Innovation Works + Allegheny Health Network launch AlphaLab Health

Seed-stage investment and health care leaders join forces to create AlphaLab Health, a health care and life sciences accelerator for Pittsburgh. Applications are open immediately.

Pittsburgh (Bellevue) - Innovation Works, one of the country’s most active active seed-stage investors, announces a new life and health sciences accelerator in partnership with Allegheny Health Network (AHN). AlphaLab Health serves as an innovation hub for the region’s life sciences sector, cultivating promising medical technologies and making early-stage investments in companies.

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AlphaLab Health builds on the success and reputation of Innovation Works’ other accelerator programs, AlphaLab and AlphaLab Gear. Like its sibling accelerators, AlphaLab Health is cohort-based and provides early-stage funding, mentorship opportunities from industry experts, clinical resources, and office and lab space when available and as appropriate.

The AlphaLab Health application cycle is now open! Entrepreneurs should go to www.alphalabhealth.org for more information and to access the application. Six companies are targeted for the first cohort.

AlphaLab Health’s collaboration initially focuses on seeding four business categories:

  • Diagnostics

  • Therapeutics

  • Medical devices, and

  • Health IT

AHN will also pilot some of the technologies that are developed in a clinical setting, allowing the health network to act as a living commercialization lab for translational, “bench-to-bedside” research.

Over the next cycles, the investments and AlphaLab Health curriculum are expected to spur the creation of hundreds of regional jobs. “Starting a new company can be risky, especially in the life sciences field,” said Rich Lunak, Innovation Works President and CEO. “By providing seed funding, Innovation Works and AHN are helping to de-risk those businesses in the earliest stages, preparing them to attract talent and secure future investors.”

The initial AlphaLab Health program will start in January 2021 and end in June 2021. However, the AlphaLab Health team will begin working 1:1 with companies as they are accepted into the program, after their interviews in November 2020. Apply today at alphalabhealth.org/apply .

Have more questions? Email info@alphalabhealth.org or sign up for office hours to meet one-on-one with a member of the AlphaLab Health team.

Sean Luther