Digital Health Accelerators Boosting Local Companies

Business accelerators have long been a crucial link for taking startups from the research and prototype stage to marketing and selling their products and services to customers. But until about six years ago, there were only a couple of accelerators to serve L.A.’s medical device and health tech industries — including one exclusively focused on medical devices for pediatric care.

Starting in 2015, a pair of life science accelerators came onto the L.A. County scene seeking to serve the burgeoning health tech sector: Cedars-Sinai Accelerator in West Hollywood and MedTech Innovator in Westwood. They were soon joined by KidsX in East Hollywood — affiliated with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and USC — and a program from the South Park-based Larta Institute known as Heal.LA, along with one incubator for health tech startups, ScaleHealth in Palms.

“These accelerators are an outgrowth of the local digital health market,” said Paul Grand, chief executive of MedTech Innovator.

“Increasingly, health tech is software driven, even if hardware devices are involved,” Grand continued. “Los Angeles is a great place for software talent with both the availability of and lifestyle for such talent. Plus, our local academic medical centers and research institutions bring in more National Institutes of Health funding than almost any other metro area in the country.”

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