Giving Compass' Take:

• HealthLeaders reports on a specialized venture fund called Vantedge Innovation Alliance, which vets ideas, supports innovation development and provides commercialization services.

• Could this be the new model to help health systems survive and thrive? How might other alliances develop in alignment with the country's changing health care needs?

• Here's how we can connect engineering and medicine to accelerate health care innovation.

Physicians and other clinicians have a lot of ideas to improve healthcare through digital innovations yet helping them commercialize those solutions is a challenge for many organizations, particularly when staff devoted to these endeavors already operate at capacity.

LSU Health New Orleans has found a solution to this dilemma by joining Vantedge Innovation Alliance. The Alliance is a network of health systems partnering with Vantage Ventures, a Chicago-based innovation firm and venture fund that helps these institutions commercialize innovations from within their systems. This approach offers an interesting alternative to the "do-it-yourself" model, exposing participants to additional expertise, support, and incubation opportunities among the membership. The Alliance is currently open to additional health systems.

Members invest to participate in the $50 million fund, which can accommodate 10 health systems. The amount of each participant's investment was not disclosed. LSU is the first to announce its participation, and five vacancies remain. Ideal candidates are regional health systems with four to 12 hospitals, at least $1.5 billion in net patient revenue, and an innovation staff of two to four members, says Kyle Hathaway, co-founder and managing partner of Vantedge Ventures.

While similar venture funds exist, and activity is "heating up," says Hathaway, "Our focus is unique. A few organizations have focused on helping health systems ingest external innovation. We saw a need to help them to commercialize their internal innovations and get them to market."

Read the full article about the alliance that helps systems commercialize innovations by Mandy Roth at HealthLeaders Media.