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Five benefits of a health tech accelerator program

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In the ever-evolving world of health care, the role of technology is becoming increasingly crucial. From improving patient outcomes to streamlining administrative processes, digital technologies are changing the face of the industry. However, for startups developing health tech solutions, breaking into the market and scaling their products can be a challenging journey, requiring access to resources, expertise, and a network they might not have. This is where health tech accelerator programs come in.

Health tech accelerator programs are designed to support early-stage startups in the health technology space, providing them with the resources, mentorship, and funding they need to grow and succeed. These programs are often highly competitive, and startups that are selected gain access to a wealth of opportunities that can significantly accelerate their development. In this article, we’ll explore five key benefits of participating in a health tech accelerator program.

1. Access to mentorship and expertise

One of the most valuable aspects of health tech accelerator programs is the access they provide to experienced mentors and industry experts. Health tech startups often face unique challenges, such as navigating complex health-care regulations, developing scalable technologies, and understanding the intricacies of health systems. Having mentors who have firsthand experience in these areas can provide critical guidance.

These mentors often include clinicians, informaticists, investors, health-care professionals, and thought leaders. Their insights can help startups refine their business strategies, optimize their digital health solutions, and navigate the health-care landscape. With this guidance, startups are better positioned to make informed decisions, avoid common pitfalls, and accelerate their growth.

2. Funding and investment opportunities

For many startups, securing funding is one of the biggest hurdles they face. Health tech innovation can be expensive, especially in the early stages when startups are working on solution development, regulatory approvals, and pilot testing. Accelerator programs often provide startups with seed funding, as well as the opportunity to connect with venture capitalists, angel investors, and other potential backers.

Many accelerator programs culminate in a “demo day,” where startups pitch their solutions to a room full of investors and other key decision-makers. These events can be crucial in securing the funding necessary to scale a digital health solution or product. Beyond initial funding, the exposure gained from being part of a well-known accelerator program can lead to additional investment opportunities down the road.

3. Networking and industry connections

The health-care industry is notoriously complex and fragmented, making it difficult for new players to break in without the right connections. Health tech accelerator programs offer startups the opportunity to network with key leaders in the health-care and technology ecosystems, including clinicians, payers, pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and potential customers.

Through structured networking events, mentorship sessions, and partnerships with established organizations, startups gain access to a wide range of stakeholders who can help substantiate their products, open doors to new markets, and provide feedback that can be used to refine their offerings. In the health tech space, strong industry connections are often critical to gaining traction and scaling successfully.

4. Market validation and credibility

The health tech industry is highly regulated and risk-averse, meaning that customers and investors are often wary of new technologies. Participating in an accelerator program can serve as a form of market validation, signaling that a startup’s offering has been vetted by experts and has the potential for success.

The credibility gained from being accepted into a prestigious accelerator program can be a game-changer. It provides startups with a level of legitimacy that can help them stand out in a crowded and competitive market. Whether it’s attracting investors, forging partnerships, or securing early customers, the reputation of the accelerator can give a startup a significant boost.

Additionally, accelerator programs often have ties to major health-care institutions and organizations. This can provide startups with opportunities to pilot their products in real-world health-care settings, which can serve as both a test of the product’s viability and a powerful proof of concept for future customers and investors.

5. Access to resources and infrastructure

Another significant benefit of accelerators is the access to resources and infrastructure that startups might not obtain otherwise. These resources can include everything from access to clinical data for model building and testing, legal and regulatory support, and technology infrastructure to deploy and scale. For early-stage health tech companies, these resources can be a game-changer.

Conclusion

Health tech startups are at the forefront of transforming health care, but navigating the challenges of innovation, regulation, and market entry can be daunting. Health tech accelerator programs offer invaluable support by providing startups with the mentorship, funding, networking opportunities, credibility, and resources they need to succeed.

Mayo Clinic Platform_Accelerate is a 30-week accelerator program from Mayo Clinic Platform focused on helping startups with digital technologies advance their solution development and get to market faster. Learn more about the program and the access it provides to clinical data, Mayo Clinic experts, technical resources, investors, and more at https://www.mayoclinicplatform.org/accelerate/.

This content was produced by Mayo Clinic Platform. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

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The Download: speaking to robots, and growing pharmaceutical mushrooms

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This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

When you might start speaking to robots

Last week, Google made a somewhat surprising announcement. It launched a version of its AI model, Gemini, that can do things not just in the digital realm of chatbots and internet search but out here in the physical world, via robots. 

Gemini Robotics fuses the power of large language models with spatial reasoning, allowing you to tell a robotic arm to do something like “put the grapes in the clear glass bowl.” These verbal commands get filtered by the LLM, which identifies intentions from what you’re saying and then breaks them down into commands that the robot can carry out.

You might be wondering if this means your home or workplace might one day be filled with robots you can bark orders at. Read our story to find out.

—James O’Donnell

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

And to read more about how AI is making robots smarter, check out: 

+ Fast-learning robots were one of the entries in MIT Technology Review’s list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025. Read why they made the cut, and the companies you should be keeping an eye on. 

+ What’s next for robots in 2025. With tests of humanoid bots and new developments in military applications, the next year will intrigue even the skeptics. Read the full story.

+ “Robot utility models” sidestep the need to tweak the data used to train robots every time they try to do something in unfamiliar settings. Read the full story.

+ Is robotics about to have its own ChatGPT moment? Researchers are using generative AI and other techniques to teach robots new skills—including tasks they could perform in homes. Read the full story.

Job titles of the future: Pharmaceutical-grade mushroom grower

Studies have indicated that psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin and MDMA, have swift-acting and enduring antidepressant effects. Though the US Food and Drug Administration denied the first application for medical treatments involving psychedelics (an MDMA-based therapy) last August, these drugs appear to be on the road to mainstream medicine.

Research into psilocybin has been slowed in part by the complexity of the trials, but the data already shows promise for the psychedelic compound within so-called magic mushrooms. Eventually, the FDA will decide whether to approve it to treat depression. If and when it does—a move that would open up a vast legal medical market—who will grow the mushrooms?

Scott Marshall already is. The head of mycology at the drug manufacturer Optimi Health in British Columbia, Canada, he is one of a very small number of licensed psilocybin mushroom cultivators in North America. Read the full story.

—Mattha Busby

This story is from the latest edition of our print magazine, which is all about relationships. Subscribe now to receive future editions once they land—subscriptions are currently 25% off the usual price!

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 BYD’s new EV can charge in just five minutes
Which could help attract customers previously put off by long charging times. (Bloomberg $)
+ The company also announced plans to build a charging network in China. (The Guardian)
+ The world’s first consumer sodium-ion battery power bank has been announced. (The Verge)
+ BYD is one of MIT Technology Review’s Climate Tech Companies to Watch. (MIT Technology Review)

2 NASA’s stranded astronauts have begun their return to Earth
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have spent nine long months in space. (CNN)
+ The pair kept busy by exercising for two hours a day. (BBC)

3 How Elon Musk’s ties to China could warp American polic
Tesla’s value is heavily dependent on him maintaining a cordial relationship with the CCP. (Vox)
+ Musk’s companies are extremely valuable targets. (The Hill)
+ If relations sour with China, Musk may look to expand more aggressively in India. (Rest of World)

4 Microsoft is developing an AI model that simulates our brains’ reasoning 
The goal is for it to learn from real-world experience, instead of just data. (FT $)
+ AI reasoning models can cheat to win chess games. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Alphabet has agreed to buy cybersecurity startup Wiz
At $32 billion, it’s the biggest acquisition the company has ever made. (FT $)

6 Everything you say to your Echo will be sent to Amazon
And if you opt out, Alexa won’t work anymore. (Ars Technica)
+ But Amazon denies that ending on-device processing will harm user privacy. (The Register)

7 US funding cuts could undo decades of progress fighting HIV
Experts are rushing to get drugs to vulnerable communities while they still can.(The Guardian)
+ Eight countries are likely to run out of treatments soon. (Reuters)
+ This annual shot might protect against HIV infections. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Donald Trump is convinced that Joe Biden used an autopen
The President alleges that aides used the gadget to duplicate Biden’s signature. (WP $)
+ However, Trump has not provided any evidence to back up his allegations. (BBC)

9 Big Tech is competing with your need to sleep
There’s only so many hours in the day to consume content, after all. (Insider $)
+ I tried to hack my insomnia with technology. Here’s what worked. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Thank goodness for Facebook Marketplace
It feels like the last bastion of fully human interaction on social media. (NYT $)

Quote of the day

“It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us.”

—Astronaut Suni Williams, who has spent nine months living on the International Space Station, says she’s looking forward to returning to her family once she touches back down on Earth, Reuters reports.

The big story

Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work.

October 2024

There’s a trendy new cure-all in town: exosomes. They’re being touted as a miraculous treatment for hair loss, aging skin, acne, eczema, pain conditions, long covid, and even neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. That’s, of course, if you can afford the price tag—which can stretch to thousands of dollars.

