Creative Destruction Lab and Dandelion Health partner to unlock AI-enabled innovation in healthcare
The partnership will expand CDL’s objectives-based accelerator program to include Dandelion’s de-identified, multimodal clinical datasets, enabling h
The partnership will expand CDL’s objectives-based accelerator program to include Dandelion’s de-identified, multimodal clinical datasets, enabling high-potential startups to create more equitable and impactful algorithms for patients, providers, and drug and device developers.
TORONTO, June 20, 2024 – Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a leading global startup program, today announced a strategic collaboration with Dandelion Health, a product development platform for clinical AI and precision medicine, to unleash AI-enabled healthcare innovation and precision medicine. The partnership will expand CDL’s objectives-based accelerator program to include Dandelion’s de-identified, multimodal clinical datasets, enabling high-potential startups to create more equitable and impactful algorithms for patients, providers, and drug and device developers. This exciting new initiative will launch in October 2024.
Current healthcare efforts in AI are, at times, ad hoc with limited ability to scale due to poor data and digital foundations for model training, validation, and regulatory submission, as this recent OECD report illustrates. These barriers can hinder the development, implementation, and use of responsible AI in healthcare, where high-dimensional clinical data are especially fragmented and difficult to de-identify and access for machine learning use cases. Addressing these barriers are critical to ensure that investments in healthcare AI can achieve expected returns and that all people can benefit from the application of responsible AI in healthcare.
Since 2012, CDL has been a leader in capacity building in innovation and entrepreneurship, admitting over 3,600 ventures globally, with 20% in AI streams across 13 sites.
CDL’s mission is to enhance the commercialization of science for the betterment of humankind. This mission aligns with Dandelion Health’s goal to catalyze the development of clinical AI for everyone. Under this new partnership, Dandelion will provide safe and ethical access to de-identified clinical data of unparalleled depth, quality, and diversity annually a select group of companies in the CDL Health streams that have been expertly-vetted by CDL to advance their venture objectives through CDL’s nine-month program. Early-stage health startups at CDL may leverage Dandelion’s rich dataset to build or validate proofs-of-concept for algorithms that support early diagnosis, personalized screening, prevention strategies, biomarker discovery and effective therapies.
“A common barrier for early-stage health startups admitted to CDL is the lack of clinical data for externally validating their AI/ML-based technology,” says Laura Rosella, scientist and mentor at Creative Destruction Lab in the CDL Health stream. “These ventures resort to a lengthy process of approaching individual hospitals to conduct their research projects, often characterized by small sample sizes, poor generalizability, inability to measure potential biases and insufficient data.”
The CDL and Dandelion partnership aims to drive innovation, trust, and collaboration in healthcare AI. The Dandelion dataset provides a rich source of multimodal clinical data, such as imaging, waveforms, provider notes, and videos linked to the complete longitudinal electronic health record of over 10 million patients representing a wide range of ages, races, ethnicities, self-reported sexes/genders, geographies, incomes, and care practices across the United States.
“We believe that an integral aspect of the innovation in this industry is going to originate from startups, but there remain systemic barriers that have limited high-potential entrepreneurs from accessing the data and resources they need to grow and scale successful healthcare AI companies. We are delighted to partner with CDL to get Dandelion’s de-identified data into the hands of new ventures that have the potential to build great AI products for the benefit of many patients and physicians.” says Dandelion Co-Founder and CEO Elliott Green.
If you are interested in participating in the CDL program and taking advantage of the new partnership with Dandelion, please reach out to admissions@creativedestructionlab.com for more information.
About Creative Destruction Lab
Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) is a nonprofit organization that delivers an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies. Its nine-month program allows founders to learn from experienced entrepreneurs, increasing their likelihood of success. Founded by Professor Ajay Agrawal in 2012 at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, the program has expanded to 13 sites across seven countries: Oxford, Seattle, Paris, Atlanta, Madison, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Halifax, Berlin, Estonia, and Melbourne.
About Dandelion Health
Dandelion Health is a healthtech company building the infrastructure for the next generation of healthcare. Our Real World Data platform empowers AI, medical device and life sciences companies with the data, tools, and support to accelerate the entire product development lifecycle. Founded by the world’s leading experts in healthcare and AI, Dandelion is a diverse and growing consortium of leading healthcare systems from across the United States.