April 20, 2016

Top Ten Reasons Boston is the Ultimate Digital Health Hub

by Lesley Solomon

Boston is full of history. It’s home of the Boston Tea Party, the U.S.S. Constitution, the Freedom Trail, and scores of people who’ve made names for themselves here, too.

While we’re proud of our past, we’re looking forward to a bright future. We’re known for our muscle, which has helped us win historical battles and sports championships – go Pats/Celtics/Red Sox/Bruins, etc.! However, Bostonians are even more renowned for our brains. We’ve seen way more medical breakthroughs and scientific discoveries than home runs by Big Papi.

Boston is a powerhouse for digital health – and we’re just getting started. Here, an ever-growing number of startups, academic medical centers, investors and academics are joining forces. They’re using analytics, devices, data, wearable technologies, electronic health records and more to effectively improve healthcare by saving consumers time and money and helping providers deliver better care.

Follow my weekly DigitalDownload, part of Brigham Innovation Hub (iHub), to learn how Boston is creating new history.

MIT sailboats.

And now, the list! Boston is:

…home to a wealth of intellect

Top-tier educational institutions like Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston University, Northeastern and Tufts, give Boston the highest student population per capita in the U.S. We’re also home to some of the best academic medical centers in the world, including Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and my home, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), ranked #1 and #6, respectively, on U.S. News and World Report’s list of best hospitals.

…the top recipient of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding

2015 was the 20th consecutive year that Boston-based organizations received more NIH research funding than any other city in the nation. Enough said.

Jessica Dudley, MD, chief medical officer of Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization, and Adam Licurse, MD, speak with Calum MacRae, MD, at iHub’s Digital Health Shark Tank.

…the origin of countless scientific breakthroughs

• In 1954, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital won the Nobel Prize for successfully culturing the polio virus in 1949, making possible the development of the Salk and Sabin vaccines.
• In 1979, MGH radiologists pioneered the MRI scan.
• In 2005, BWH researchers were the first to prove that measuring C-reactive protein (CRP) levels is just as important to predicting heart attacks as measuring cholesterol.

…known for its spirit of innovation

We are Forbes’ #8 city to start a business and Qmed’s #2 city for health innovation. Also, Boston is the #3 city for venture capital investments in tech, with more than $3.1 billion invested in 2012 (the most recent year data is available)….