Additional Comments from Healthcare Venture Investing Survey Respondents

Health system leaders responding to the 2017 annual survey on venture investing shared their perspectives on the role of venture activities in supporting their organizations’ corporate strategies and spurring innovation. Here are just a few comments regarding key areas of focus within the survey.

On Aligning Venture Investing Strategies with Corporate Goals

“One hundred percent of our investments have strategic value to Ascension and our other 12 health system investors. This strategic value enables them to benefit from being an investor in these companies and from being a customer.”

— Matt Hermann, senior managing director, Ascension Ventures, Clayton, Mo.

“Our investments have to be part of the core strategy of the organization. We want to create things that create value for us.”

— Rich Roth, chief strategic innovation officer, Dignity Health, San Francisco

“We’re less driven by the need to review a huge number of deals than by our desire to identify those key solutions that address core organizational needs. Financial return is secondary to strategic value.”

—Jonathan Gordon, director of New York Presbyterian (NYP) Ventures

“We’re trying to focus on finding solutions to core technical and patient care problems that we can get behind. Our job is much easier than your stereotypical venture fund because we only invest in things we think we are going to use or be a big or the biggest customer of.

The point may not be so much to earn higher returns—although we like returns—as to solve strategic problems. The main goal is to drive innovation into the organization.”

—Darren Dworkin, CIO of Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles, and managing director of Summation Health Ventures

On Syndicating Venture Investments

“Once we think we may want to start up a company, we usually consult with potential co-investors to help us make this decision. We prefer to have independent venture firms as lead investors to ensure investment discipline and limit our exposure.”

—Jack Miner, managing director, Cleveland Clinic Ventures

On Integrating Venture Activities with Operational and Clinical Activities

“You can’t allow health system bureaucracies to move so slowly they crush ventures. Interminable piloting is a disservice that health systems perpetrate on entrepreneurs. Early-stage companies spend too much time piloting.”

— Matt Hermann, senior managing director, Ascension Ventures, Clayton, Mo.