GE Healthcare and Wayra have successfully concluded their first year of the Edison™ Accelerator, building an ecosystem of healthcare providers, industry players and healthcare start-ups to develop, integrate and commercialize digital solutions. Below we describe how the program came together and what has been achieved since.
As the momentum behind digital transformation in healthcare gathers pace, the need for stakeholder collaboration has never been greater.
“COVID-19 has shone a light on what can be achieved quickly and effectively when digital health players come together and focus on a specific problem statement”, says Jan Beger, Senior Director of Digital Ecosystem at GE Healthcare. “The challenges the healthcare sector is facing are too complex for a single company to solve on its own. Co-creating with other companies in the healthcare ecosystem can be an effective way to bring together the ideas, skills, contacts, and other resources needed to produce truly powerful innovations.“
The industry needs an ecosystem approach to seize the opportunity created by the pandemic with the potential to change the way healthcare providers procure technologies that meet their needs in more innovative ways.
Edison Accelerator is a start-up acceleration and healthcare provider collaboration program in EMEA designed by GE Healthcare in partnership with Wayra UK, Telefónica's Open Innovation Hub. Launched in early 2021, the Edison Accelerator is part of an ecosystem model that enables digital health start-ups, scale-ups and healthcare providers to collaborate and innovate, harnessing the benefits of GE Healthcare’s development environment and mentoring services to build on the value proposition of their own tools and applications.
Participating start-ups have access to world-class technical mentorship and business development support from Wayra, GE Healthcare, Intel and AWS. The program provides mentorship including healthcare technology, business development, investment and human resources. The foundation of the program is to identify the pressing problems of healthcare institutions. Validated problem statements are something many digital health startups are lacking.
Edison Accelerator brings health tech startups, great data scientists, engineers and developers closely together with healthcare professionals, for advisory, guidance and clinical mentoring. The program’s healthcare provider partners can provide data for Artificial Intelligence (AI) development and offer opportunities to run pilots or proof of concepts when a prototype has been built. The start-ups have the ability to build or integrate their solutions to GE Healthcare’s innovative Edison™ platform. The platform enables the capability to rapidly develop, host and deploy various applications and will ultimately give the start-ups access to GE Healthcare’s clients.
GE Healthcare, as a leading global medical technology, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and digital solutions innovator, has a global footprint and with operations in more than 160 countries supports on market launch and commercialization.
“The opportunities for healthcare with a truly intelligent connected digital enterprise are significant, but no one organization can get there alone. The Edison Accelerator will be central to the ecosystem that will harness the brainpower and energy of start-ups and clinical partners to arrive at solutions that help healthcare providers deliver precision health across the care continuum,” says Amit Phadnis, Vice President, Chief Digital Officer, GE Healthcare. “We believe that over the next few years, Edison would become an important hub for healthcare innovation with thousands of applications and services available on it.”
The 2021 edition of the Edison Accelerator concluded in November, with 5 finishing start-ups. Over the last six months, start-ups partnered with healthcare institutions and GE Healthcare to work on the following missions:
- Accelerating Imaging AI adoption at scale
- Eliminating waste in the oncology care pathway with AI & Digital Technologies
- Democratizing cancer care: Putting the healthcare consumer front & central
Accelerating Imaging AI adoption at scale
„The Edison Accelerator is an opportunity for the EMRAD network to explore how we can accelerate the adoption and integration of AI products into existing NHS workflows,” explains Dr. Yutaro Higashi, Radiologist & Deputy Medical Director, East Midlands Imaging Network EMRAD. “Using the Edison™ Open AI Orchestrator, we collaborate with GE Healthcare and the AI partners with the aim to demonstrate that integrating AI results in better care for our patients.”
Lucida Medical1 uses machine learning and radiogenomics to help identify prostate cancer from MRI and clinical data. The company aims to make cancer screening accurate, accessible, cost-effective and quick. Dr Antony Rix, CEO & Co-Founder, Lucida Medical explains: “Combining the right technologies and great teams will be key to unlocking healthcare innovation. The support of GE Healthcare and Wayra UK through the Edison Accelerator enables us to streamline the process for clinicians to access Prostate Intelligence. Through partnerships, we will deliver Lucida Medical’s vision to help find cancer early.”
Radiobotics1 develops robust and clinically validated algorithms for MSK radiology that can increase throughput by automating the analysis and reporting on routine X-rays, which are time-consuming and where the backlogs are substantial. “Working for many years in the NHS, I see the stress our services are under and the impact that technology can have to relieve some of this pressure. The Edison Accelerator is important to join the dots between NHS partners such as EMRAD and technology powerhouses such as GE Healthcare to activate Radiobotics' technology across the health ecosystem. Championing innovation in this way is key to meeting our current and future healthcare needs.”, says Cathal White, Business Development Manager, Radiobotics.
