Athenahealth, a Watertown, Mass.-based health information company, is launching the More Disruption Please accelerator at its new offices at Austin’s redeveloped Seaholm Power Plant.
The program will provide seed funding, free office space, technical and marketing assistance and other resources to startups that are addressing problem areas in the health care delivery system.
Member companies also will have access to Athenahealth’s network of more than 62,000 health care providers. In exchange, Athenahealth will receive equity in the companies when they raise their first round of outside funding.
“Austin has a lot of incubator programs, but they are generalists, and there’s no ecosystem specifically for health care,” said Mandira Singh, senior manager of business development at Athenahealth. “We’re excited to have a program tailored specifically for this industry because we see a ton of potential here.”
Singh said a targeted program is important because “health care is ripe for innovation, but it’s a tricky because of things like HIPAA regulations, and the FDA and how fragmented the market is. There are certain hurdles that come in creating a health care company that don’t exist in other industries. For startups to be around each other as they face certain hurdles really helps them grow.”
Athenahealth has launched similar accelerators at its Boston and San Francisco offices. The Austin program will accept applications on a rolling basis, with an expected residency of eight to 12 months for each member company.
Founded in 1997, Athenahealth provides cloud-based services such as electronic health records, medical billing and other services for doctors’ offices, hospitals and other facilities nationwide.
The company, which has 3,525 employees worldwide, is the largest tenant at Seaholm, where it currently as 70 employees.
It plans to grow to 200 employees in the next couple of years and reach 600 during the next decade. It’s currently hiring developers, project managers and user experience experts.
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