Tampa General Hospital fund helps healthcare startups innovate for the future

TAMPA, Fla. - Improving healthcare through innovation is the main focus of Tampa General Hospital's venture capital fund TGH Innoventures. For the last year, the fund has been helping healthcare start-ups get off the ground, and Monday night, community partners gathered at Embarc in downtown Tampa to learn more about the program's progress and how it works.

"We have a new vision and it's a bold vision and it's to be the safest and most innovative health system in the country so a big part of that is innovation," Tampa General Hospital President & CEO John Couris said.

TGH announced the creation of the venture capital fund last November. To help bring it to life, TGH Innoventures partnered with Embarc a local Tampa-based non-profit, membership-based co-work collective.

"There are a number of startups that are housed here at Embarc Collective that are focused on healthcare. We at TGH Innoventures provide office hours to those entrepreneurs. We connect them with leaders within TGH where and when appropriate that we think those start-ups are really solving problems with our health system," Tampa General Hospital VP of Innovation Rachel Feinman said.

Tampa Mayor Jane Castor made an appearance at Monday's event and partners were given a tour of the Embarc workspaces as well as the new TGH Innovation Lab.

"It is a team of people by design to be disrupters. It is a team of people by design to invest in new programs and new services so we can accelerate the pace of change," Curis said.