Mayo Clinic has launched an immersive 20-week programme to help four artificial intelligence (AI) health tech start-ups get market-ready.

The 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 will also provide workshops for the participants.

“Health tech start-ups are critical contributors to the cycle of innovation,” said John Halamka, president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, an initiative to improve health care through insights and knowledge derived from data. “We are excited to collaborate with these innovators to solve some of the most complex problems in medicine today.”

Participants will work with data science experts to delineate AI model requirements. They will check for fairness and bias in their AI models, and gain an understanding of Food & Drug Administration clearance pathways.

The programme will give them access to de-identified Mayo Clinic patient data in a secure environment. They will be able to conduct model validation with guidance from data science experts, and plan clinical validation studies, such as clinical simulation or clinical trials.

These participating companies were chosen from a competitive process. The programme will help participants explore ways to improve health care in a variety of areas:

• Cliexa: Based in Denver, Cliexa aims to transform patient-centred data into actionable insights for people with cardiovascular conditions and multiple chronic diseases such as diabetes.
• Quadrant Health: Based in New York, Quadrant Health will analyse electronic health record and patient messaging data to triage messages and predict patient harm before it occurs.
• ScienceIO: Based in Boston and New York, ScienceIO will develop tools for organising data to help streamline care and reduce the administrative burden for physicians.
• Seer Medical: Based in Melbourne, Australia, Seer Medical will use data to refine and test its home-based epilepsy diagnostics and management models, as well as look for digital biomarkers to predict seizures.

“We are helping participants take a crucial step in their growth trajectory by providing start-ups with a disciplined focus on model validation and clinical readiness to show product value,” said Eric Harnisch, vice president of partner programmes for Mayo Clinic Platform. “The programme is integral to our Mayo Clinic Platform mission to enable new knowledge and new technologies that improve patients’ lives worldwide.”

A waitlist is open for the second Mayo Clinic Platform cohort. This cohort is planned to begin in summer 2022.