J. Whittle2, T. Petelenz2,4, T. D’Ambrosio2,5, J. Langell1,2,3,4 1University Of Utah,Department Of Surgery,Salt Lake City, UT, USA 2University Of Utah,Center for Medical Innovation,Salt Lake City, UT, USA 3VA Salt Lake City Health Care System,Center of Innovation,Salt Lake City, UT, USA 4University Of Utah,Department Of Bioengineering,Salt Lake City, UT, USA 5University Of Utah,Lassonde Entrepreneurship Institute,Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Introduction: Many universities have embraced the concept of faculty-driven innovation, invigorating a new generation of physician entrepreneurs focused on translating discoveries to commercial products. New federal funding programs have been created that are designed to support faculty commercialization of academic research. Innovation Corps (I-Corps) a program developed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) provides educational support and seed funding to educate research faculty on business principles of technology commercialization.
Our university is a funded I-Corps training site focused on healthcare technology. Our curriculum teaches Lean Start-up and Business Model Canvas principles, customer discovery and elements focused on unique aspects of health technology commercialization. Annual faculty cohorts are selected to participate in a 20-week I-Corps program and assigned entrepreneurial partners to create interdisciplinary teams. Teams attend the I-Corps training program composed of didactic lectures and workshops (table 1) and assigned an industry mentor. Teams also receive $3000 seed grants and conduct market assessments. At the end of the program teams with viable commercial technologies concepts are provided ongoing support. Here we present our I-Corps experience, curriculum and the impact it had in educating faculty and supporting entrepreneurial activities over our first 4-years of implementation.
Methods: Team data was collected to assess participant characteristics, faculty assessment of program quality and program impact. Data was acquired through our I-Corps program database, participant objective self-reporting of commercialization metrics and subjective quality surveys.
Results: During the first 4-years, we trained 102 faculty-led entrepreneurial teams in the I-Corps program. This included 81 physicians (34 Surgeons), 22 medical students, 37 engineering faculty and 41 engineering graduate student. 21 of 102 teams responded to our commercialization progress surveys. Of these, 20 continue to pursue technology commercialization forming 14 companies and filing 22 patents. These companies have generated 30 employees, 5 federal SBIR grants, 7 licensing agreements and >$11.5M in funding. Eight team faculty leads reported publishing their efforts in peer-reviewed journals and 11 presented their work at national academic conferences.
Conclusions: Our NSF I-Corps program tailored to healthcare technologies has successfully promoted physician innovation and entrepreneurship. Interdisciplinary programs like I-Corps designed to educate and support faculty innovation and entrepreneurship are important tools to promote the translation of research into clinical solutions.
