The Mayo Clinic has announced its second cohort of health tech start-ups for its Accelerate platform.

The programme will help seven companies develop and validate their artificial intelligence-driven health care products and advance their business plans.

The immersive, 20-week programme offers participants access to Mayo Clinic experts in regulatory, clinical, technology and business domains with a focus on AI model validation and clinical readiness. Technology experts from Google and Epic also will provide workshops for the participants.

“The only way we can transform health care is by bringing together clinical experts with technology innovators,” said John Halamka, president of Mayo Clinic Platform, an initiative to improve health care through insights and knowledge derived from data. “Our Accelerate programme combines emerging companies with breakthrough ideas, leaders from Mayo’s clinical practice and our unique data-behind-glass approach to algorithm development.

He said the secure environment allowed companies to build algorithm models they can use for innovation, but the data never leave the Mayo Clinic Platform.

The programme will help participants explore ways to improve health care in a variety of areas:

• Aesop Technology: Using machine learning on 3.2 billion patient visits, Aesop aims to make physician data entry easier, faster and less error-prone by automating diagnosis input and improving medication-related workflows. Aesop has offices in California, Colorado and Taiwan.
• Biotia: By fighting infectious diseases with AI and genomics, Biota is leveraging DNA sequencing technology to enable personalised, data-driven discovery of microorganisms that cause illness. The company is based in New York.
• Delfina: Tackling the maternal health crisis, Delfina’s software is monitoring health data to assess pregnancy risks, coordinate with providers and deliver a personalised care plan to improve pregnancy outcomes. Delfina has offices in San Francisco, New York and Minnesota.
• Dynocardia: Using wearable technology for accurate real-world continuous blood pressure and other heart function measures, Dynocardia is leveraging AI to enable early detection before serious health events. The company is based in Massachusetts.
• ImpriMed: To personalise human and animal cancer treatment, ImpriMed aims to validate an oncology platform to provide patients and clinicians with predictive information for individual cancer patients. The company has offices in California and South Korea.
• Predicta Med: To shorten the diagnostic journey and enable early and effective treatment, Predicta Med is creating an AI-based decision support platform for early detection of autoimmune diseases. The company is based in Israel.
• Soap Health: Soap (subjective, objective, assessment, plan) Health seeks to enhance physician productivity and insight to ensure accurate and timely pre-diagnosis – made before occurrence of symptoms – and diagnosis. The company is based in Florida.

Chosen from a competitive process, each company receives a benefit package that offers: access to deidentified patient data in a secure environment; AI model validation with guidance from data science experts; ability to check for fairness and bias in AI models; exploratory collaboration discussions with clinical experts; guidance to understand FDA clearance pathways; and support to plan clinical validation studies, such as clinical simulation or clinical research trials.

As part of this in-kind investment, Mayo Clinic Platform will have an equity position in the companies.

“In our first cohort, we already have seen these companies receive attention from potential investors, health care providers and others who want to support their work,” said Eric Harnisch, vice president at Mayo Clinic Platform. “We are excited to further these efforts with the second group of companies.”