AT&T Foundry opens its doors at TMC Innovation Institute

A ribbon-cutting, a speech by Mayor Sylvester Turner and playing with cool digital health devices were just some of the fun that took place when the AT&T Foundry for Connected Health Care held its grand opening June 7 on the campus of the TMC Innovation Institute.

While making his welcoming remarks, Turner said that while Houston is still considered an oil and gas town, when it comes to health care, the Texas Medical Center speaks for itself. He went on to explain that Houston is still a young city with plenty of opportunity to grow and innovate, which was strengthened with the AT&T Foundry.

“The AT&T Foundry aims to bring the next generation of health care to the Texas Medical Center and the citizens of Houston,” the mayor said. “It will help advance the industry by making the Texas Medical Center more attractive to startups and investors, providing a reason for these companies to stay in Houston. There is no reason Houston cannot become the No. 1 technology hub for biotech and life sciences.”

The AT&T Foundry is the communication giant’s sixth, and its first with a focus on one vertical—connected health. The first AT&T Foundry opened in 2011 as an approach to innovation.

The Houston AT&T Foundry features three main test environments for startups, physicians or others with ideas on connected health care innovation to develop new solutions:

• Home (after care): Test the elements related to home monitoring after a patient goes home from the hospital.
• Clinical: Recreating the connected hospital environment.
• Nurse Station: Bridge patient care in the hospital and the home, allowing caregivers more visibility and remote access to meaningful patient data in real-time.

“The idea of us being collocated with dozens of hospitals and clinics, surrounded by startups, designers and other enterprises sharing the same vision as us, will allow us to work on the real problems and take the solutions we are building and test them in a real-world environment,” said Igal Elbaz, vice president of ecosystem and innovation at AT&T Services Inc.

AT&T focused on health care because it saw how the industry is a big part of society, and the company wants to be a leader in the domain and ahead of the curve, he added.

Chris Penrose, senior vice president of AT&T’s Internet of Things organization, echoed those comments and added that the company was making an investment in Houston because it is “passionate about leading the future,” and that health care has the “greatest opportunity for massive change by bringing in connectivity and the platforms and solutions to allow all of the parts of the ecosystem to better communicate in real time, and to advance the opportunity to deliver better health care here, and around the world.”

Following the opening remarks, there was a fireside chat between Ralph de la Vega, vice chairman of AT&T Inc. and CEO of business solutions and international, and Robert C. Robbins, M.D., president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center, moderated by Craig Lee, director of the AT&T Internet of Things Foundry in Plano, as well as the AT&T Foundry for Connected Health Care in Houston.

They discussed how the AT&T Foundry will benefit health care and Houston, innovation, and examples of digital health solutions.

“This partnership allows us to get in this game in a major way and converge our assets together. We appreciate you taking a chance on Houston and making an investment here,” Robbins said.

Vega explained that to have a focus on innovation, there also needs to be a collaborative environment.

He also showed off the GALE Smart Portable Health Center, a first aid kit created by AT&T and 19Labs that combines technology with the connectivity to help send critical information in an emergency.

“You have to collaborate to innovate, and that is what we saw here: an environment ideal for innovation,” he added. “Health is about to be reinvented to the benefit of all of us. What is happening now is a near transformation and revolution, in essence, and there is no stopping the innovation. The only question is, ‘Do you want to be a part of it or disrupted by it?’ We at AT&T are please to work with the Texas Medical Center to be part of that good disruption that is going to create lower costs and better health care for all of us.”