OSF Partners with venture studio High Alpha Innovation

PEORIA, Ill., Feb. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — As OSF HealthCare looks to transform health care by tapping its own Mission Partners (employees), it has chosen an outside partner, High Alpha Innovation, to help rapidly advance ideas from exploration to implementation or commercialization within and outside the health system.

High Alpha Innovation, an Indianapolis, Indiana-based venture studio, has years of experience in partnering to build startup companies around new software ideas and products. The partnership will speed development of new health tech companies with solutions that can help OSF HealthCare and other health care systems. The OSF Innovation Studio will collaborate with High Alpha Innovation on ideas that are endorsed by OSF HealthCare leaders as those that can transform health care by solving some of its most complex problems.

The OSF Innovation Studio already has 20 ideas in various stages of the development phase, including an app to help pre-surgical planning for patients with medical implants.

“We chose High Alpha Innovation because their approach allows us to benefit from the speed and learning agility of a startup, the knowledge and scale of a large organization, and the experience of a high-growth organization in creating companies,” explained Brent Cross, director of Transformational Innovation & Commercialization at OSF Innovation. “With High Alpha Innovation’s venture studio playbook, we can launch new companies and products that can be scaled to meet the needs of OSF HealthCare and deliver value to the broader health care ecosystem.”

“The OSF team is leading the charge to innovate in health care and ultimately creating value both community-wide and around the world. As we approach focus areas together, like talent scarcity, patient navigation, health care in the home and modernizing enterprise tools, we believe that a ‘shark-tank’ approach to building new companies allows us to optimize resources, explore new markets and pursue transformative ideas,” said High Alpha Innovation Managing Director Matt Brady. “By launching startups, OSF can drive the largest amount of value in the shortest amount of time.”

High Alpha Innovation uses a 12-week ideation process — culminating in a Sprint Week— to select the best ideas to present to OSF leaders for investment to further develop and scale, ultimately gaining conviction to launch a startup that could also attract outside investors.

More information about the OSF Innovation Studio and High Alpha Innovation partnership, including video, audio and photos, is available on the OSF Newsroom.

OSF HealthCare is an integrated health system owned and operated by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, headquartered in Peoria, Illinois. OSF HealthCare employs nearly 24,000 Mission Partners in 150 locations, including 15 hospitals – 10 acute care, five critical access – with 2,089 licensed beds, and two colleges of nursing throughout Illinois and Michigan. The OSF HealthCare physician network employs more than 1,500 primary care, specialist and advanced practice providers. OSF HealthCare, through OSF Home Care Services, operates an extensive network of home health and hospice services. It also owns Pointcore, Inc., comprised of health care-related businesses; OSF HealthCare Foundation, the philanthropic arm for the organization; and OSF Ventures, which provides investment capital for promising health care innovation startups. More at osfhealthcare.org.

OSF Innovation, launched in 2016, is the umbrella initiative for the planning, structure, goals and services OSF HealthCare uses to innovate for the improvement and transformation of health care.
More information at osfinnovation.org.

High Alpha Innovation is an Indianapolis-based venture studio that partners with corporations and universities. Its dedicated team of company builders, strategists and designers apply a proven venture studio playbook — pioneered by High Alpha — to help the world’s leading organizations innovate through systematic startup creation. Learn more about High Alpha Innovation at highalphainno.com.

Contacts: Colleen Reynolds | Media Relations Coordinator, OSF HealthCare | cell: (309) 825-7255
                  Ben Roess | Marketing Associate, High Alpha Innovation | cell: (937) 477-9261

SOURCE OSF HealthCare