By Healthcare Facilities Today

Johns Hopkins will cosponsor DreamIt Health Baltimore, a four-month boot camp early next year for entrepreneurs starting health information technology companies, according to an article on the university's Hub website. 

The project is designed to speed promising new technologies to market by giving company founders intense business and health care training, mentoring, an injection of "pre-seed money" capital, and opportunities to meet key individuals from industry and government health care agencies in the Baltimore-Washington area, the article said.

The application deadline is Nov. 11. Participants will be chosen by Dec. 16, and the program will run from January to May. Applications are available online. Potential DreamIt Health Baltimore participants can apply as a company or as an individual.

The project's focus on companies in health-related information technology is important, because that is a "fertile" area for innovation to make health care more accessible and affordable, said Ronald J. Daniels, Johns Hopkins president in the article.

"This accelerator project will have important implications for the future use of information as we use technology to find solutions for the most pressing health problems of our day," Daniels said. "Just as important, it sets up Baltimore to become even more central to the health care information revolution through the rapid validation of solutions."

BioHealth Innovation Inc. is also a cosponsor of the Baltimore accelerator, which builds on a similar health IT-focused program in Philadelphia. The organizer is DreamIt Ventures, which since 2008 has run accelerators launching 127 companies in various industries.

Read the article.