Although healthcare treatment is typically local, healthcare innovation is global, often involving international collaborations. As it advances its mission to engineer the future of healthcare, Baptist Health Innovations has been adding key international relationships. One vital collaboration involves Triventures, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage healthcare technology companies.
Triventures cofounder Dr. Peter Fitzgerald, who is also the director of the Stanford Center for Cardiovascular Technology at Stanford University School of Medicine, says his firm focuses on investments that promote continuity of high-quality care. That focus sits well with vice president of innovation at Baptist Health, Mark Coticchia, who says his team focuses on enabling and sustaining continuity of high-quality care at the organization and elsewhere. Coticchia’s group also focuses on technologies that improve patient experience and personalize medicine. They accomplish their goals partly through forging international collaborations, and Triventures exemplifies the approach.
Coticchia points out three main benefits of the collaboration.
1. Sourcing healthcare solutions
Finding great technology solutions, where “great” includes the potential for impact in patient outcome or cost, is like finding an oyster with a pearl. To find health-tech pearls, Baptist Health Innovations relies on market intelligence. With offices in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, Triventures offers such intelligence.
The firm annually sources and reviews hundreds of investment opportunities that come from a broad network, including organizations that have put money into the Triventures funds. Referred to as “limited partners,” these organizations include Johnson & Johnson, Philips and Sheba Medical Center in Israel. As a limited partner, Baptist Health has access to the pool of investment opportunities as well as the network of entrepreneurs and investors associated with the opportunities.
“As a limited partner, we see a lot of technologies that can help Baptist Health and patients,” Coticchia said. “That’s a key reason for placing our money with Triventures.”
2. Codevelopment projects
In codevelopment projects, Baptist Health Innovations licenses data and know-how to a company that uses the intellectual property (IP) as part of its offerings. One exciting codevelopment project is in the works with a software company in the Triventures portfolio, and if all goes as expected, in 2023, Baptist Health will begin sharing, for a fee, de-identified healthcare data. Fitzgerald says it should be a fruitful collaboration because Baptist Health physicians “understand the real-world workflow of chronic diseases,” and that provides Triventures with a much-needed sounding board. “That's key," he said.
3. Investments in startup companies
Through startup investments, Baptist Health Innovations adds possible returns on investment to revenue streams at the organization. Many health systems seek to diversify their sources of revenue, and, as a limited partner, Baptist Health may benefit from a return on its investment in the fund. Further, Baptist Health Innovations has an arsenal of creative, proven investment tools; it may, for instance, license IP to Triventures portfolio startups, which would generate royalty revenues. Alternately, Triventures may make an equity investment in a Baptist Health spinoff company, which infuses cash directly into the spinoff.
Engineering the future of healthcare
The international collaboration with Triventures illustrates the Baptist Health Innovations commitment to bringing healthcare advances to the organization and South Floridians. In 2019, Dr. Barry T. Katzen, chief medical innovation officer, recruited Coticchia to add scale and scope to the innovation approach he had started. Coticchia, who has spent his career commercializing technologies, recruited Nila Bhakuni, who has similarly spent her career in technology transfer. Bhakuni serves as assistant vice president for innovation at Baptist Health. The commercialization pairing is a strong one, as Coticchia and Bhakuni are high achievers in the technology transfer industry.
“Dr. Katzen wanted to ensure Baptist Health physicians and staff could rely on our health technology commercialization skillset," said Coticchia. "It’s been an honor to create the program at this leading health organization. I especially like expanding access to international healthcare innovations like we’ve done with Triventures."
Baptist Health leadership is committed to developing an innovation approach that competes with the top health system innovators in the nation. The Triventures partnership is a unique, international aspect of that approach. “The team’s operational execution has been amazing,” Fitzgerald said. “We only started our collaboration a year and a half ago, and we’re already developing something special.”
To learn more about Baptist Health Innovations, visit Innovation.BaptistHealth.net.
Baptist Health South Florida is the largest healthcare organization in the region, with 12 hospitals, more than 27,000 employees, more than 4,000 physicians and more than 100 outpatient centers, urgent care facilities and physician practices spanning across Miami-Dade, Monroe, Broward and Palm Beach counties.