Health care and life sciences accelerator seeking applications

AlphaLab Health, a planned health care and life sciences accelerator that will be headquartered at the Allegheny General Hospital Suburban campus in Bellevue, is seeking applications from entrepreneurs.

The accelerator is a partnership between the Allegheny Health Network (AHN) and Pittsburgh-based technology investor Innovation Works. It will be an innovation hub for cultivating promising medical technologies.

It will focus on seeding four business categories: diagnostics, therapeutics, medical devices, and health information technology.

Companies selected for the accelerator will receive investment from AHN and Innovation Works. AHN also will select some of the technologies and allow the health network to act as a living commercialization lab.

Six companies are sought for the first cohort.

In addition, AHN and Innovation Works may invite health- and life-science-focused startups to share office space in a co-working environment at AGH.

“AlphaLab accelerators specialize in helping great entrepreneurs build great companies,” Rich Lunak, Innovation Works president and CEO, said. “Marrying our capabilities to AHN’s health care expertise will benefit founders, who can test their concepts with clinicians, researchers, and operational experts on an accelerated timeline. This will result in better health care products and greater capital efficiency as they scale their businesses and find the right product-market fit.”