LANCASTER, Pa. & TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mor Research Applications, a subsidiary of Clalit Health Services, has agreed to join in the Aspire Ventures Precision Medicine Fund and Smart Health Innovation Lab (iLab). The collaboration is part of a strategic partnership agreement among Aspire, Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health (LG Health), Capital BlueCross, Clio Health, Clalit, and Mor, that benefits all parties in advancing technologies for precision medicine and achieving international market adoption that improves healthcare globally.
“Through a robust program of cross-border venture capital with U.S. and Israel, the U.S. market is being opened to the transformational technological force of the Start-up Nation. In return, worthy Israeli start-ups will benefit from unique commitments of U.S. health systems to provide contracts and reimbursement,” said Essam Abadir, Managing Partner at Aspire.
Mor Research Applications is the Technology Transfer Office of Clalit Health Services. Clalit is the largest HMO in Israel and the second largest in the world, with 4.3 million members, 14 hospitals, and around 2,000 clinics across the country.
Mor provides end-to-end technology transfer services and helps inventors translate new ideas in the medical fields into beneficial products and solutions available to health caregivers and patients. Mor’s commercialization portfolio comprises more than 100 different projects and companies, from pre-seed to advanced stage, aiming to solve a number of unmet needs.
The iLab is designed to accelerate the progress of such companies by finding, fostering, and developing new approaches to healthcare that can be directly deployed in new markets globally. Established by Aspire, LG Health, Capital BlueCross, and Clio Health, the iLab connects healthcare startups with experts across the healthcare field, including investors, payors, and providers. That access offers startups first-hand knowledge of the market and how their technology can best serve patients within that ecosystem.
“The unique international iLab ecosystem we are building has already proven it can deliver enterprise contracts, reimbursement, and funding to transformational companies like NeuroFlow, developed by students at the University of Pennsylvania; Emovi, which came from three Montreal-based universities; and OneOme, co-founded with scientists of the Mayo Clinic,” said Kim Ireland, CEO, Smart Health Innovation Lab. “As the tech transfer office of Clalit, Mor provides direct access to Israeli health tech innovation we can now expose to the U.S. markets.”
“We’ve been intrigued by the iLab’s market adoption process and its ability to fast-track technologies into the hands of doctors and patients,” said Pini Ben-Elazar, Chief Executive Officer at Mor. “This new partnership not only helps us enter the U.S. market, but represents a joining of international forces to pursue solutions for the challenges conceived and developed by Clalit's professionals. This marks global growth for all partners via collaboration in an established fund.”
About Aspire Ventures
Aspire Ventures, an Aspire Universal Company, is a private equity firm focused on transforming industries and impact investment. Aspire Ventures leverages its capital, intellectual property and domain expertise to help bring breakthrough technologies to market faster and more cost effectively for the benefit of people worldwide.
Aspire Ventures has developed A2I, an adaptive artificial intelligence platform, to help its portfolio companies offer innovative technologies in the areas of mobile, cloud, machine learning, and big data analytics for a variety of industry sectors, most notably healthcare. Aspire Ventures is leading several initiatives in healthcare designed to break down silos, foster innovation and integration, and effect revolutionary change, and the company's vision for healthcare is focused on creating a better patient experience through precision medicine. For more information on Aspire Ventures, please visit https://aspirevc.com/.
