Samsung and UCSF Partner to Accelerate Preventive Health Technology Innovations

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) have partnered to accelerate validation and commercialization of new sensors, algorithms, and digital health technologies for preventive health solutions.

The two organizations will jointly establish the UCSF-Samsung Digital Health Innovation Lab, a new space located in UCSF’s Mission Bay campus in San Francisco, where researchers and technologists can develop and conduct trials to validate new mobile health technologies. The joint innovation lab will be a first-of-its-kind test bed where entrepreneurs and innovators will be able to validate their technologies and accelerate the adoption of new preventive health solutions.

“Harnessing new preventative health technologies to help people live healthier lives is the next great opportunity of our generation,” said Young Sohn, president and chief strategy officer of Samsung Electronics. “We invite the world’s innovators and entrepreneurs to join us to validate their new sensors, analytics, and preventive health solutions in a world class setting. Samsung’s global Digital Health Innovation Lab initiative is aimed at enabling great new ideas to be tested, validated, and commercialized more quickly, thereby making lives better for millions of people around the world.”

The mobile health field is rapidly evolving. Advances in technologies such as wearable computing, health sensors, and cloud-based analytics promise to help people take control of their own health and to improve the quality of life for millions of people. However, without systematic, rigorous validation of these technologies, mobile health has struggled to achieve its potential and gain widespread adoption by consumers and healthcare professionals. Samsung and UCSF aim to address this challenge by leveraging UCSF’s expertise in medicine and digital health and Samsung’s leadership in electronics and mobile technologies to rapidly develop new technologies.

“There are many new sensors and devices coming onto the market for consumers, but without medical validation, most of these will have limited impacts on health. Meanwhile, many practitioners also have creative ideas for new devices, but they lack the technological knowledge to fully develop them,” said Michael Blum, M.D., UCSF’s associate vice chancellor for Informatics. “This partnership will bring together these two very different worlds of expertise with the resources needed to accelerate new and disruptive technologies that will truly change lives.”

The UCSF Mission Bay campus is a vibrant ecosystem of innovation and biotech hub, with more than 50 bioscience startups, nine established pharmaceutical and biotech companies and 10 venture capital firms.

The Digital Health Innovation Lab is part of Samsung’s efforts to partner with leading global healthcare institutions to validate next-generation preventative health technologies. It also reflects a strategic goal of the UCSF Office of Innovation, Technology and Alliances to forge innovative industry partnerships that advance its work at the forefront of health and medicine.

UC San Francisco is a university exclusively focused on health, dedicated to transforming health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes  graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with programs in the biological sciences, a  biomedical research enterprise and two hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

The Office of Innovation, Technology and Alliances coordinates UCSF’s efforts in forging collaborations that translate cutting-edge science on campus into therapies and products that directly benefit patients worldwide. The office oversees intellectual property, technology transfer, and innovative alliances with commercial, non-profit, and government organizations.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. employs 286,000 people across 80 countries and has annual sales of $216.7 billion.