The Johns Hopkins University and Luminox-Health, a leading Israeli startup hub focused on digital health, have entered into a multiyear collaborative agreement connecting Israeli entrepreneurs with Johns Hopkins medical expertise, faculty thought-leadership, technology, and network of business partners and investors. Johns Hopkins faculty members will have the opportunity to team up with Israeli entrepreneurs to build solutions to modern medical challenges, which will enable Johns Hopkins to take a leadership role as a pioneer in identifying and driving e-health innovation in the U.S. and abroad.

The agreement brings together one of the world’s pre-eminent medical research institutions and the unique emerging digital health innovation ecosystem of a country that has been called startup nation. Israel is home to more startups per capita than anywhere else in the world. In spite of the proliferation of startups, Israeli entrepreneurs find it challenging to gain access to strategic U.S. partners to further develop their ideas into real-world solutions and grow their companies in the international marketplace.

Moreover, U.S. investors and health care players hungry for digital health innovations have difficulty identifying these promising Israeli digital health startups. The Johns Hopkins-Luminox collaboration is designed to bridge these gaps. The collaboration will go beyond traditional funding and short-term acceleration programs, offering a long-term, hands-on, fast-track market access route — from pilots to exploring potential business collaborations with The Johns Hopkins University. In addition, Luminox will bring new funding sources and expertise to the Johns Hopkins ecosystem, exposing Johns Hopkins entrepreneurs to an expanded network.

“We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Luminox-Health to bring new companies and novel ideas to Johns Hopkins,” says Ronald J. Daniels, president of The Johns Hopkins University. “The impact of a robust innovation ecosystem on our ability to achieve our mission of groundbreaking discovery, exceptional patient care, and service at home and around the globe is critical.” 

“Healthcare innovation has long been a national priority, presenting Israel with a tremendous opportunity to become a global leader in fields such as patient empowerment and engagement, Tele-Care, mobile health and big data,” says Avi Hasson, Chief Scientist of Israel.

“One of the major challenges for Israel’s digital health entrepreneurship is gaining access to strategic U.S. health care partners for proof-of-concept and business collaborations,” says Yossi Bahagon, Luminox’s CEO. “Currently, each startup finds its own way to the U.S. health care market. Even with a talented team and a solution that answers a true need, most entrepreneurs have difficulty navigating their way through the complex health care world to find a win-win collaboration model. The Johns Hopkins-Luminox collaboration will offer outstanding Israeli digital health startups an established and effective route to one of the leading medical institutions in the world. We are going to infuse knowledge, experience, execution capabilities and high-end business connections into promising companies so that entrepreneurs will achieve their success milestones quicker, more effectively and at higher quality.”

As part of the collaboration, Luminox is establishing an investment fund focused on early-stage digital health innovations that will collaborate with the FastForward program. FastForward, Johns Hopkins’ innovation hub and technology accelerator, is designed to transform research into products for the commercial market. Through this program, Luminox companies will conduct research at Johns Hopkins with its faculty members, co-developing startups side by side with Israeli entrepreneurs through the Johns Hopkins HexciteIL initiative. This program takes startups through early-market feasibility evaluation, discovery of potential customers and development of technology.

To solidify the relationship and broaden communication between Johns Hopkins’ and Israel’s health IT communities, Johns Hopkins officials will travel to Tel Aviv in October. Executives will meet with Israel’s health care innovation leadership, including Avi Hasson, the chief scientist of Israel’s Ministry of Economy. The unique collaboration is currently in advanced discussions with additional strategic players from different health care domains — insurers, pharma and retail — to expand its value proposition for digital health entrepreneurs. More information can be found at http://ventures.jhu.edu/luminox/.

About Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures

Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV) is The Johns Hopkins University’s intellectual property administration center, serving Johns Hopkins researchers and inventors as a licensing, patent and technology commercialization office, and acting as an active liaison to parties interested in leveraging university research or materials for academic or corporate endeavors. JHTV helps develop new discoveries and inventions into products and services that benefit society and transform the world. In 2014, JHTV secured more than $16 million in licensing revenue, possessed more than 2,000 active issued patents and created 13 new startup companies. For more information about Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, opportunities to collaborate, start a technology venture or license a technology, visit http://ventures.jhu.edu/.

About Luminox

Luminox is a leading Israeli digital health startup hub and a strategic innovation partner of the world's leading corporates. Luminox scouts, builds, nurtures and scales up digital health startups. From its headquarters in Tel Aviv, it is plugged-in to the heart of Israel’s movers and shakers in the digital health domain.

Luminox's expertise spans across the complete value chain of the Digital-Health ecosystem, including clinical informatics, mobile-Health, Big-Data, Tele-Care and Digital-Therapeutics. Luminox has successfully built and implemented some of the largest and most successful digital-health solutions in the world.