‘It’s ridiculously hard to make a startup succeed.’ Hartford’s new medtech accelerator is focused on improving those odds

With Hartford pushing to raise its profile as a hotbed of entrepreneurship and innovation, the first class of fledgling companies chosen for downtown’s new medtech accelerator focused squarely Tuesday on beating the odds stacked against startups.

“It’s ridiculously hard to make a startup succeed, and that’s why programs like this are so important,” Gerry Roston, managing director of the program, Digital Health CT, said. “It’s called an accelerator, and fundamentally, the role of an accelerator is to reduce the time that it takes to get into the market with their product.”

On Tuesday, the program officially kicked off at Constitution Plaza, the 10 companies selected from an initial field of about 400 applicants.

The accelerator fosters connections between startups and large health systems such as Hartford HealthCare, one of the partners that launched the accelerator earlier this year. Key to the program, Roston said, is helping young companies better understand how they fit into the bigger health care industry.

“You’ve got these emerging companies that can’t break down the door, or get through the process,” said Heather Gray, vice president of Houston-based BrainCheck, one of the 10 companies in the first class at the accelerator. “They can’t get through security, procurement and vendors and get peoples’ attention.”

BrainCheck has developed an app that assists primary care physicians in spotting signs of dementia. The app is aimed at bringing diagnosis to patients quicker rather than waiting for months to get an appointment with a neuropsychologist, Gray said.

Founded in 2015, BrainCheck counts 150 physician groups across the country as among its clients, but it has not yet broken into large health care systems, like Hartford HealthCare, the parent of Hartford Hospital.

“So, this is a really interesting opportunity to be able to fully come to the table as partners,” Gray said. “How can we work together? They can help us refine our product and get even better.”

In addition to Hartford HealthCare, Trinity College, UConn’s School of Business and CTNext, the state’s startup support organization, also partnered in the medtech accelerator.

The accelerator is temporarily located in Trinity’s liberal arts “action lab” on Constitution Plaza until it’s permanent quarters are ready on the plaza.

The medtech accelerator, which will host companies for three months once a year, joins others downtown focused on insurance and manufacturing as well as initiatives such as Upward Hartford. London-based Startupbootcamp was chosen to run the program.

Farmington-based Encapsulate was formed two years ago by UConn engineering school Ph.D.s to develop tests for treating lung cancer by taking cancerous cells from biopsies and growing tiny tumors outside the body. Tests are then conducted on those tumors to determine which of the more than 25 treatments would be most effective.

Armin Rad, one of the co-founders, said Encapsulate has participated in other accelerators but Hartford’s differs because of its sharp focus on biotech.

“For us, this is really what we need,” he said. “It’s directly engaging you and the people really know what they do.”

Encapsulate hopes to bring its product to market in three years, given the lengthy government approvals that are necessary for the treatment of cancer, Rad said. The company plans to expand into other forms of cancer, and it hopes to expand to other hospitals in Connecticut and then neighboring states and even beyond, he said.

“If they can learn how to work with a health care system like Hartford, the odds are they can do the same with the next one and the next one, and then, they are no longer a startup,” Roston said.

Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at kgosselin@courant.com.