Northwell Health, the largest health system in New York, and Aegis Ventures, an investment group that builds and launches startups, announced the creation of a jointly owned healthcare AI platform company, Ascertain.
Ascertain will have $100 million in seed funding to develop and commercialize healthcare AI solutions and emerging companies on its platform. The solutions on this platform will focus on improving quality and access to care, while closing health equity gaps, the companies said.
The companies developing solutions on Ascertain’s platform will be given access to Northwell’s datasets, as well as access to the health system’s clinical and technical teams.
Ascertain said it will launch multiple companies on its platform in 2022, including one whose technology uses AI to help clinicians predict the risk of developing preeclampsia, a hypertensive pregnancy complication that disproportionately affects Black mothers in the United States. Ascertain is working with Northwell’s newly-launched Center for Maternal Health on the development of the technology.
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In October, Northwell and Aegis announced their partnership. "We cannot just live in our own world," Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling told Modern Healthcare in October. "With all of the new technological and AI advancements that are going on by companies outside of healthcare, we've got to be bringing people together so that we can learn from one another."
Ascertain's chairman will be John Manning, formerly CEO of Dun & Bradstreet. Also on the leadership teams will be John Beadle, managing partner at Aegis; Mark Solazzo, chief operating officer at Northwell; and Richard Mulry, CEO of Northwell Holdings, the health system’s investment arm.
