Striding toward a healthier state: but is the digital movement just what the doctor ordered?

• Author: Sukin, Gigi

STARTUPS ARE BOLDLY transforming industries and showing no signs of slowing down. That includes health care, a sector ripe for innovation, thanks to revolutions affecting how care is delivered, by whom and where financial burdens fall. The current cost of health care accounts for roughly 18 percent of the national GDP and a hefty share of house-hold budgets for many Americans.

The good news is that nimble tech-savvy businesses are crafting engaging, low cost, convenient digital health and health-care IT tools with the potential to dramatically redesign the health care system as we know it.

According to Mercom Capital,in 2014 alone, a $4.8 billion influx in venture capital spewed into the health care ring. The speed and strength of this boom is in part attributed to reforms and regulations that rolled out with the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which, among other priorities, incentivized electronic health record implementation. As such, health care is getting up to speed with sexy new technologies that modernize the practice and emphasize the consumer. And with a reputation as one of the nation's healthiest cities. Denver is looking to get in on the action.

From coworking space creators Battery 621 and Industry, a new collaborative office concept is set to come online at 38th Avenue and Blake Street in the River North neighborhood of downtown Denver in early 2016. Stride, the health-tech-centric company space provider, will serve as the venue for cross-pollination and innovation among the health, wellness and technology communities. from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Englewood-based Prime Health Collaborative, a collection of providers. academics. administrators and entrepreneurs. is "the software to the hardware of Stride," says Jake Rishavy, co-founder of Prime, an offshoot of the Denver South Economic Development Partnership. Stride's health-tech ecosystem is expected to become a magnet for Prime, creating jobs, attracting investors, providing community amenities and inspiring collaborative efforts around the state.

"While there is a blossoming industry here, no one was undertaking the effort to provide leadership or identify and wrangle the companies into a community," Rishavy says. "We started with monthly meetups, then hosted a couple of digital health summits. We brought in investors, founders, executives, a tech presence and health-care constituents to simulate this emerging...