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The University of Maryland Medical Center is one of the nation’s top hospitals, according to the annual Leapfrog Group survey. This is the seventh year UMMC has received this distinction.

The Leapfrog Group survey analyzes patient safety and quality performance measures from almost 1,200 hospitals. UMMC is one of only two hospitals in the U.S. (and the only one on the East Coast) to make the list every year since it began in 2006.

Baltimore’s newest incubator is officially open for business — and class.

Betamore, located at 1111 Light St. in Federal Hill, aims to help grow technology companies by day and teach the next generation of entrepreneurs by night. The incubator will host technology companies developing products for Internet and mobile devices and offer co-working space for freelancers and contractors in other technology sectors. After work hours, the entrepreneurs from tenant companies and other experts in the area will teach classes on practical technology and entrepreneurship skills, like Web development and pitching to investors.

While accelerators may be in a bubble, they’re also beginning to have a measurable, positive impact on the ecosystem. The real opportunity, though, is not in creating another Y Combinator, but in building vertical-specific accelerators that bring together industry partnerships to create learning and business opportunities for their startups. In healthtech, there’s Rock Health, Blueprint, Healthbox, New York Digital Health Accelerator and Startup Health to name a few.

The roster is growing, and today we have another addition to the list from veteran accelerator DreamIt Ventures. Today, DreamIt is partnering with Independence Blue Cross (IBC) and The University of Pennsylvania Health System (Penn Medicine) to create a digital health accelerator, designed to provide with entrepreneurs with the resources they need to take advantage of opportunities in the changing landscape of the health industry.

KQED and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation each invested $1.25 million in Matter Ventures, a media startup accelerator they’ve created with help from Public Radio Exchange.

Corey Ford, who ran the accelerator Runway, is CEO of Matter Ventures.

The accelerator — publicized last year as Public Media Accelerator — will pick startups for its four month program and pay them a $50,000 investment as they work in shared space in the South Park area of San Francisco.

A new $50 million investment fund will provide seed capital to launch new businesses that use technologies from government and university research labs in the Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia.

The Chesapeake Regional Innovation Fund will provide seed capital for startups and emerging technology companies focused on innovations in energy, life sciences and security. The first investments are anticipated for later in 2013.

Early stage startups already see New York as a hub for media, advertising and fashion. But the city is starting to build up its name in health tech as well.

At the start of this year, both Startup Health and Blueprint Health – two incubator-type programs that provide funding, mentorship and connections – announced their first classes of startups.  Then, in October, the New York Digital Health Accelerator, backed by the New York eHealth Collaborative nonprofit and the private New York City Fund, introduced its own batch of health tech startups.

As of Friday, the Division of Economic and Community Outreach changed its name to the Division of Innovation and Applied Research.

The department “serves as a point of entry for businesses, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and community members interested in collaborating with the University,” according to Towson’s website.

The name change is a small part of the work that Dyan Brasington, the vice president for Division of Innovation and Applied Research, is doing under President Maravene Loeschke.

The Johns Hopkins University performed $2.1 billion in medical, science, and engineering research in fiscal 2011, making it the leading U.S. academic institution in total research and development spending for the 33rd year in a row, according to a new National Science Foundation ranking.

The university also once again ranked first on the NSF’s separate list for federally funded research and development, spending $1.88 billion in FY2011 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense. In FY2002, Johns Hopkins became the first university to reach the $1 billion mark on either list, recording $1.14 billion in total research and $1.023 billion in federally sponsored research that year.

QIAGEN N.V. has announced the first product launches in its initiative to advance routine workflows in next-generation sequencing (NGS) applications. At the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) in San Francisco, QIAGEN will present four new products that improve critical sample preparation processes in the pre-analytical phase of next-generation sequencing. At ASHG, QIAGEN also will provide an outlook on additional pre-analytical products under development for advanced NGS workflow solutions, which are planned for launch in early 2013.

The QIAGEN pre-analytical products are “universal,” compatible with any NGS platform in the market and functional in a wide range of NGS applications. They represent the first launches in the QIAGEN initiative unveiled earlier this year, which aims to integrate sample preparation products and novel assay technologies into complete workflows for next-generation sequencing.