UCSF Health Converge

Building AI where healthcare happens

Overview

Many healthcare AI solutions are developed outside the clinical environments they are meant to serve. Companies can spend critical time and resources building products that are difficult to integrate, hard to adopt, or misaligned with clinical or operational workflows. Health systems are then left evaluating tools that may be promising but are not yet ready for enterprise deployment.

Even when a tool appears viable, the full health system evaluation process – including clinical, technical, financial, and compliance reviews and IT integration and staff workflow planning – can take a year or more. Once a tool enters the clinical environment, it is often limited to a handful of settings and rarely scaled across the enterprise. These barriers are not new, and in the AI age, when the stakes for safety, trust and impact are even higher, healthcare organizations are likely to move even more cautiously.

Supported by Kleiner Perkins and Doerr Capital, UCSF Health Converge is designed to address that fit-for-purpose challenge by helping companies build with implementation in mind from the start. Each project is anchored in a real care delivery need and sponsored by a UCSF Health operational leader. Selected companies co-develop solutions with interdisciplinary teams across clinical care, operations, analytics, and IT, with dedicated support for technology integration, project management, governance, and evaluation.

How Converge works

Centering on an "inside-out" approach, UCSF Health Converge selects a small number of companies annually to bring into the workflows, technology systems, and operational realities that determine whether an AI solution can address enterprise-level health system challenges and improve the experience of patients and care teams at scale.

Participating companies work directly with UCSF Health clinical, operational, IT, and AI experts, creating a pathway to shape, test, and refine solutions with the people and systems that would ultimately use them. This approach is designed to move healthcare AI beyond external product development and isolated pilots and toward solutions that are clinically meaningful, technically feasible, operationally useful, and capable of scaling responsibly.

What participants gain

UCSF Health Converge gives participating companies direct access to the clinical, operational, and technical expertise needed to develop AI solutions for real health system use. Selected companies work inside one of the nation's leading academic health systems, with the executive sponsorship, operational access, technical guidance, and evaluation support needed to move from promising product to meaningful adoption.

The program is executive-led, operator-grounded, and venture-informed. With sponsorship and engagement from UCSF Health senior leaders, including the CEO and CIO, participating companies gain access to the UCSF Health teams who understand the operational problems, workflows, technology systems, and implementation requirements that determine whether a solution can succeed at scale. Venture collaborators bring company-building expertise, founder networks, and deep industry perspective to help shape solutions with broader market potential.

Each participating company receives:

Participants receive structured IT and project management support, including technical guidance, integration planning, and coordination with health system governance processes. With oversight and direct involvement from the CIO and Chief AI Officer, projects are developed as priority business initiatives of the health system, aligned with data needs, integration requirements, technical standards, and governance expectations.

Participants have the opportunity to develop solutions within a world-class academic health system known for complex care, clinical excellence, scientific rigor, and innovation. Working inside UCSF Health means building against the standards that matter in real care delivery: safety, trustworthiness, health equity, patient-centered care, and measurable impact. This creates a powerful foundation for credibility, validation, and broader market relevance.

Companies have access to UCSF Health expertise in evaluating the impact of AI tools in real health system environments, including support for defining success metrics, collecting and assessing outcomes data, and understanding whether a solution is delivering meaningful clinical, operational, and experiential value. This evaluation helps determine whether a solution is ready for responsible adoption within UCSF Health and builds the evidence and credibility founders need to bring it to the broader health care market.

At the end of the program…

The program is designed so that upon completion, participating companies have a product with meaningful potential for health system impact – a product that is:

Clinically excellent and designed and validated by the physicians, nurses, and care teams who would use it in one of the nation's leading academic health systems;
Technically viable and robust enough to integrate with enterprise software, data environments, and operational systems;
Incorporated into real health system clinical and/or operational workflows; and
Evaluated for safety and trustworthiness by an established AI oversight process, with defined metrics and a monitoring framework to assess the impact within the health system.

Program phases

Define
Align on the problem, use case, and success metrics within a real clinical or operational context: Companies work with UCSF Health leaders and teams to observe and understand current workflows, document baseline operating metrics, identify gaps and pain points in present processes, and define business and functional requirements.
Develop
Build and refine the solution within UCSF Health environments, with dedicated clinical, operational, IT, and AI support for ongoing iteration: This phase includes AI/LLM refinement, embedded safety and workflow analysis, development of performance and monitoring analytics, and the necessary technical integration with UCSF Health IT infrastructure.
Validate
Test performance in real-world settings, with a focus on measurable clinical and operational impact: Companies work with UCSF Health front-line staff and leadership to validate their technology against expected operational performance and stated business objectives. This phase also includes review of performance analytics, AI safety checks, assessment of regulatory and compliance requirements, and integrated IT testing to ensure high-reliability performance with existing systems.
Deploy
Pilot in targeted settings and assess readiness for broader use across the system: This phase includes departmental use with relevant stakeholders, appropriate management oversight to support business performance, integration with production systems to enable real-time AI capabilities within the operational environment, and performance analytics to validate and monitor the AI-driven improvements.

Initial areas of focus

UCSF Health Converge is initially focusing on two areas where AI has significant potential to improve care delivery, patient experience and health system performance.

Supporting patients before, after, and between care visits.
Includes using AI tools to identify patient needs earlier, improve communication, and make it easier for patients to navigate their care.
Improving care delivery inside hospitals and clinics.
Includes using AI tools to help clinical and operational teams reduce administrative burden and cut through information overload to make better decisions – with applications in clinical decision support, documentation, billing, care planning, and other operational processes that shape the care experience.

Across both areas, the program focuses on solutions that align with UCSF Health's values and standards for clinical excellence, health equity, safety, trustworthiness, and patient-centered care. Success will be measured by impact within the health system – whether solutions can improve care for patients, fit into existing workflows, be adopted by care teams and scale responsibly across specialties and care settings.

Information for applicants

Who should apply?

UCSF Health Converge is designed for companies building AI-enabled solutions that support health system operations and care delivery. Companies at a range of stages are eligible, but the strongest applicants will have a viable product or platform with the potential to scale, and a clear sense of the clinical and/or operational challenges their solution seeks to address. Participants should be prepared to deeply embed with our teams and willing to adapt their product to the workflows, technology requirements, electronic medical record infrastructure, and implementation realities of a complex academic health system.

Email us with questions

How to apply

UCSF Health Converge selects a small number of companies each year.

Applications for the inaugural cohort open July 15 and will remain open through September 14, 2026, at 11:59pm PT. We expect to announce selections in the late fall.

Apply now

Program collaborators

UCSF Health Converge is led by UCSF Health in collaboration with Kleiner Perkins and Doerr Capital, who provide investment support and hands-on mentorship to selected companies. Their experience building and scaling healthcare technology companies – along with their founder networks and market perspective – complements UCSF Health's expertise in clinical care, health system operations, and large-scale delivery.

Kleiner Perkins
Doerr Capital

Senior leadership and governance

Elizabeth Engel serves as the Executive Director of UCSF Health Converge, leading the accelerator. The program sits within UCSF Health’s IT organization under Mark Rauschuber, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for UCSF Health. Oversight of the strategy and day-to-day operations of UCSF Health Converge is led by the CIO and interim Chief Health AI Officer, Smitha Ganeshan, with leadership representation across clinical and operational domains.

Elizabeth Engel
VP, UCSF Health | Executive Director, UCSF Health Converge

Executive committee

UCSF Health Converge is also governed by an Executive Committee – a collaboration among senior leaders of UCSF Health, Kleiner Perkins, and Doerr Capital: