The innovations include video games for mental health, a tool for providing reputable medical information to patients, and a surgical navigation system.
The second cohort of the Dartmouth Innovations Accelerator for Digital Health (DIADH) has concluded, culminating in the awarding of $175,000 to three projects that promise to revolutionize health care.
Choosing which projects to fund was a challenge in itself.
“The caliber of the participants in this cohort was just outstanding,” said Barry Schweitzer, Associate Director of the Magnuson Center.
The accelerator is a partnership between the Magnuson Center, the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health, and the Geisel School of Medicine. The second cohort of the accelerator brought forth a number of exciting digital health projects from talented teams of clinical and research faculty and students from Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Health, many having years of research backing them up. Among those, the three winners stood out for the impact their innovations would have on patients, the scientific and technical expertise they demonstrated, and their plans for using the funding to advance their ideas.
“This was an exceptional group of Dartmouth colleagues working on a diverse range of digital health products that promise to redefine the future of healthcare,” said Lisa A. Marsch, Director of the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health.
Eleven teams participated in the cohort, accessing coursework and receiving help from students at the Tuck School of Business and external mentors in April and May. These mentors, most of whom are alumni of Dartmouth College and its professional schools, have years of experience in the business of healthcare. The mentorship provided by these people and the Tuck students provided invaluable business insights and guidance to the technical teams participating in the program.
The winners were selected after a pitch competition held in June. Judging at this event was carried out by DIADH’s External Advisory Panel, a group also having many Dartmouth connections. The panel included investors and executives from top venture capital, healthcare companies, and digital health industry stakeholders.
“We were all deeply impressed by the progress all the teams made during the program in thinking about their digital health solutions and their plans for bringing these solutions to patients,” Schweitzer said. “This was reflected in the very positive feedback that we received from our External Advisory Panel—people who are not easily impressed.”
The three winning projects, based on recommendations by the External Advisory Panel, are:
Playbl
$75,000
Playbl creates video games designed to improve the health and wellbeing of teens. It was founded by Dr. Lynn Fiellin, MD, professor of biomedical data science at Geisel School of Medicine. Fiellin is also the founder of the play2PREVENT Lab in the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health at Geisel, where she works to develop scientifically backed gaming experiences for better health outcomes.
“By engaging youth where they are, our ‘games for good’ effectively promote positive behavioral changes,” said Kirby Salerno, CEO of Playbl, who participated in the accelerator alongside Fiellin.
Participating in the accelerator was “incredibly helpful,” even for such an experienced team, Salerno said. With the help of mentors from Tuck and a New Hampshire-based med-tech company, the Playbl team “refined and near-finalized a fabulous pitch deck that we are carrying forward to other key stakeholders including potential investors.”
That led to them winning the pitch competition and the $75,000 top prize. Over the next six to twelve months, that funding will allow Playbl to build a minimum viable product (MVP) of a customer-facing platform that can be used by educational and healthcare institutions. With that MVP, Playbl will be ready “to scale at a much faster rate to reach millions of adolescents around the country and the globe,” Salerno said.
The award isn’t just financial, however. The connections and mentorship during and after the accelerator will prove just as valuable, Salerno predicts.
“This award will also provide support to key consultants and team members to develop marketing and professional development materials” he said, “as well as solidify partnerships with key federal partners such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Vox Cura
$50,000
Vox Cura is an AI-driven platform that aims to democratize access to reliable, accurate medical information. It was founded by Dr. Asha Zimmerman, a transplant surgeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Geisel School of Medicine, and Thomas D’Angelo, a data analyst in the Transplant department. Zimmerman and D’Angelo both majored in philosophy and came up with the idea while discussing the barriers of medical information transfer and availability.
“Vox Cura is essentially an application that’s going to help deliver medical information to people who have limited resources,” both within the U.S. and abroad, Zimmerman said.
As a physician, Zimmerman knows that patients turn to the internet before and after they see him—in fact, he even does it himself when he has a health concern. But he knows that much of the information available online is either inaccurate or incomplete. Vox Cura will draw from medical literature and use generative AI to give patients information that is most relevant to their conditions.
“This is a resource for high-quality, clear information,” Zimmerman said.
Participating in the accelerator prompted Zimmerman to rethink how to get Vox Cura into the hands of users.
“The accelerator clearly lays out a road map for how to get your ideas to people,” he said.
Zimmerman plans to use the $50,000 funding to refine his MVP as Vox Cura moves toward a clinical trial later this year. He’s moving forward with confidence in bringing the idea to market.
“There’s a big gap between doing research and having it accessible to people,” he said. “The accelerator shows you how to bridge that divide.”
ENTerpoint
$50,000
ENTerpoint is a surgical navigation system to guide ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgeons during robotic surgeries. It was developed by Yuan Shi, Thayer PhD ’24, in the lab of Ryan Halter, PhD, Associate Professor of engineering and Adjunct Associate Professor of Surgery at Geisel School of Medicine and Dr. Joe Paydarfar, MD, Associated Professor of Surgery at Geisel and Adjunct Associate Professor of Engineering
Compared to current practice, ENTerpoint has shown an accuracy improvement of 88% in pre-clinical studies, with the potential to significantly improve surgical safety and efficacy, and reduce healthcare costs.
“The system shows the real-time position of robotic instruments relative to the anatomy and provides depth of information through a heads-up display,” Shi said.
During weekly classes through the accelerator, Shi learned to avoid common pitfalls and develop a product that will be more useful to surgeons and provide better outcomes for patients.
“Learning about the barrier between a research project and a successful commercial product was very useful,” Shi said. “The accelerator gave me a new perspective on my research, encouraging me to think outside the lab and consider the ‘so what’ of my work.”
Her mentor through the accelerator, llsa Webeck, a MedTech Marketing Strategist with Simbex, invited Shi to watch the Harvard Catalyst Medical Device Development Pitch Competition, an experience that shaped Shi’s own pitch.
The ENTerpoint team will use the $50,000 to build their MVP and continue pre-clinical assessments, while moving toward a clinical trial. That data will assist as the team seeks FDA approval for ENTerpoint.
As she moves forward, Shi is grateful to have the network of participants in the accelerator.
“This is a very strong cohort with all sorts of great ideas,” she said. “It was encouraging and inspiring to see so many people in the Dartmouth community dedicated to improving healthcare. I learned a lot from them.”
_____________________________________________________________________
This article also appears on the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurships’s website.