Applications Open for HITLAB Fall 2023 Breakthrough Alliance Challenge

Challenge Seeks to Identify Digital Health Solutions that Address Gaps in Healthcare

The HITLAB Breakthrough Alliance is holding a ‘Call for Applications’ for its annual Fall 2023 Breakthrough Alliance Challenge. They are looking for the world’s most innovative developing and early commercial digital health technologies that solve significant gaps in healthcare. The challenge is open to all new and innovative solutions across the healthcare spectrum.

For over twenty years, HITLAB has been a pioneer in the advancement of digital health research, strategy, and education. In 2016, the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) partnered with HITLAB to launch the Digital Health Breakthrough Network (DHBN) as part of its broader efforts to facilitate growth in New York City’s healthcare and life sciences sectors. HITLAB now independently operates this program and continues providing rapid solution verification services to the digital health ecosystem.

Chaired by Bill Taranto, President, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund The HITLAB Breakthrough Alliance is a global consortium of member organizations with a shared mission to improve health outcomes and care delivery through verified emerging technologies.

“The Innovator’s Challenge is a core component of our Breakthrough Alliance Program. The goal is to enable health technology companies to benefit from rigorous cost-effective methods for generating meaningful, evidence-driven data that seek to validate their concept, prototypes, or products and attract key clients and investors,” said Stan Kachnowski, Director Columbia Business School, Digital Health Program and Chair, HITLAB. “We have seen many ew and novel solutions come out of previous challenges and look forward to seeing what innovations are submitted this Spring.”

Innovator applications will be accepted through October 20th. Submissions will be screened and evaluated by a panel of judges using several criteria, including:

Impact
Differentiation
Scalability
Economic feasibility
Sustainability
Quality of work
Social Media
Impact

The finalists will be contacted on October 30th and upon confirmation will be announced on November 1st, 2023. They will present their solutions live (virtually) on November 29th during the HITLAB Fall Innovator’s Summit at Columbia University. Up to three finalists will be chosen and announced by a panel of judges.

The winning innovations will subsequently be evaluated in rapid-cycle studies with end-users providing key verification data and actionable insights regarding design, feasibility, and market potential. There is no cost to apply, no cost to participate, and no equity requested by HITLAB.

The HITLAB Breakthrough Alliance board members will ensure that this vital research is completed in a timely and effective manner.

The application can be found here: https://www.hitlab.org/bta-challenge/ .

About HITLAB Breakthrough Alliance

HITLAB Breakthrough Alliance is an accelerator that helps early-stage startups conduct rapid pilot studies to test their products and move closer to market. Selected startups have their technologies tested in pilot studies with clinical partners and patients, gathering the data needed to accelerate their concepts. To source startups, Breakthrough holds open innovation competitions and networking events that bring together the digital health and investment ecosystem.

Breakthrough is membership-based and board members represent the best organizations in healthcare.