Former Mayo Clinic CEO Dr. John Noseworthy is returning to healthcare as executive chairman of Northwell Holdings-led company Caire.
Caire, a startup creation platform company, was launched in January by Northwell’s investment arm and venture studio Aegis Ventures. The company is starting Caire Collaborative, an initiative to bring health systems together to invest in and create startups on the Caire platform.
Noseworthy, who was CEO of Mayo from 2009 to 2018, will oversee the collaborative. He said the concept of health systems partnering on innovation appealed to him.
“The innovator’s dilemma is tech comes up with a solution, then they try to find a problem to apply it to or a market to buy it,” Noseworthy said. “I was convinced from what I heard that [Caire] realized that the health systems need to be at the center of this. And they need to identify what are the most vexing issues that they're dealing with for patient care or their business model.”
Noseworthy said while he was at Mayo, the system attempted to introduce digital tools but were challenged by clinicians’ reluctance. He sees Caire as an opportunity to bridge the startup world’s desire to move fast in implementing innovation and the practical challenges that health systems face.
“They need someone who can be the glue between the innovators from tech and the innovators that are in healthcare,” Noseworthy said. “They thought that they should bring an experienced healthcare leader in who could play that role and I certainly lived that full-time for a good decade.”
Northwell Health president and CEO Michael Dowling said he’s received interest from potential health system partners but declined to be specific. He said he envisions five or six health systems initially participating.
“We've got to disrupt ourselves in an appropriate way and when we get a collective working together, we'll all be better,” Dowling said. “And with leadership like [Noseworthy], I have no doubt we will be successful."
Caire is the second launch from Northwell Health and Aegis. The two started Ascertain, another digital health startup creation company, in April 2022. Ascertain launched A.I. company Optain in March with $12 million in funding.