UC Davis Health has struck a deal to collaborate with prominent venture capital firm General Catalyst to make UC Davis Medical Center a leader in digital medicine.
General Catalyst has managed eight venture capital funds totaling approximately $3.75 billion in assets, according to venture capital tracking site Crunchbase. The firm has invested in hundreds of companies, and has had more than 177 exits.
“Digital innovations in medicine have the potential to not only improve patient outcomes but be a game-changer for the entire health care sector,” said Dr. Ashish Atreja, chief information officer and chief digital officer at UC Davis Health, in a news release. “This collaboration will create an environment that fosters open innovation in digital health, which we hope will lead to new solutions to improve the lives of our patients, increase the efficiency of health care systems and have a positive impact on the health of our communities.”
General Catalyst is a venture capital investor started in 2000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It also has offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York and London.
Under the partnership, UC Davis Health will use General Catalyst’s ecosystem of companies to accelerate the adoption of digital health technology in health care delivery, research, education and public service, according to a news release. The collaboration will also support the medical center's existing efforts to transform operations, care and outcomes.
General Catalyst was ranked No. 1 in this year’s Health Tech 50 list of prominent digital health investors.
“In order to accelerate health care transformation, General Catalyst believes that partnering with leading-edge systems like UC Davis Health is instrumental. As an academic medical center with an established innovation arm, Digital CoLab, UC Davis Health has spearheaded transformation efforts within the broader UC system to aim to deliver improved health outcomes,” said Daryl Tol, head of health assurance ecosystem at General Catalyst, in a news release.
UC Davis Health and General Catalyst will form a committee to explore collaboration opportunities, co-development of new businesses and co-development of products, services and technologies by leveraging UC Davis Health as an innovation center, according to the news release.
“UC Davis Health’s collaborative culture and demonstrated commitment to health equity makes General Catalyst proud to welcome them into our Health Assurance partnerships,” Tol said.
UC Davis Health is a partner in Aggie Square, a 25-acre development of research and office space on the campus of UC Davis Medical Center on Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento. Aggie Square could have up to 2 million square feet of office and research space.
A year ago, UC Davis Health and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) subsidiary Amazon Web Services announced a collaboration on a cloud innovation center in Sacramento to explore new techniques to deliver health care without going to a hospital.
