Intermountain Healthcare, Healthbox team up for joint healthcare innovation venture

Intermountain Healthcare and Healthbox are joining forces on a healthcare innovation and venture model to stimulate collaboration between inventors, entrepreneurs and healthcare industry experts.

The physical structure, to be based in Salt Lake City adjacent to Intermountain Healthcare, is still under development. Healthbox and Intermountain will lead three new initiatives:

• The Intermountain Foundry will provide a structured framework to help high-potential employee ideas and near-market concepts become commercial businesses.
• Strategic Investments will source companies from the broader healthcare ecosystem and develop partnerships that include investment and potential customer relationships.  
• The Healthbox Salt Lake City Accelerator, which launched in September in partnership with Health Equity, Zion’s Bank and BD, brings the Healthbox infrastructure to Salt Lake, connecting resources and expertise throughout the region to support outside entrepreneurs with progressive products at various stages of development.

“Over my tenure, I have been increasingly impressed with the innovative ideas coming from Intermountain Healthcare’s physicians and employees that hold the potential to lead us into the next era of healthcare delivery,” said Bert Zimmerli, Intermountain Healthcare’s chief financial officer, in a statement. “Collaborating with Healthbox provides us not only with the foundation to expand the impact of their solutions but the means to form relationships with entrepreneurs and their technologies that will improve quality and reduce the cost of care for our patients.”