From Fly-Over to “Fly-To” Country: BioSTL Attracts International Health Care Innovators to St. Louis
GlobalSTL Health Innovation Summit customizes one-on-one meetings between Midwest health care leaders and high-interest startups
ST. LOUIS – Digital health technologies from Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and the U.S. seeking strategic business development opportunities are coming to St. Louis Wednesday, November 17, 2021, for the fifth annual GlobalSTL Health Innovation Summit.
GlobalSTL, the global company recruitment initiative of BioSTL, selected the 15 highly-innovative digital health companies to meet with local healthcare organizations to boost competitive advantage and economic impact in St. Louis.
GlobalSTL’s innovation buying platform is comprised of 16 healthcare organizations (systems, payers, and PBMs) across five Midwestern states, whose combined revenues exceed $365 billion, representing 10% of US healthcare spending – an attractive business opportunity for international and national companies looking to expand into the US and Midwest markets.
The Summit provides for a highly-curated, intimate gathering where the startups recruited by GlobalSTL meet with decision makers from large organizations, which have specific pain points for which they are trying to solve. Only the startups that receive strong interest from multiple GlobalSTL partner organizations are invited to participate.
This very deliberate approach has landed 19 new international companies in St. Louis. Since 2014, GlobalSTL has helped global companies reach $188 million in revenue and local investments, adding 250 new jobs to St. Louis. Forty-one percent of the startups invited to participate in the Summits have closed business deals with at least one of the strategic business partners they meet here. Local and international companies spoke about their St. Louis experience at our last in-person Summit in 2019.
GlobalSTL reviewed more than 1,500 digital health companies and invited 15 of the most compelling companies to pitch their cutting-edge technologies to more than 100 senior leaders from St. Louis and Midwest health systems and organizations.
“Global innovation can be a difference maker in St. Louis’ competitive standing,” said Donn Rubin, President & CEO of BioSTL. “Through this Summit, our region is being deliberate and proactive in attracting global innovation to propel our businesses and solve our challenges.”
The success demonstrates the three-fold goal of GlobalSTL: (1) provide St. Louis companies access to cutting-edge technology to boost their competitive advantage; (2) secure prized US customers and strategic partners for the international companies; and (3) leverage the first two wins to establish a US presence of high-growth international companies in St. Louis, thus enriching St. Louis’ ecosystem with new jobs, talent and innovation, and economic activity.
“In just five years, the GlobalSTL Health Innovation Summit has become the premier healthcare innovation business development event in the Midwest. The 60 companies that have attended the four Summits prior to 2021 have raised more than $3.1 billion in investment; 74% of which has been raised post-Summit. GlobalSTL is proving an impressive value acceleration platform for these top healthcare innovators, while driving global innovation and investment directly to St. Louis,” said Vijay Chauhan, GlobalSTL Lead. “With massive buying power, healthcare is our region’s economic dynamo. The goal of the Summit is to make this engine even stronger. In 2020, our success with international companies caught the attention of top US healthcare innovators, and we are now attracting the best of both worlds – US and international companies – to the Summit. The Summit is about transforming St. Louis from Fly-Over Country to ‘Fly-To’ Country for top healthcare innovation.”
Some of the types of digital health technologies GlobalSTL is bringing to St. Louis and Midwest hospitals and corporations include: consumer-centric innovations including “hospital-at-home” telehealth technologies, social determinants of health innovators that provide inclusive, “whole-person” care for citizens in underserved urban and rural communities, remote monitoring of patients with chronic conditions, big data solutions that include predictive and risk stratification technologies, as well as solutions for lowering operations costs, improving behavioral health, preventing physician burnout, and reducing hospital readmissions.
The 15 US and international innovative companies offering such solutions at the 2021 GlobalSTL Health Innovation Summit include:
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Ada (Germany) provides clinically accurate AI symptom assessment and care navigation by helping patients understand their symptoms and likely conditions and helping them to choose the right level of care at the right time.
- Aiva (USA) connects patients and providers via smart speakers.
- Array (USA) provides telepsychiatry, allowing patients to connect with qualified, remote behavioral health clinicians.
- Biofourmis (Singapore) integrates and analyzes continuous physiology data from clinical-grade wearables to detect personalized patterns and predict clinical exacerbation in advance of a critical event, enabling medical professionals to intervene days before a critical event and providing better outcomes for patients.
- care.ai (USA) deploys sensors throughout the care space to provide AI-powered inferences about conditions, events, and activities, and automatically sends alerts when an intervention is deemed necessary.
- Current Health (UK) offers a care-at-home platform to enable healthcare organizations to deliver high-quality, patient-centric care at a lower cost.
- Dario Health (Israel) offers digital therapeutics for diabetes, hypertension, MSK and behavioral health.
- DayTwo (Israel) provides a sustainable path to remission for metabolic diseases through its gut microbiome profiling, AI to predict blood sugar response to food, and virtual care.
- Halo Health (USA) unifies all clinician communication channels such as secure messaging, video, voice, and alerts, ensuring the right messages instantly get to the correct care team member.
- Kyruus (USA) connects patients with the right care and providers with its provider search, scheduling, and data management platform.
- Luma Health (USA) allows health systems and clinics to build automated workflows (clinical, operational, financial) for complex use-cases to synchronize every part of the patient journey.
- nQ Medical (USA) uses passive, AI-aided to analysis of personal device interactions to assess neurodegenerative diseases through its digital biomarker discovery platform.
- Pack Health (USA) relies on social determinants of health to identify what barriers may exist between patients and doctors’ advice.
- Socially Determined (USA) analyzes Social Determinants of Health and social risk factors and reveals the patterns driving costs and utilization among patient populations and how to address them.
- Vynca (USA) couples technology and analytics to manage patients’ serious illness through palliative care, including the physical, mental, spiritual, and social needs of every individual, no matter where they are located.
The GlobalSTL Health Innovation Summit kicks off with an innovators’ reception at The BioSTL Building on Tuesday, November 16, 2021, followed by the all-day Summit November 17, 2021 at Le Meridien St. Louis Clayton. Startups will hear from clinical and innovation leaders on the strategic and innovation priorities of their organizations that COVID-19 has catalyzed and their expectations for potential innovation partners that they will be meeting with during the Summit.
The following companies and healthcare systems are attending:
American Enterprise Group | Ascension and Ascension Ventures | Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan | BJC HealthCare | Centene Corporation | Evernorth - Cigna | Memorial Health System | Mercy | OSF HealthCare | Regenstrief Institute | Saint Louis University School of Medicine | Southern Illinois Health | SSM Health | Unity Point Health | VA Health System | Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine