Northwell Health and Aegis Ventures to form first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence venture to drive better, more equitable, and lower-cost healthcare

Substantial financial commitment will kick-start multi-billion-dollar external investment to address entrenched healthcare challenges

Platform to combine clinicians, scientists, venture capital and entrepreneurs with AI-enhanced data from diverse populations

Northwell Health, New York’s largest healthcare provider, and Aegis Ventures, a New York-based startup studio, today announced they are forming a joint venture (JV) that will ideate, launch, and scale AI-driven companies to address healthcare’s most challenging quality, equity, and cost problems. The JV will assemble leading medical, technology, and business resources to create a first-of-its-kind company creation platform for healthcare innovation. Aegis Ventures intends to invest at least $100 million of seed-stage funds through the platform to catalyze a significant multiple of that amount from the venture capital and investment community.

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The JV will work with stakeholders across the Northwell system to create new patient care solutions through collaboration with frontline clinicians, working side-by-side from ideation to implementation, to develop innovations that use AI to predict, diagnose, and manage health conditions. The parties have already started work on solutions related to improving maternal health outcomes and chronic disease prediction. Alongside this disease focus, the JV will use AI to identify and eliminate operational inefficiencies in healthcare delivery. All technologies and tools will be identified, developed, and validated within the secure Northwell Health environment to maximize data integrity and privacy. Ultimately, the aim of the JV will be to accelerate the speed with which new lifesaving AI solutions reach the patient’s bedside.

“New York was at the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis, and today’s announcement places it at the epicenter of innovation that will tackle healthcare’s most pressing problems,” said Michael Dowling, President and CEO of Northwell Health. “This joint venture will leverage data from Northwell’s patient population, one of the most diverse in the world, along with Northwell’s intellectual capital in AI technology. Working together, Northwell and Aegis will create companies that bring higher quality, lower cost healthcare to those who need it most.”

Northwell has a track record of success in AI research, including the development of a landmark algorithm that predicts patients’ overnight stability to reduce the need to wake them for vital sign checks. Developed using 26 million measurements from 2.3 million patient visits, the algorithm helps reduce nighttime disturbances to speed patients’ recovery and discharge. In addition, Northwell serves one of the most diverse patient populations in the United States. Caring for more than 2 million people annually across 23 hospitals and hundreds of other facilities provides the health system’s clinicians and researchers with a unique vantage point into the health and wellbeing of traditionally underserved communities. This perspective will be a key aspect of the Northwell-Aegis JV, which will prioritize innovation to reduce racial and socioeconomic biases that drive health inequities and have impaired existing AI solutions.

“Aegis’ experience in commercialization and Northwell’s experience in clinical care complement each other perfectly,” said Aegis Ventures Chairman Bill Schoenfeld. “Our joint platform will bring together the medical, technological, and investment talent to launch new companies that address healthcare’s most pressing challenges.”

In addition to linking clinicians, researchers, patients, and other healthcare stakeholders, the Northwell-Aegis JV platform team will include exceptional entrepreneurs, data scientists, engineers, and industry leaders with the commercial acumen needed to bring these innovations to the patient’s bedside. From day one, the JV will prioritize the needs of patients and clinicians, and develop best practices in ideation, research, and company creation to significantly accelerate the pace of AI development and adoption. This represents a new, more targeted approach to the way in which venture capitalists and healthcare systems can work together to solve major healthcare challenges.

“Our mission is to catalyze a new Moore’s Law in healthcare where, as we continually improve access, we continually reduce cost,” said Tom Manning, Chairman of the Northwell-Aegis JV and former Chairman & CEO of Dun & Bradstreet, the leading global provider of corporate information and data analytics. “This new effort promises to transform the model for innovation in healthcare and improve outcomes for everyone, but particularly for people who may be lost in the shuffle and most need our help.”

Through the launch of the JV, Northwell and Aegis are committed to building an exceptional team who will embrace this unique opportunity to create impact. To learn more about the JV or register your interest in joining the team that will further these unique opportunities, please visit https://aegisventures.com/healthcare-ai/.

About Northwell Health

Northwell Health is New York State’s largest health care provider and private employer, with 23 hospitals, 830 outpatient facilities and more than 16,600 affiliated physicians. We care for over two million people annually in the New York metro area and beyond, thanks to philanthropic support from our communities. Our 77,000 employees – 18,900 nurses and 4,800 employed doctors, including members of Northwell Health Physician Partners – are working to change health care for the better. We’re making breakthroughs in medicine at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. We're training the next generation of medical professionals at the visionary Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Hofstra Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. For information on our more than 100 medical specialties, visit Northwell.edu and follow us @NorthwellHealth on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

About Aegis Ventures

Aegis Ventures is a next-generation startup studio that partners with entrepreneurs and industry leaders to originate, launch, and scale transformative companies. Our platform brings together market-shaping ideas, permanent growth capital, and ambitious individuals driven to solve major societal problems. We aim to build companies with the capacity for vast impact, with an initial focus on three key areas: data and automation, health and wellness, and digital health and health technologies. Within these verticals, Aegis seeks to create companies that leverage technology to better optimize tradeoffs between quality, access, and cost, focusing on innovations that promote seamless continuity of care, patient empowerment, and better-informed clinical decision-making. To learn more about Aegis, visit our website aegisventures.com and follow us on LinkedIn.

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