August 21, 2020 | Venerated universities around the world achieve their success by design, luck, hard work, investment, and circumstance. Those universities maintain their stellar reputations only by continuing to produce remarkable research, impactful individuals, and substantive programs that produce outstanding results. The Stanford Biodesign program is one such example.
Recently renamed The Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, the relatively young program has produced outstanding results. Nearing its 20th anniversary, the program is responsible for launching over 50 health technology companies including the neurotech darling Cala Health and the inimitable Oculeve. Nearly three million patients have benefited from technologies spawned within the program.
It is no wonder that others seek to replicate the program, but it is rare that an ecosystem with ample complementary resources even exists. Enter Cleveland. Cleveland’s innovation ecosystem is home to the Cleveland Clinic with more than 300 clinical staff members in neuro, 100 active clinical trials and high surgical volume in DBS and SCS, it is a stone’s throw from Case Western Reserve University. Case boasts over $250 million in annual biomedical research funding, more than 20 neurotech faculty members, and 150+ publications last year. And the Lewis Stokes VA Center is just across the street.
Andrew Cornwell, the VA’s director of industrial and strategic collaboration, and Jon Sakai, Cleveland Clinic’s director of medical device commercialization, recently announced that the newly minted Cleveland NeuroDesign Innovation Fellowship will accept its first cohort this fall. The year-long fellowship will prepare its participants to identify, analyze, and execute on unmet clinical needs within an unparalleled environment. According to Cornwell, the program will create an ecosystem of entrepreneurs with the skills to talk to clinicians, understand their needs, and then design solutions to address those needs.
