ESTABLISHMENT OF A PROGRAM IN BIO-INNOVATION FOR IMPROVING THE TRANSLATIONAL OUTCOMES OF BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH

Over the past several years two programs have been established aimed at improving the way in which we both educate and carry out translational biomedical research. The first was initiated at the Stanford Medical School 9 years ago (SPARK Stanford). This program works to improve the ability of researchers to translate their projects and benefit patients. The program is based on supplying both seed funding and mentoring in order to direct Stanford research towards the clinic and commercial sector. The results thus far have been fantastic with over a 50% success rate in terms of licensing of the products being developed.

Similarly, over the past 8 years I have developed and run an educational course for both post graduate students and staff to become trained in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Commercialisation using techniques in creativity, design and business thinking. The program was first launched at the Technion, Haifa in 2007 and since that time has been run with over 500 students. The results of the course has been great in the sense that students working in small teams have been able to come up with some truly remarkable ideas for solving current medical health problems in a very short period of time.

In this talk, I will describe these programs and the collaboration with Stanford and other partners internationally to further develop our research programs and courses.