Three Digital Health Startups Selected for Bayer's 2016 Grants4Apps Accelerator Program in China

Digitalization is transforming the world. The internet healthcare sector is experiencing rapid growth, with a proliferation of accelerators and incubators. Bayer China has also taken action. The Shanghai incubator project is part of “Bayer’s Grants4Apps,” an open innovation initiative that Bayer successfully launched in Berlin, Germany, in 2013. Since its inception, Bayer’s Grants4Apps has established co-working spaces and incubator programs worldwide.

Bayer’s first open innovation initiative in China, Grants4Apps—“Bayer Start-up Program · Shanghai 2016”—was officially launched in February 2016. More than 50 start-ups were invited to submit their project proposals and compete, with three digital health start-ups ultimately emerging as finalists. The three shortlisted companies are: Huasheng Mi, Wubei, and Ruijia.

The “Grants4Apps: Bayer Grants for Startups ∙ Shanghai 2016” initiative is the Chinese edition of the “Bayer Grants for Startups” program, targeting local digital health startups in China. The three startup projects selected in the final round have officially moved into Bayer’s Lujiazui office in Shanghai. Bayer will provide these three digital health startups with key support, including funding, workspace, and training, to help them advance their projects and refine their business models. Over the next 88 days, they will further develop their respective projects within Bayer’s “accelerator.”

Zhu Lixian, President of Bayer Group in Greater China, stated that technological advancements are evolving rapidly. In this new era, Bayer is not focusing solely on a single domain but is actively integrating novel ideas and insights from diverse fields. Through the Grants4Apps initiative, Bayer aims to better identify and understand innovative concepts and ideas. She remarked, “China currently hosts numerous startups across various types and stages of development. Bayer seeks enterprises in the digital health sector that possess novel ideas and have relatively mature products. Our selection criteria place greater emphasis on the human factor—specifically, whether the founders are passionate and how effectively the entrepreneurial team collaborates.”

Zhu Lixian also noted that the digital health sector is developing rapidly and has a significant impact on the healthcare industry. Launching such initiatives in China aims to gain deeper insights into the activities of Chinese startups. Following the great success of the co-creation space project in 2013, Bayer introduced the “incubator” concept in 2014, building upon its startup program to provide more systematic support for startups in the digital health field.

It is reported that August 12, 88 days from now, will serve as the showcase day for the outcomes of the startup projects. Bayer will invite a group of investors to attend the event, where the startup teams will present their innovations and ideas to a broader investor audience.

Shortlisted Company Profiles

Peanut Seek

Huashengmi has developed an ultra-thin (flexible) wearable device. The device currently monitors key health metrics, including body temperature, and will progressively incorporate heart rate, bodily fluid, activity, and sleep monitoring capabilities. Designed to be integrated into close-fitting apparel, it is suitable for infants and young children, women, as well as bedridden elderly individuals and patients.

Wubei

Ubei is a product that leverages smart devices to monitor and improve patient medication adherence accurately and cost-effectively. Through extensive market research, patient behavior studies, modern technology, and product design, it successfully integrates hardware and software to provide a comprehensive solution for medication adherence issues. The product consists of three components: a hospital-side medication dispensing system, a portable patient pillbox, and a mobile app, truly enabling end-to-end medication management services from the hospital to the home.

Ruijia

All team members are from the PETLab at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, possessing extensive software engineering experience and a strong background in interdisciplinary collaboration between medicine and engineering. Ruijia’s primary focus is on medical image processing platforms. It has built a SaaS-based medical image processing platform that provides services to doctors and hospitals requiring image analysis. This project is expected to reduce the cost of medical image processing to one-tenth of that associated with existing general-purpose methods. The primary clients are physicians who need to process medical images. Ruijia’s development will proceed in three phases: First, a SaaS service for AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment based on medical imaging, entering into imaging-based clinical decision-making by providing quantitative analysis, surgical planning, and prognostic assessment for major diseases such as lung cancer and liver cancer. Second, a PaaS platform for AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment using medical images, offering an open algorithm integration platform to attract physicians and researchers to jointly develop intelligent imaging-assisted diagnostic and therapeutic technologies for various diseases and organs. Third, a DaaS center for AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment using medical images, aggregating big data on medical imaging and clinical decision-making behaviors to advance medical imaging-assisted diagnostic and therapeutic technologies toward a stage of advanced intelligence.