IMDA eNews - 8/3/2026
Innovation Challenge
Vizient is accepting applications from healthcare startup companies
interested in competing in its sixth annual Innovation Challenge,
which will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, Oct. 3 as part of the
2018 Vizient Connections Summit. Applications are due by 5 p.m. CDT
on Monday, Aug. 6, 2018. The companies should be revenue-producing
but still in the early growth stage. Categories are virtual
care/remote monitoring and care coordination/communications. The
competition calls for two contestants to go head-to-head in the
virtual/remote care and communication/care coordination domains,
respectively. Each contestant will deliver an eight-minute product
pitch then participate in a five-minute question-and-answer session
from an expert panel, which includes an executive from two of
Vizient's member hospitals, a venture capitalist investor and the
CEO of Vizient. For more details, send an email to
[email protected]
or call 704-377-7114.
Early-stage companies get a boost
Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC and the
University of Pennsylvania signed an agreement to identify and
accelerate the development of early-stage healthcare solutions from
the Philadelphia region's life science ecosystem that address
significant unmet patient and consumer needs in medical devices,
pharmaceuticals, consumer and health technologies. The venture will
also support innovators with training, mentoring and networking
programs. The Philadelphia venture is Johnson & Johnson Innovation's
first such venture in the United States, but the company launched
one last year in Alberta, Canada, in collaboration with the
University of Alberta.
Stark Law to morph?
The House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee
held a hearing July 17 on modernizing the Stark Law to facilitate
value-based care, reports the American Hospital Association. Enacted
in 1989, the law generally prohibits physicians from referring
certain Medicare patients to an entity in which they or an immediate
family member have a financial interest. In a healthcare system
moving to value-based payments, the law may unduly limit ways
that physicians and healthcare providers can coordinate patient
care,†Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan was
quoted as telling the subcommittee. In a statement submitted to the
subcommittee, AHA urged Congress to remove the compensation
provisions under Stark, which "do not support a value-based system,"
and create a safe harbor under the Anti-Kickback Statute for
clinical integration arrangements.
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