Dallas—Health Wildcatters has chosen its latest class of healthcare startups, and has also announced that the accelerator is splitting its cohort into two programs. One class will begin in the fall as usual, and the other will join a newly-originated spring session.
“If we split it in half, it gives us a bigger chance to have more of an impact as we focus on high quality teams, six at a time,” says Hubert Zajicek, Health Wildcatters’ co-founder and CEO.
The spring class will also participate in the accelerator’s annual demo day the next fall, while those that are in the current program will join their spring colleagues in a road show next year. “They will each benefit from the entire program,” he adds.
The six companies that make up this fall’s class (for more details on them, see below) are developing innovations in health IT, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostics, and hail from the United States and Israel. So far, Health Wildcatters has hosted six classes, including this fall’s, for a total of 57 startups.
Zajicek says Health Wildcatters intentionally seeks to be open to a broad array of healthcare-related technologies, even as other programs seek to specialize in certain verticals. The Texas Medical Center’s TMCx accelerator in Houston, for example, hosts two startup cohorts in the specific areas of medical devices and health IT each year. “People are attracted to the diversity of the group,” Zajicek says. “If they’re not fitting squarely into one category, they’re still welcome, and can be successfully accelerated; our backers are very diverse as well.”
The new startups are:
—ClikRX: Technology to simplify prescribing durable medical equipment by digitizing processes that are currently done manually or through a fax.
—Halo Mountain: The company says it’s creating a treatment for early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.
—MycoDart: Developing a diagnostic test for the early and rapid detection of clinically significant invasive fungal and Candida infections.
—Sentiv: Software that allows nonprofits to create virtual fitness fundraising events that allow supporters to participate at their own pace and on their own time.
—Sppare.me: Offers men sperm cryopreservation, or freezing.
—StingRay Therapeutics: An immuno-oncology company that is developing medication for more effective cancer and infectious disease treatment.
