There is a lot of innovation in the healthcare sector in New York. On January 28, Upstate Capital and NYSTAR celebrated the healthcare innovation ecosystem at Invest NY: Health & Wellbeing.
To start off the show, our keynote conversation included Vikram Agrawal, the founder, President and CEO of Levrx, a prescription drug technology solution and platform designed to improve outcomes for patients, providers and payers alike. Vikram founded the company in Troy New York after his first venture, Etransmedia, a digital health software company was sold to a major hospital network in 2016. He was joined by Todd Tidgewell, a Partner in Nixon Peabody’s Private Equity Practice in its Albany and New York City offices. Todd’s practice is focused on corporate transactions, including: the formation, financing and growth of business enterprises; mergers & acquisitions; private equity and venture capital financing and investment fund formation.
Next, Jason Helgerson, the founder and CEO of Helgerson Solutions Group, spoke about the current state of health care trends at the state & national level, including the impact of COVID19 on health care, potential future scenarios post-COVID and the Biden administration.
Ryan Young, the Founder & CEO of Opollo Technologies, a healthcare technology startup, spoke with Christina Orsi, Associate Vice President for Economic Development at the University at Buffalo and Clayton Besch, Director of ESD’s New York Ventures about building Opollo in Buffalo.
Next, Maria Gotsch of the Partnership Fund for NYC and Sharon Rutter of NY Ventures discussed investing in life Sciences in New York City.
The Masonic Medical Research Institute, located in Utica, New York, was founded in 1958 and originally played a major role in the defeat of rheumatic fever. Its current focus is on Cardiovascular Disease, but it also serves as a laboratory and research resource for New York’s biomedical industry. We heard from Maria Kontaridis, Ph.D., MMRI’s Executive Director, Director of Research and the Gordon K. Moe Professor and Chair of Biomedical Research and Translational Research.
Next we had Atuso Kuki, Ph.D., the President of the Trudeau Institute, discussing Trudeau’s reach in the North country how they became a scalable regional partner for entrepreneurs and biotechs, plus Trudeau’s response to the COVID 19 pandemic.
Closing out our program, an investor panel featuring Theresa Mazzullo, the CEO of Excell Partners, Somak Chattopadhyay, a Managing Partner at Armory Square Ventures, and our panel moderator, Lindsay Karas Stencel, a Partner at Thompson Hine LLP, discussed the investor perspective on the health and wellbeing industries in Upstate New York and beyond.
Our next in the Invest NY series is an event dedicated to advanced manufacturing, hardware devices and IoT. Invest NY: Industry 4.0 will be March 25, 2021. Check out the website for more information. Become a member today and enjoy free tickets to this event and all our online events. Send us a note for more information.