Maine’s health technology industry is about to get a shot in the arm.
Northeastern University’s Portland-based Roux Institute, in partnership with Maine’s two major health care providers, plans to bring 30 young health tech companies to the state over the next three years through a residency program.
The school is partnering with MaineHealth and Northern Light Health, operators of the state’s major hospital networks.
Teams chosen to participate in the program will receive $50,000 in startup money and spend a year building out their companies with the mentorship of health technology experts and entrepreneurs, access to Northern Light Health and MaineHealth experts and resources, clinical settings to test their ideas, and free business, design and legal services.
MaineHealth, the parent organization of Maine Medical Center and seven other hospitals in Maine, will make a $500,000 investment in the program in return for an equity stake in successful businesses.
The program will allow participants to “develop, vet and trial creative solutions to complex problem’s facing Maine’s health care industry,” MaineHealth said in a statement Wednesday.
According to the Roux Institute, the technology, engineering and computer science graduate school run by Northeastern University, the program will help accelerate growth in Maine’s healthcare technology industry.
“Having directors of partnerships, research and entrepreneurship in the same space means we can solve problems and change lives,” Rai Winslow, Roux’s director of life sciences and medicine research, says in a description of the effort posted by the school.
For the first three months of the program, residents will build their mentor teams, get to know the resources available to them and fine-tune their ideas. For the rest of the program, they will secure financing and continue to build out their companies. The entire program is part time. The expected time commitment is between 15 to 20 hours for the first two weeks, six to eight hours for the next 10 weeks and one to two hours a week for the nine-month phase.
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