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Happy Tuesday, Hospitalogists!
Today’s post is a quick dive into the world of health system innovation: Who’s working with whom? Who is partnering in the ecosystem? What strategic areas are they targeting for health system transformation?
Here are some recent, notable partnerships and coalitions to note, and if there are any I’ve missed, please feel free to ping me by replying and I’ll add them to the online version!
The Health System Innovation Engine Picks up Steam in 2025
I’ve covered quite a bit of the health system transformation and innovation ecosystem in the past, and I find it really interesting to learn more about how strategic players think as well as what they’re investing in, but also HOW they’re incubating and investing into new companies and ways to gain operating efficiencies.
So here’s a quick rundown of some of my conversations from the past year or so with health system leaders and investors all working to make healthcare better, but also achieve financial returns along the way to bolster the bottom line. Many of these health systems are massive and obviously have other initiatives at play across the enterprise, but I wanted to highlight a few recent examples.
Longitude Health:
Hospitalogists are probably pretty familiar with Longitude Health. I wanted to start with these guys because they are a bit unique in their approach, but also the Hospitalogy community is hosting a roundtable with Longitude Health leadership this Friday (apply for the community here to register - reserved for plus members!). Longitude Health just signed on another high profile member to the coalition this week - Michigan Medicine - which brings the academic medical center into the fold alongside current members Baylor, Memorial Hermann, Novant, and Providence, the five of which generated a combined $74.1B in total revenue in 2024. Absolute powerhouses.
Longitude Health incubates new companies in cohorts, and I went deeper into their methodology in a membership send here on how they select new initiatives including a comprehensive review with strategy folks and CFOs to determine financial viability, but also to drill down into operating problems (so not necessarily always after maximizing external financial gain).
So far in cohort 1 for 2025 they’ve launched a specialty pharmacy, population health / value-based care, and RCM / financial experience company with the idea that these health systems with their shared resources can sell scalable platform solutions in these areas to help other less advantaged or similar sized health systems with limited resources or core competencies elsewhere. The idea reminds me of my recent conversation with Fairview’s James Hereford where he discussed their new specialty pharmacy platform Fairview Pharmacy Solutions, how they are deeply competent in that service specifically, and are looking to scale their solution to other similar-sized systems.
Aegis Ventures, Northwell Health, and the Digital Health Consortium:
Over the past few years, $80B in investment has filled the coffers of over 13,000 digital health firms. But how many have delivered real, tangible impact?
Aegis Ventures and co want to change that.
I’ve been meaning to write about this one for a while. John Beadle and John Noseworthy were kind enough to spend some time with me and tell me all about Aegis’ new venture alongside major health systems in similar fashion to Longitude. Aegis has tons of experience in working alongside 30+ health systems and noticed many had similar problems along with opportunities they couldn’t tap into on their own. So alongside Northwell’s innovation arm, they formed the Digital Consortium.
The Digital Consortium is a coalition of 11 health systems: Northwell Health in New York being the founding member, then 9 original members, then finally adding two more in late 2024:
Stanford Health Care
Endeavor Health
Indiana University Health
Memorial Hermann Health System
Northwell Health
Novant Health
Ochsner Health
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Sharp Healthcare
November 2024: added UPMC
November 2024: added Vanderbilt Health
So what is the Digital Consortium? It’s a highly collaborative environment where health systems dive into their most deeply felt pain points along with opportunities for growth. These health system innovation teams come together during an annual retreat to discuss real problems, how to tackle them, and what solutions might be needed to future proof or sustain operations. Aegis and team strongly believe that to solve the problems in healthcare, there’s never going to be a single trillion dollar company, and innovation has, and needs, to start from within the health system. Their goal is to empower systems to drive innovation in a way they wouldn’t be able to with internal resources. What folks need is a shared ecosystem that shares systems, and a set of core partners and platforms to validate and scale solutions across those enterprises.
From there, the Digital Consortium invests across 5 key pillars:
Reimagining the consumer experience
Automating workflows
Creating and amplifying new biomarkers
Unlocking real-world evidence to accelerate clinical trials, and
Unlocking shared care / expanding share of care for health system.
To date they’ve made investments in Caire (digital front door platform), Hume, Optain, Upliv, Ascertain (back office automation platform), and a to-be-named stealth company in the maternal health analytics space.
