HITLAB Announces Winners of Spring 2023 Breakthrough Alliance Challenge

HITLAB TEAM • June 28, 2023

Innovators presented their health solutions during the Digital Health Summit in NYC  

New York, NY June 28, 2023 — HITLAB announced the winners of the Spring 2023 Breakthrough Alliance (BTA) Innovator’s challenge. The BTA is a digital health consortium founded in partnership with New York City Economic Development Corporation and was created to accelerate the optimal adoption of digital health innovations through shared evidence, communication, and perspectives to improve health outcomes, access and care delivery.  

The finalists, who were selected based on innovation, scalability, sustainability and impact of their solution, include Motto Health, Glendor, Inc., Dance4Healing, Health Circuit and DeepLook Medical. 

There were hundreds of applications from around the world. Each was reviewed and scored by a panel of independent judges and Breakthrough Board Members including:  

  • Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, President and BTA Chair, Bill Taranto 
  • FFF Enterprises, Chief Information Officer, Jonathan Hahn 
  • Novo Nordisk, Head of U.S. Digital Transformation & Innovation, Amy West 
  • Ellume, Head of North America Regulatory Affairs, Zina Manji 

All 5 companies presented their digital health solutions on June 27th during the HITLAB 2023 Innovator’s Summit. The winning solutions selected include: 

1st Place – Motto Health

2nd Place – Health Circuit

3rd Place

BTA Challenge Judges: Jon Han (FFF Enterprises), Zina Manji (Ellume Health), Amy West (Novo Nordisk) and Bill Taranto (Global Innovation Health Fund)

All three winning solutions will be evaluated in validation studies conducted by the HITLAB Research and Evaluation team. They will also receive an opportunity to present with other industry leaders at one of HITLAB’s monthly Digital Health Symposia. The 1st and 2nd place winners will receive published articles. 

“HITLAB has hosted over 20 BTA challenges over the last 9 years,said Stan Kachnowski, Chair of HITLAB and Director Digital Health Program, Columbia University. “Weve had the opportunity to work with many amazing start-ups, providing them with research and valuable networking opportunities. We look forward to working with the latest winners to help create exposure for their solutions  

Summary of Winners and Honorable Mentions: 

  • Motto Health (New York, NY) Motto is a virtual specialty care program for patients with chronic inflammatory conditions. Their mission is to provide high-quality, convenient clinical care and support to empower individuals with chronic inflammatory conditions to live their best life. Motto Health aims to create a new model of specialty care that improves the health and happiness for individuals with chronic inflammatory conditions. 
  • Health Circuit (Barcelona, ES) – Surgifit is a personalized digitally supported pre-habilitation pre-operative program designed to improve the functional status of patients with the goal of improving peri-operative outcomes such as post-operative complications, length of hospital stay and 30-day use of healthcare resources. It is a personalized physical training program of just 4 weeks in the preoperative period of major surgery that is capable of halving the occurrence of postoperative complications. 
  • Dance4Healing (Sunnyvale, CA) – Dance4Healing roots in neuroscience: using AI to recommend music, dance, groups based on emotion and condition, using behavior design and gamification to encourage learning while building dance habits. The ecosystem includes at home training with movement feedback, “mobile on the go” to continue the healing process, and a platform to build a community focus on music and dance therapy for healing. 
  • Glendor, Inc. (Draper, UT) – Glendor PHI Sanitizer is an AI-based system that fully automatically and in situ (behind the firewall on customer premises or in customer cloud) de-identifies PHI (Protected Health Information) from medical images and metadata. 
  • DeepLook Medical (New Haven, CT) – DeepLook Medical is enhancing medical imaging by providing a powerful new visual analysis tool, and offering reliable real-time data to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of cancer care. Their mission is to empower doctors and patients alike, regardless of location or socioeconomic status, with accessible, user-friendly software that puts their news first. 

About HITLAB 

HITLAB is an impact-first organization that offers digital health research, teaching, and advisory services to improve health delivery around the world. 

At HITLAB, we believe technology and health can work together to improve the quality of health delivery and healthcare worldwide. We use rigorous research and evidence-based methods to identify the best digital health solutions for each of our partners. 

About HITLAB Breakthrough Alliance 

HITLAB Breakthrough Alliance is an accelerator that helps early-stage startups conduct rapid pilot studies to test their products and move closer to market. Selected startups have their technologies tested in pilot studies with clinical partners and patients, gathering the data needed to accelerate their concepts. To source startups, Breakthrough holds open innovation competitions and networking events that bring together the digital health and investment ecosystem. 

Breakthrough is membership-based and board members represent the best organizations in health