Eliminating waste in the oncology care pathway with AI & Digital Technologies
„Current cancer diagnostic pathways remain laborious, lengthy and sometimes a multi-faceted process with many potential bottlenecks despite recent innovations. With increasing post Covid-19 pressures, any such bottlenecks could delay diagnostic investigations and hence adversely affect patient outcomes,” says Dr. Peter Strouhal, Medical Director UK, Alliance Medical. “Alliance Medical’s focus on service excellence and innovative imaging technologies allows us to create value for patients, clinicians, service providers and other stakeholders while improving patient experiences, clinical outcomes and yet still driving efficiencies to reduce costs. Thus, we are delighted to partner with GE Healthcare through the Edison Accelerator as a validation partner to help deliver a healthier world with more precise and efficient care.”
SPRYT1 is an appointment scheduling solution that improves uptake and coverage rates for screening services as well as aiming to reduce the appointment no-show problem. No show rates are a significant problem in diagnostic cancer services. “We’re delighted to be given the opportunity to work with GE Healthcare and Alliance Medical on the Edison Accelerator to deliver our patient-first, intelligent scheduling system that will help empower patients to have more control over their medical appointments as well as reduce inefficiencies in the oncology care pathway,” says Daragh Donohoe, Co-Founder, SPRYT.
My Clinical Outcomes1 integrates remote, longitudinal Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) into routine clinical practice to enable smarter individual decisions, and better overall value care pathways. “We have the opportunity to place the outcomes that matter to patients at the heart of the recovery from Covid-19. The Edison Accelerator allows us to partner at this key time to scale the remote monitoring of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures to help services prioritize patients with the greatest needs, make more informed clinical decisions, and to minimize unwarranted variation and cost,” says Tim Williams, Co-Founder & CEO, My Clinical Outcomes.
Democratizing cancer care: Putting the healthcare consumer front & central
“We believe that collaboration between corporations and start-ups is essential to boost innovation in healthcare. Through the Edison Accelerator, we can share needs and experiences with other European stakeholders and create an ecosystem of cooperation and joint development,” says Tania Menéndez Hevia, Digital Transformation Officer, Ribera Salud. “Through the accelerator, we work with the start-up Legit.Health to get a better diagnosis and follow-up of wounds.”
Legit.Health1 is a clinical data and communication tool that helps next-generation dermatologists improve diagnosis, score severity and monitor the evolution of wounds, and chronic and malignant skin lesions. This AI-powered technology helps clinicians and patients alike to improve diagnosis. “You can't improve what you can't measure. The Edison Accelerator allows us to partner and scale to bring AI tools to help organizations practice a more value-based healthcare,” says Andy Aguilar, CEO & Co-Founder, Legit.Health. “Legit.Health’s algorithms increase the reliability of data and enrich both the quality and the quantity of clinical endpoints.”
We strongly believe in the power of a collaborative ecosystem
“By moving the relationship away from one of competition between commercial organizations, and one of that is transactional when it comes to healthcare providers and technology vendors we are going to deliver mutual benefit and get the technologies we need for our patients and the population we serve,” says Katherine Boylan, Head of Innovation, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. “The value for us as a healthcare provider for participating in the Edison Accelerator is that it allowed us to work with subject matter experts on a real-world problem that helps us and leverages the commercial, strategic and technical minds of GE Healthcare’s Edison platform. We benefit from the expertise, we build our own expertise, we build our collaborative network, that we may otherwise not have been part of.”
“The rising adoption of AI, changing customer expectations, and the growing number of complex use-cases have led to the need for a collaborative approach between various stakeholders.”, says Rob Walton, President and CEO GE Healthcare EMEA. “The Edison Accelerator is bringing together those stakeholders under a single, connected ecosystem to generate a real impact in helping to improve the bottom line and in providing patient care.”
Katherine concludes, “The highlight in the last couple of months was the enthusiasm and desire to work together the program has generated locally within our organization, but also working with colleagues in GE Healthcare and in the start-ups. In an NHS organization there is sometimes a bit of distrust of commercial organizations being around trying to sell us something, but I think the mindset of some of our colleagues locally is changing due to the opportunity to participate in the Edison Accelerator. Collaboration and co-development are key for delivering digital transformation and getting the data-driven technologies that we need into healthcare.”
Ready to join?
Start-ups and scale-ups based in Europe, the Middle East or Africa targeting the healthcare space will be able to apply for the 2022 cohort in March 2022. Specific problem statements will be shared when scouting starts. Applications from start-ups leveraging technologies like big data and advanced analytics, AI and machine learning, image and time series processing and edge computing will have an advantage in their application.
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1. These products are not distributed by GE Healthcare
