Health Hub SF Announces the winners of UCSF Digital Health Awards 2020

September 24, 2020 -- SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- UC San Francisco’s Health Hub, an innovation hub and startup studio supporting the next wave of digital health entrepreneurs, announces the winners in the UCSF Digital Health Awards. This unique awards event celebrated the achievements of innovative companies dramatically improving healthcare with technology.
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The winners were selected across 15 categories by an unmatched team of 250 expert judges from the healthcare and VC industry, including Stan Kachnowski (HITLAB), Steve Barsh (Dreamit Ventures), Bob Kocher, MD (Venrock), Desert Horse-Grant (UCLA Biodesign), Ursheet Parikh (Mayfield Fund), Paul Grand (Medtech Innovator), Bambi Francisco (Vator), Anne Wellington (Cedars-Sinai Accelerator), Daniel Kraft (Digital.Health), Blake Wu (NEA), Michael Roizen (Cleveland Clinic), Michael Blum, MD (UCSF), Michael Lesh, MD (UCSF), and Lindy Fishburne (Breakout VC).

The winners were chosen from more than 750 submissions based on a rigorous judging criteria. In the first round of judging, the priority was on market validation and traction; in the second, innovation and differentiation; in the third, overall patient impact.

Due to COVID-19 and social distancing measures, winners were announced and honored at a virtual ceremony on the UCSF Mission Bay campus on September 23, at 6:00 pm PT where finalists from across the world joined in through Zoom, waiting in anticipation to see if they had won. Each award was presented by two industry experts, with occasional cameos from some of the biggest changemakers in healthcare, such as Alex Gorsky (CEO of Johnson & Johnson) and Dr. Amy Abernathy (Principal Deputy Commissioner of the FDA). The full video stream of the event is here.

The awards this year also honored innovative digital health companies who stepped up to the many challenges that the pandemic presented — misinformation, the danger of in-person doctor’s appointments, slow testing, and even slower results, and safely returning to work — among many others. These companies either pivoted their products entirely to combat COVID, tweaked certain aspects of their preexisting solutions, or simply saw the pandemic as a new use-case of a perfectly applicable, tried, and tested product. These products were launched within weeks of the first lock-downs, displaying American ingenuity at its finest. At the UCSF Digital Health Awards, we especially wanted to celebrate these unsung heroes of the pandemic through three new COVID Patriot categories - Best Diagnostic Testing Solution, Best Patient Engagement Solution, and Best Delivery and Decision Support Solution.

“We’re honored to shine a spotlight on the early stage companies and their founders making the brave steps making access to care affordable and practical,” said Mark H. Goldstein, Chairman of the UCSF Health Hub and General Partner at venture capital firm Builders VC. “Our winners represent the best of the best and we’re excited to now help them open new providers' doors.”

Winners of the 2020 UCSF Digital Health Awards are:

New Application of AI: Viz.ai
‍New EHR Advance: Human API
‍Remote Diagnostics: Conversa Health
‍Hospital Diagnostics: Eko Health
Telehealth: GoodRx
‍Mental & Behavioral Health: Ginger
‍Consumer Wellness: Oura
‍Consumer Prevention: Dexcom
Employer Wellness & Prevention: Grand Rounds
Patient Cost Savings: Advocatia
COVID Patriot - Best Diagnostic Testing: Mammoth Biosciences
COVID Patriot - Best Patient Engagement: ConsejoSano
COVID Patriot - Best Delivery & Decision Support: Carbon Health
Best Technology with UCSF DNA: Akili
UCSF Digital Health Hall of Fame: Doug Hirsch, Trevor Bezdek, Rajeev Singh, and Roy Shoenberg

Submissions were open to qualified, mature digital health companies with in-market products that have been used by thousands of patients and have been verified in a validation study or clinical trial.Despite the recent growth of the digital health industry due to COVID-19, which is now valued at over $112B globally, the reach of digital health remains limited by a lack of knowledge on the potential of these technologies. UCSF Health Hub established the Digital Health Awards to spread awareness for the leading digital health companies transforming patient care, so that today’s cutting-edge technologies can have an even broader reach to better people’s lives and decrease healthcare costs. Marketing collaborators for the awards include Startup Health, Dreamit Ventures, Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, Plug & Play, Rock Health, TMCx Innovation, Health Wildcatters, Berkeley Skydeck, UCSF Innovation Ventures, Builders VC and MATTER, as well as the American Medical Association’s Physician Innovation Network.

About UCSF Health Hub
UCSF Health Hub is a 501c3 non-profit supported and funded by Silicon Valley’s top health-related venture capital firms in a unique affiliation with UCSF. UCSF Health Hub connects ideas and companies with the people, expertise, and capital to scale breakthrough healthcare solutions and produces monthly on-campus events operates an company-to mentor-to clinician online matching system called Health Hub Connect and produces the UCSF Digital Health Awards show. Visit us at https://www.healthhubsf.org/ and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Media Contact

Oiendrilla Das
oiendrilla@ucsfhealthhub.com