The Health AI Assurance Laboratory at UMass Chan Medical School is collaborating with Red Cell Partners, an incubator and investment firm, to test and certify artificial intelligence products aimed at enhancing health care innovation and regulatory compliance.
The two-year collaborative agreement is between UMass Chan and Red Cell Partners, which builds and launches technology-led health care, national security and cyber startups. The agreement makes UMass Chan an established member of Red Cell’s Partners Advancing Critical Technologies program and allows UMass Chan to evaluate select AI health care products from Red Cell’s portfolio.
“This collaboration enables a rapid yet rigorous pathway to develop, test and evaluate AI tools using real-world clinical data,” said Adrian Zai, MD, PhD, MPH, associate professor of population & quantitative health sciences and chief research informatics officer at UMass Chan. “Our shared goal is to quickly identify which AI tools are safe, effective and ready for real-world health care challenges, and which are not.”
Dr. Zai is a co-leader of the Health AI Assurance Laboratory and serves as director of the data sciences core within the Department of Population & Quantitative Health Sciences and director of the biomedical informatics core in the Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences.
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“The partnership with Red Cell is to create a feeder system of AI companies to come to us, establish guidelines on AI assurance on how it is deployed in patient care, and at the same time, to build our business model out to support the industry and determine the turn-around time to make AI startups competitive in health care,” Zai said.
Red Cell will provide select AI health care products for UMass Chan to conduct rapid-cycle real-world evaluations at cost. UMass Chan will provide data access through the Center for Clinical and Translational Science’s Research Informatics Core and will receive fee-based reimbursement for services provided.
"The partnership builds on a strength of UMass Chan,” said David McManus, MD’02, MSc’12, the Richard M. Haidack Professor in Medicine, chair and professor of medicine and founder of the Health AI Assurance Laboratory. “As early and serious market entrants, we have developed great talent, as well as the technical infrastructure, national network, and intramural governance to contribute meaningfully to industry partners like Red Cell.”
Timothy Ferris, MD, MPH, is president of the Red Cell’s Healthcare Practice division. He previously served as national director of transformation at National Health Services England, and as CEO of the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization.
“We’re on a mission to make health care better. By working together, we’re refining and making the technology that clinicians and hospital systems want,” Dr. Ferris said. “UMass Chan doesn’t just talk the talk of serving the underserved. They do it day in and day out. And those are the types of people that we want to partner with.”
Ferris said UMass Chan’s high-quality faculty, mission-oriented care for underserved populations and innovative approach were some of the major factors that attracted Red Cell to partner with the Medical School.
“UMass Chan has worked hard to create internal and external partnerships that position us on the leading edge of how to implement AI into health care. This partnership expands the pipeline of AI companies and innovators who will be able to work with our outstanding students, faculty and resources,” said Nate Hafer, PhD, associate professor of molecular medicine, director of operations for the Center for Clinical & Translational Science and a key member of the Assurance Lab leadership team.
A memorandum of understanding was signed by Red Cell Partners and UMass Chan in March. Red Cell Partners is based in McLean, Virginia.
