GlobalSTL Hosts Washington University & BJC HealthCare Leaders in Startup Nation

Digital Health Delegation Travels to Israel to Boost St. Louis Innovation

ST. LOUIS – GlobalSTL is leading three delegations to Startup Nation this month. This week, a delegation focused on digital health is in Israel to make specific connections for Washington University in St. Louis with Israeli industry leaders and innovators. Then, from January 28 – February 2, 2018, in partnership with SixThirty, concurrent delegations focused on cybersecurity and financial technology will travel to Israel. The following includes details of the digital health delegation’s trip:

On Monday, January 22, 2018, GlobalSTL, an initiative of BioSTL, is sponsoring a meetup in Israel featuring Philip R.O. Payne, director of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Institute for Informatics (I2), and Thomas M. Maddox, director of BJC HealthCare’s Innovation Lab. The meetup and week-long trip abroad will introduce Payne and Maddox to Israel’s thriving innovation ecosystem, which includes more than 410 digital healthcare startups.

“St. Louis is a powerhouse in healthcare with nationally recognized healthcare systems, corporations and investors,” Vijay Chauhan, GlobalSTL lead, said. “Wash U and BJC, among others, are looking for leading, global innovation to succeed in a fast-changing healthcare economy. GlobalSTL is actively seeking out the top digital health innovations to help our healthcare systems solve their pain points, which in turn directly benefits our local healthcare organizations and their patients and customers.”

During the trip, the team will meet with Israeli innovators, venture capitalists, government officials, accelerators, and startups. Desired outcomes for the trip include:

• Increasing Washington University’s and BJC’s awareness and profile within Israel’s healthcare innovation community. Leading U.S. systems such as Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic are well known in Israel and have working partnerships with Israel.
• Identifying immediate innovation opportunities (collaboration with medical centers, HMO's, startups, VCs) for Washington University and BJC to leverage to advance their own innovation priorities.
• Creating an ongoing pipeline of innovation and engagement between Israel and Washington University and BJC.

Specifically, I2 and the Health Systems Innovation Lab are looking to find technology in the following fields:

• Translational bioinformatics – developing and showing the impact of reproducible solutions to linking bio-molecular and clinical phenotypes in support of translational research and precision medicine;
• Learning healthcare systems – instrumenting Electronic Health Records and modeling/structuring ensuing data sets to enable high-throughput clinical phenotyping “at scale”; and,
• Population health informatics – leveraging data-driven intervention strategies delivered in settings beyond the hospital and clinic in order to promote health and wellness (this can include but is not limited to mobile health, IoT, and ubiquitous computing). This would also include technologies/methods that support value-based clinical transformation.
• Personalized medicine – collecting and analyzing the full spectrum of patient data (e.g. genomic, clinical, behavioral, and environmental) to better match diagnostic and treatment resources to individual needs;
• Patient and provider journeys – remote monitoring and predictive technologies to characterize the daily lives of patients and providers to determine where opportunities exist for improving their health.

The delegation also will attend the EY DigitalHealth Conference.

A note from Donn Rubin, GlobalSTL Founder, President & CEO of BioSTL:

“The GlobalSTL initiative, started in 2014, has already yielded substantial success in connecting Missouri and Israel for the mutual benefit and economic growth of both communities. St. Louis nonprofit organization BioSTL launched the GlobalSTL initiative to connect St. Louis to some of the world's leading innovation hubs. GlobalSTL started with Israel, because it is a world-leading innovation engine, which also happens to share important areas of strength with St. Louis, including medicine and healthcare, agricultural technology, financial tech, and cybersecurity.

“Though this initiative is relatively new, St. Louis has competed very well with regions on the East and West Coasts of the United States to attract the U.S. headquarters of leading Israeli technology companies. Under the initiative, five cutting-edge Israeli companies have established their U.S. bases in St. Louis, creating 56 direct new jobs with an average salary of $77,600, plus an additional $12,000,000 in local capital investment. Moreover, these companies are recruited to Missouri at a point when they are poised for future growth that can occur in our state.

“Four additional Israeli companies recruited by GlobalSTL are participating in St. Louis' financial tech and cybersecurity accelerators, a step toward establishing a permanent presence. And, several others in agtech and healthcare are involved in pilots with Missouri corporations, clinical trials at our medical schools, and other strategic relationships that can lead to new job creation and economic activity in Missouri based on these relationships.

“Although GlobalSTL is active now in numerous additional countries (in Europe, Asia, and South America), Israel remains the centerpiece of success for the initiative and for future potential. Because Israel is so well-known globally as a leader in innovation, the early success seen with well-known innovative Israeli companies has helped to establish GlobalSTL's credibility and

St. Louis' reputation as an attractive location for global companies seeking to access U.S. customers to grow their North American business.

“GlobalSTL is one of the most exciting initiatives capitalizing on St. Louis’ business and innovation assets to position our region for leadership in the 21st-century economy, and its focus on Israel is a major reason for its early success. The relationships and networks facilitated by GlobalSTL between St. Louis businesses and organizations with Israeli universities, hospitals, government agencies, investors, and innovators, has positioned St. Louis’ innovation economy for greater success and quality jobs generation.”