The largest healthcare provider in New York State, Northwell Health, signed and sealed two new partnerships with Irish Medtech businesses. Northwell Health is using solutions from Irish companies to enhance customer experience and improve efficiency and productivity, thanks to a partnership signed with Enterprise Ireland.
Northwell Health has 22 hospitals and 600 outpatient facilities, and cares for more than 1.8 million people a year in the New York area, and beyond. President and Chief Executive Michael Dowling is highly focused on continuous innovation in what he views as a fast-changing and increasingly more competitive market.
Northwell Health reviewed over 50 Irish companies and agreed deals with two – Technopath Clinical Diagnostics and Salaso Health Solutions.
Technopath developed a first-of-its-kind, consolidated immunochemistry testing product. Consolidation is attractive to companies like Northwell Health because it enables clinical labs to significantly reduce handling requirements, reclaim storage and minimise waste, leading to a more efficient quality control process.
“The solutions Technopath has developed have dramatically helped us to improve the quality, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of our laboratory quality control processes.”
Northwell Health has signed a 50-50 joint venture agreement with Technopath, with a view to promoting the Irish companies’ offering to labs all over the US. It owns one of the biggest labs run by a health system in the US – performing more than 30 million tests and analysing 200,000 surgical specimens a year.
Salaso Health Solutions is based in Kerry. The company has developed a platform which allows patients to use their smartphones or tablets to access and interact with high-definition video exercises prescribed by their clinicians.
The deal expands on the company’s existing contract with Northwell Health to provide online care management services to stroke survivors and patients with movement disorders and other neurological conditions.
Under the agreement, Northwell Health will invest in Salaso Health Solutions to enable the company to further develop the solution, expanding the scope of online rehabilitation care to patients with cancer, COPD [Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder] and other medical conditions.
“We are always interested in solutions that can improve clinical outcomes. Salaso’s app can improve what a patient does at home after they have been treated by a doctor so they don’t have to come back to the hospital and are more knowledgeable,” said Dowling.
Until two years ago, Dowling didn’t appreciate the scale of the entrepreneurial developments that have been built in Ireland. “I spent a couple of days going around to a lot of companies with Enterprise Ireland and I was completely blown away,” he says. “The capabilities and competencies that exist in Ireland, especially in areas such as Medtech, are phenomenal. In my view, this is down to the education system and the innovative spirit, personality and knowledge of the people.”
One of the areas where Irish Medtech companies are particularly strong in is digital health, according to Dowling.
“Everything is becoming more democratised because of the access consumers have to mobile phones. We do business with other countries, but there is nothing as expansive as what Irish companies are doing in the whole digital health and customer experience space. The consumer is the biggest change agent in healthcare. We have to deliver what the consumer wants. The innovations coming out of Ireland fit right in with that.”
Learn more about the Irish companies adding value to the North American health systems and key information on doing business in the USA.
