Red Cell Partners Announces Strategic Collaboration with UMass Chan Medical School to Advance AI in Healthcare

Red Cell Partners, an incubation and investment firm building and investing in technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in healthcare, national security, and cyber, today announced a collaborative agreement with the UMass Chan Medical School to test and certify artificial intelligence products and solutions aimed at addressing some of healthcare’s biggest challenges.

The two-year collaborative agreement comes at a time when the U.S. healthcare system lags those of other high-income nations, including Australia, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In fact, in a study that compared the healthcare systems of 10 nations across five domains—access to care, health outcomes, administrative efficiency, care process, and equity—the United States ranked last or next to last in nearly every category.

“The U.S. healthcare system is in serious trouble,” said Red Cell’s Healthcare Practice President Timothy Ferris, MD, MPH. “Even though America’s healthcare spend accounted for 17.6 percent of GDP in 2023—a figure that’s expected to climb to 20 percent by 2035—our approach to caring for patients is not only less affordable; it’s less accessible, less equitable, and less efficient. That’s the bad news. The good news is that AI can help us chart a new course for our healthcare system—one where providers are more effective at their jobs and where patients realize better health outcomes.”  

The Partnership

The partnership creates a framework for collaboration between UMass Chan and Red Cell to  evaluate, certify, and develop AI-based healthcare products and solutions. Combining UMass Chan’s healthcare expertise, clinical environment, and data resources with Red Cell’s strengths in developing and accelerating technology, the agreement focuses on three key areas:

• AI product evaluation and certification of selected healthcare AI products by Red Cell or its portfolio companies
• Rapid-cycle real-world evaluations by UMass Chan to test AI products and provide feedback and validation in a clinical setting
• Data access through UMass’s Center for Clinical Translational Science’s Research Informatics Core (UMCCTS) to enhance AI development and refine AI solutions for healthcare.  

Additionally, the agreement establishes UMass Chan as a member of Partners Advancing Critical Technologies (PACT), a Red Cell program that brings innovators and problem solvers together to expedite the delivery and application of emerging technology in the real world.

“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 and quantitative health sciences and chief research informatics officer at UMass Chan. “By combining Red Cell’s agility in AI innovation with UMass Chan’s clinical and data science strengths, we’re accelerating the feedback loop between technology developers and frontline clinicians. Our shared goal is to quickly identify which AI tools are safe, effective, and ready for real-world healthcare challenges—and which are not.”

“The partnership builds on a strength of UMass Chan. The team here has substance and grit. We have been working on digital health and AI since before it was cool. 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,” said David McManus, MD, MSc, the Richard M. Haidack Professor of Medicine, chair and professor of medicine at UMass Chan.

“UMass Chan has worked hard to create internal and external partnerships that position us on the leading edge of how to implement AI into healthcare. This partnership expands the pipeline of AI companies and innovators who will be able to work with our outstanding students, faculty, and resources. I look forward to what we’ll be able to accomplish next with Red Cell Partners,” said Nate Hafer, PhD, associate professor of molecular medicine at UMass Chan.

Why This Partnership Matters

Despite AI’s ability to improve diagnostics, discover new medications, enable precision medicine, automate routine tasks, and help providers make better decisions about their patients’ care, AI adoption has lagged in healthcare partly due to low trust in artificial intelligence and the lack of clinician involvement in the development of the technology.   

Further complicating matters is the decision by the federal government to rescind prior AI policies and directives that “act as barriers to American AI innovation,” which means individual states must now determine how or if they will regulate AI, particularly in healthcare.

“Innovation cannot take place in a silo. It takes collaboration and iteration. That’s why academic partnerships, like the one we’ve established with UMass Chan, are so critical,” Ferris said. “At Red Cell, we are committed to developing responsible, safe, and transformative AI for healthcare and we believe our agreement with the medical school will not only allow us to leverage each other’s expertise, but to deliver sorely needed emerging AI technology to healthcare that have undergone real-world vetting and validation by leading clinicians.

“By involving providers in the process, we will foster the trust in AI necessary to increase AI adoption in healthcare, which we know will enhance efficiency, reduce administrative burden and lower costs. Everyone benefits from this,” Ferris added.