Above photo credit: Flickr user Kay Gaensler.

Christian Seale is the founder and managing director of Startupbootcamp in Miami, a business accelerator operating in Europe and Asia that is launching its first U.S. program with $2 million from Knight Foundation. 

Miami is America’s city of 2050; it represents the current, future and rich diversity of the United States.

At Startupbootcamp, we believe Miami is uniquely positioned to form, build and scale global companies focused on better serving diverse communities typically ignored by traditional technology hubs.

That’s why we are launching—with the support of Knight Foundation and our founding partners —Startupbootcamp Miami, the first digital health accelerator focused on diverse and underserved populations in the U.S.

We are committed to turning Miami into a global center for health care innovation. Each year, we will recruit hundreds of startups from across the globe that are working to improve our health and health care system and select the best 10 to participate in our three-month accelerator. Our promise is simple: Companies we choose to participate in our Miami program will achieve a year of progress in that time. Through our global network of relevant corporate partners, mentors and investors we will then position them to scale globally.

For the Miami community, we will add to the mentorship and investor base so crucial to a thriving innovation ecosystem. We hope our programs create a multiplier effect to benefit both the teams selected to participate and the broader community that gathers, learns and shares at our hackathons, community events and Demo Days.

The entrepreneurial energy across Miami is palatable and infectious. We are thankful to Knight and the expanding network of innovators in South Florida for building this rapidly growing entrepreneurial ecosystem.

If you are an ambitious and extraordinary founder building a game-changing company in health care we want Miami to be the city you choose. We have a strong foundation: eight hospitals, over 33,000 beds, three globally recognized research universities and a legacy of successful companies such as Simply Health, Navarro Health and MAKO Surgical among many others.

Our problems in health care are big. According to the Harvard Business Review $1 trillion in health care spending is wasteful. Medical debt is the largest cause of personal bankruptcy. Fifty million Americans do not take their prescription medication as prescribed. More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Our problems worsen across racial and socioeconomic lines.

Low-income populations, African-Americans and Hispanics have higher rates of obesity, diabetes and typically receive lower-quality care. Hispanics will soon comprise 30 percent of the U.S. population yet fewer than 4 percent of health care providers speak Spanish and many providers do not know how to approach the population’s cultural and economic diversity. We believe it is imperative to leverage the power of technology and innovation to better serve these populations, improve their health outcomes and build better communities. Miami’s diverse population is an ideal market to test, refine and accelerate solutions to be scaled across the U.S.

We are proud to join what we believe will soon become recognized globally as a top startup and health care hub, and we are hopeful that together with Knight Foundation, our founding partners and future portfolio companies, we can improve the health of all populations and make our health care system more equitable, efficient and accessible.

Applications for Startupbootcamp Digital Health Miami 2015 are now open. Apply here.  

Follow Startupbootcamp on Twitter @sbootcamp and @sbchealth. For more information please email [email protected].