But there’s a big problem with these big promises: We don’t fully understand how exosomes work—or what they even really are. Read our story. 

—Jessica Hamzelou

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)

+ This destructive little otter is a menace, but still very cute.
+ Here’s how to make the perfect tomato soup: complete with a surprise twist.
+ London’s fanciest bars are going all out to outfit themself with hi-fi listening systems.
+ A word of warning—these books are dangerous.

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When you might start speaking to robots

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Last Wednesday, Google made a somewhat surprising announcement. It launched a version of its AI model, Gemini, that can do things not just in the digital realm of chatbots and internet search but out here in the physical world, via robots. 

Gemini Robotics fuses the power of large language models with spatial reasoning, allowing you to tell a robotic arm to do something like “put the grapes in the clear glass bowl.” These commands get filtered by the LLM, which identifies intentions from what you’re saying and then breaks them down into commands that the robot can carry out. For more details about how it all works, read the full story from my colleague Scott Mulligan.

You might be wondering if this means your home or workplace might one day be filled with robots you can bark orders at. More on that soon. 

But first, where did this come from? Google has not made big waves in the world of robotics so far. Alphabet acquired some robotics startups over the past decade, but in 2023 it shut down a unit working on robots to solve practical tasks like cleaning up trash. 

Despite that, the company’s move to bring AI into the physical world via robots is following the exact precedent set by other companies in the past two years (something that, I must humbly point out, MIT Technology Review has long seen coming). 

In short, two trends are converging from opposite directions: Robotics companies are increasingly leveraging AI, and AI giants are now building robots. OpenAI, for example, which shuttered its robotics team in 2021, started a new effort to build humanoid robots this year. In October, the chip giant Nvidia declared the next wave of artificial intelligence to be “physical AI.”

There are lots of ways to incorporate AI into robots, starting with improving how they are trained to do tasks. But using large language models to give instructions, as Google has done, is particularly interesting. 

It’s not the first. The robotics startup Figure went viral a year ago for a video in which humans gave instructions to a humanoid on how to put dishes away. Around the same time, a startup spun off from OpenAI, called Covariant, built something similar for robotic arms in warehouses. I saw a demo where you could give the robot instructions via images, text, or video to do things like “move the tennis balls from this bin to that one.” Covariant was acquired by Amazon just five months later. 

When you see such demos, you can’t help but wonder: When are these robots going to come to our workplaces? What about our homes?

If Figure’s plans offer a clue, the answer to the first question is soon. The company announced on Saturday that it is building a high-volume manufacturing facility set to manufacture 12,000 humanoid robots per year. But training and testing robots, especially to ensure they’re safe in places where they work near humans, still takes a long time. 

For example, Figure’s rival Agility Robotics claims it’s the only company in the US with paying customers for its humanoids. But industry safety standards for humanoids working alongside people aren’t fully formed yet, so the company’s robots have to work in separate areas.

This is why, despite recent progress, our homes will be the last frontier. Compared with factory floors, our homes are chaotic and unpredictable. Everyone’s crammed into relatively close quarters. Even impressive AI models like Gemini Robotics will still need to go through lots of tests both in the real world and in simulation, just like self-driving cars. This testing might happen in warehouses, hotels, and hospitals, where the robots may still receive help from remote human operators. It will take a long time before they’re given the privilege of putting away our dishes.  

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

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Arbitrum devs launch incubator-style program ‘Onchain Labs’

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Arbitrum devs launch incubator-style program ‘Onchain Labs’

Offchain Labs, the developers of Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum, have announced a partnership with the Arbitrum Foundation to launch a new incubator-style program called Onchain Labs.

According to a March 17 post by Offchain Labs, the new incubator is aimed at rapidly adding to Arbitrum’s existing decentralized application (DApp) offerings with a particular focus on supporting “innovative and experimental” projects. 

Offchain Labs said this support will primarily come in the form of product and go-to-market advice and won’t provide engineering or other operational resources. 

It also added that while it’s possible — there’s no guarantee that its venture capital arm, Tandem, will purchase any of these project tokens in public markets. 

Arbitrum devs launch incubator-style program ‘Onchain Labs’

Source: Offchain Labs

Offchain Labs said the continued development of Arbitrum over the past few years has seen it grow to become one of the “most performant ecosystems in the space.” But now, with the launch of Onchain Labs, the focus will shift to building out the network’s application landscape.

“Through Onchain Labs, we’re dedicating resources to support developers looking to rapidly expand the application layer by ideating with them from the ground floor to bring the best user experiences to Arbitrum,” the company said. 

