Imagine a massive space where members of the Seattle-area health care community, from startups to health insurance companies to heavy-hitting research universities, could collaborate to solve pressing health care problems.
That's the vision for the Cambia Grove, a 9,000-square-foot facility that is currently under construction and set to open in 2015 at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Olive Way.
The new facility won't be far from where Amazon is building its new campus and where several new biotech buildings are going up.
Created by Portland-based Cambia Health Solutions, the Cambia Grove is meant to bring together all the various players in the health care and biotech communities in the Pacific Northwest to foster innovation and new ideas, with the hope of turning Seattle into a hub for "the next health care economy." Cambia will launch the Grove with the University of Washington School of Medicine, Regence BlueShield and Qliance as its anchor companies.
The three goals of the new space are to convene, identify and catalyze, all with the goal of problem-solving. The Grove will host events and also be a place for anyone in the industry to hold meetings.
"It's important to think about what things are holding the community back now," said Rob Coppedge, senior vice president of Cambia at the 2014 Governor's Life Sciences Summit. "So many of us are so siloed inside our own companies and our own sectors within the industry. We don't think this market needs another innovator or incubator. We need to build a place that belongs to the community."
For companies with ideas, the incentive to participate is that whoever they solve a problem with will be their official partner. For example, a startup who gets to solve a problem UW Medicine has been working on will get to claim UW as its first customer.
"That's a phenomenal thing for an entrepreneur to be able to say," said Nicole Bell, executive director of the Cambia Grove. "It's a reason for tech and business to think about health care jobs. They may not be thinking about that today."