BD to Create In-House Health Care Tech Start-Ups

(PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay)

21 January 2016. Medical device maker Becton, Dickinson and Company plans to create new health care technologies on an entrepreneurial model, working with Singularity University in Silicon Valley. Financial aspects of the collaboration were not disclosed.

Becton, Dickinson, or BD in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey manufactures medical devices and equipment, as well as diagnostics instruments including genomics devices. In 2014, BD acquired CareFusion, a developer of medication-dispensing and patient safety equipment for hospitals, in a $12.2 billion deal. BD says that acquisition expands its reach and opens up new opportunities for the company, which it hopes to develop through the Singularity collaboration.

Singularity University, located in the NASA Ames Research Center in California, is a business and technology training organization and start-up incubator. The collaboration with BD aims to create new technology business lines exploiting opportunities in digital health that combine medical with information technologies, making medical devices smarter and improve clinical decision-making.

BD plans to hire an entrepreneur-in-residence to lead the program on-site. Staff teams in the program are expected to take advantage of Singularity’s “start-up garage” to develop and test new business models and prototypes before presenting their ideas to BD’s executives for further advancement.

The collaboration with BD will be run through Singularity Labs, the organization’s combination of training facility and incubator for corporate clients at its Silicon Valley campus. Singularity Labs provides lab space and prototyping tools, in addition to training, for spin-off enterprises, as well as access to Singularity’s network of entrepreneurs and alumni. Singularity provides similar services to Bayer Healthcare, as well as Lowe’s Companies, Harman International, and Coca Cola.

Singularity University was founded in 2008 by legendary entrepreneurs  Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, later joined by the Kauffman Foundation, and companies Genentech, Autodesk, Google, Cisco, Nokia, and ePlanet Capital.

Read more:

• Smart Pills Detect, Measure Gases in Gut
• Phillips, Banyan Partner on Point-of-Care Concussion Test
• Clinical Trials to Test Artificial Pancreas
• Airway-on-Chip Model Simulates Asthma, COPD
• Computer Vision Devised as Drug Discovery Technique

*     *     *