Advancing health ideas from HBCUs

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Several partners are coming together to collaborate on a Kentucky-based “pre-accelerator” that will advance and commercialize healthcare ideas from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The partners include the University of Kentucky, Jackson State University and XLerateHealth, a Louisville healthcare accelerator funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The project aims to improve equity, diversity and inclusion in innovations coming to market and to support underrepresented groups’ potentially transformative ways of solving technological, social, economic, and cultural problems.

The collaboration, called “Engaging Researchers and Innovators for Commercialization at HBCUs,” or EnRich, will train HBCU faculty and students in the art of bringing their healthcare inventions to market, including how to conduct market assessments, protect their intellectual-property and understand the mechanics of working with an accelerators like XLerateHealth.

Underrepresented minority faculty and students will gain access to expert knowledge, entrepreneurship, professional networks, and mentorships. The faculty and students will also gain the expertise of the University of Kentucky’s Office of Technology Commercialization.