Aegis and the Digital Consortium are looking for similarly sized health systems who are willing to say “yes,” who hold strong track records of innovation, are willing to put C-suite resources behind their initiatives, and engage in a true partnership. Aegis tries to be emblematic of all health systems within the Digital Consortium in an attempt at diversity and has developed 3-4 health system ‘phenotypes’ where they identify the best fit for incubating companies, and deploy those solutions at those identified ‘best fit’ health systems - and it’s all designed to be an ‘opt in’ model on the health system side, so the opportunities need to be compelling for that reason. Health systems also share in equity participation and upside, similarly to other partnerships and coalitions mentioned in this write-up.
Look for more to come from the Digital Consortium as Aegis and their team are continuously looking and vetting 50+ ideas in healthcare innovation at any given time.
Cedars-Sinai and Redesign Health:
Announced earlier in May 2025, Cedars Sinai partnered with Redesign Health to launch its own digital innovation platform. Redesign is a venture incubator which has launched 60+ companies since inception. So together Cedars-Sinai and Redesign Health state their own strategic focus areas are as follows:
Specialty care access and extension
Personalized medicine
Workflow intelligence and health system decision support
Provider-payor-patient coordination
The Digital Innovation Platform will source external talent—healthcare business strategists, engineers, data scientists and others—who will leverage Cedars-Sinai’s internal clinical expertise and emerging technology to develop and scale new digital health solutions that address critical needs within the healthcare system.
The Digital Innovation Platform is taking a similar approach to Longitude Health in that they’re sourcing challenges and day to day operating problems from their clinical and administrative workforce, and offering these individuals the opportunity to participate in the new structure entrepreneurship program. Pretty cool opportunity to, as I understand it, identify entrepreneurial talent within your workforce if you’re Cedars but also be a part of something unique as a healthcare worker.
Other notable innovation partnerships and commentary:
Catalyst by Wellstar (launched in 2021) is another longstanding incubator in from one of the largest health systems in Georgia. To date, they’ve invested in over 23 companies.
In 2023, Wellstar launched a $100M venture fund. The fund aims to make more than 50 direct investments in early-stage startups, Pre-seed to Series A, over the next five years and invest indirectly in 150+ startups through limited partner investments with venture and growth equity funds with proven track records of success
It’ll invest in disruptive innovation across multiple dimensions:
Customer experience
Data, analytics, and security
Digital health
Future of work
Supply chain, logistics, and mobility
Sustainability
Meanwhile, Intermountain Ventures quietly has assembled a nice portfolio of companies. HATCo of course is working to acquire Summa Health and presumably expand General Catalyst portco’s into the operation (currently it’s hitting some public roadblocks from an Akron-based coalition opposing the deal - though they might need a quick primer in valuation).
Don’t forget about the thinktank partnerships formed post-pandemic. Both General Catalyst and a16z announced several partnerships with strategics over the years post-pandemic with the idea of working together to identify problems and build for strategics in those areas. Tangentially related, a16z announced a new venture fund with Eli Lilly called the Biotech Ecosystem Venture Fund earlier in 2025.
I’m also very familiar with LRVHealth, another venture firm whose strategy is to work with insiders to develop companies in areas of strategic need. LRVHealth just announced a new investment in LucyRx, a next-generation PBM.
Finally, the recent cross-market mega mergers will be looking to do some damage as well. Kaiser’s Risant Health is still on the prowl after scooping up Cone Health and Geisinger in recent years with goals of hitting $30B in total revenue while extending what I imagine will be Kaiser-based capabilities and solutions into its subject systems. Advocate Health as a $35B system
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MISCELLANEOUS MADDENINGS
Blake’s personal adventures with golf, college football, and life
Some golf buddies and I had our annual golf trip out to Pine Dunes in Frankston, Texas (for any Texans it’s a must-play course) and I have a fun story to share. I’m playing in a foursome on hole 11, which is an uphill, 3-shot Par 5 when all of a sudden, we hear an earth-shattering roar spread across the acreage. The next hole, hole 12, is a par 3 and also was a group of ours. My buddy Travis and I look at each other and say “no way.” This was on Friday, our first round, and so we drive up to the next tee box and lo and behold, another guy in the group had hit a hole in one. Crazy stuff. I’d probably drop a pretty penny to be able to hit a hole in one on a golf trip with friends. Insanely jealous. But also, so cool to witness.
Thanks for the read! Let me know what you thought by replying back to this email.
— Blake
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