October 28, 2021 – Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, NY) is partnering with Aegis Ventures with the goal of creating companies powered by artificial intelligence to address issues like health equity, quality, and costs.
As part of the new partnership, Aegis plans to invest at least $100 million of seed-stage funds in technology startups. Northwell, a 19-hospital system in the New York metro area, will provide its data sets and clinical talent to help with the development, the companies said.
Tom Manning, chairman of the joint venture, said the partnership will build technologies based on collaboration between front-line clinicians working side by side with data scientists from the beginning.
Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell, says that applying AI could make better use of the health system’s pool of data through predictive analysis to help develop remedial methods and technologies.
Two initial areas of interest are in improving maternity care and treatment of chronic diseases.
Dowling said the partnership is particularly interested in the maternal health area, because applying data analytics may help reduce the number of difficult pregnancies that occur for Black mothers. He said the partnership is working on a project to help reduce the risk of conditions like preeclampsia that could be treated and caught earlier through the use of artificial intelligence.
For chronic disease, the new joint venture is particularly interested in using AI to mine data to help patients with kidney and heart conditions, as well as diabetes. The overall goal is to prevent adverse outcomes, provide early intervention and have better monitoring through the use of technology.