“With Offchain Labs’ support, we’re confident we’ll see industry-leading applications that are uniquely possible on Arbitrum.”

However, it’s not just about building more applications.

The firm has also said it will only support projects that launch fairly. Offchain Labs claimed the industry’s recent trend toward extractive zero-sum launches “stands in stark contrast to the core ethos of crypto,” adding that “as an industry, we can — and must — do better.”

It will seek to counter this trend by only working with teams that commit to equitable launches, which it said was “essential for fostering community alignment. There’s no reason why all participants in an ecosystem can’t succeed together.”

The rise of layer 2s is creating problems for Ethereum

Arbitrum was one of the earliest layer 2s (L2s) on Ethereum, but there’s been an explosion in new L2 networks since Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade last year.

According to L2Beat, there are now over 70 layer 2s and many more on the way. This has created some issues for Ethereum, according to some industry professionals. 

The first is the fracturing of the Ethereum ecosystem, as different DApps run on different layer 2s, which may or may not be interoperable.

“We currently have too many, the more L2s we build, the less interoperability we will have, creating other problems around infrastructure,” Vitali Dervoed, the co-founder and CEO of perpetual exchange Composability Labs, told Cointelegraph in August. 

Related: DigiFT launches Invesco private credit token on Arbitrum

“Developers might have good intentions when building the next super-fast, low-gas-fee, easy-to-use blockchain, but in the long run, it’s counterproductive as it creates a more fragmented ecosystem,” he added. 

Another issue is that lower-cost layer 2s like Base and Arbitrum are eating into Ethereum’s revenue and impacting the layer 1’s market cap. 

It comes on the same day Standard Chartered downgraded its 2025 price target for Ethereum by a whopping 60%, from US$10,000 to just US$4,000, with the bank’s head of digital asset research, Geoff Kendrick, saying, “We expect ETH to continue its structural decline.” 

Kendrick cited the impact of low-cost layer 2s like Base and Arbitrum as one of the key drivers of this decline. 

“Layer 2 blockchains were meant to improve ETH scalability, but we estimate that Base (a key layer 2) has removed USD 50bn from ETH’s market cap.”

Magazine: ETH may bottom at $1.6K, SEC delays multiple crypto ETFs, and more: Hodler’s Digest, March 9 – 15

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SEC could axe proposed Biden-era crypto custody rule, says acting chief

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SEC could axe proposed Biden-era crypto custody rule, says acting chief

The US Securities and Exchange Commission could change or scrap a rule proposed under the Biden administration that would tighten crypto custody standards for investment advisers, according to the agency’s acting chair, Mark Uyeda.

In prepared remarks to an investment industry conference in San Diego on March 17, Uyeda said the rule proposed in February 2023 had seen commenters express “significant concern” over its “broad scope.”

“Given such concern, there may be significant challenges to proceeding with the original proposal. As such, I have asked the SEC staff to work closely with the crypto task force to consider appropriate alternatives, including its withdrawal,” Uyeda said.

The rule was floated under the Biden administration during Gary Gensler’s tenure leading the regulator. It aimed to expand custody rules for investment advisers to any and all assets held for a client, including crypto, and upped the requirements to protect them.

SEC could axe proposed Biden-era crypto custody rule, says acting chief

Source: SEC

This meant that investment advisers would have to custody their clients’ crypto with a qualified custodian. Gensler said at the time that investment advisers “cannot rely on” crypto platforms as qualified custodians due to how they operate.

The proposal caused friction with Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce, along with industry advocacy bodies who claimed the rule was unlawful and dangerous.

“How could an adviser seeking to comply with this rule possibly invest client funds in crypto assets after reading this release?” Uyeda remarked at the time. He did, however, support the proposal despite disagreeing “with a number of provisions.” 

Peirce, who was the sole commissioner of the five to vote against the rule, said at the time that the proposed rule “would expand the reach of the custody requirements to crypto assets while likely shrinking the ranks of qualified crypto custodians.”

Related: Congress repealed the IRS broker rule, but can it regulate DeFi? 

Uyeda’s latest remarks come days after he said on March 10 that he had asked SEC staff “for options on abandoning” part of a proposal pushing for some crypto firms to register with the regulator as exchanges.

The Trump-era SEC has also killed a rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets, called SAB 121.

In December, President Donald Trump picked former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to take over from Uyeda to chair the agency. This is now a step closer, with a Senate hearing reportedly slated for March 27.

Magazine: SEC’s U-turn on crypto leaves key questions unanswered 

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