“Healthcare innovation isn’t easy – no matter where you are in the world,” Jennie Kung, Senior Director of the Mayo Clinic Innovation Exchange told delegates at HIMSS22 APAC.
In his closing remarks last Tuesday, Kung outlined many challenges that could deflect innovators, such as IP strategic direction, clinical validation process, regulatory landscape, commercialization and investment strategy.
“The only truth we really know is that healthcare innovation faces a perilous path, and patient care can only advance if we can help innovators at home,” says Kung. every step of their continuous innovation process.
Exchange innovation
In 2020, Mayo Clinic launched its Innovation virtual platform to support innovators worldwide on this path.
Through this platform, Mayo provides business networking and educational resources to support innovation. As well as benefiting from Mayo’s expertise, innovators are connected to government agencies, industry partners, expert advisors, academic collaborators and investment committees.
“We are focused on helping innovators outside of Mayo achieve their goals because we believe that if we can work together, we can drive innovation faster,” explains Kung. much and deliver these results to patients”. “Sometimes it’s like a partnership with Mayo, and sometimes it helps innovators to identify and deepen their problems.”
Successful cooperation
Over the past two years, the Innovation Exchange has worked with over 65 founders and companies worldwide, including in India and Singapore.
“No founder or startup is perfect,” says Kung. “The need for healthcare innovation is huge, and so we’re open-minded.”
A successful partnership is with a Singaporean startup Neuroglee therapy, focused on improving outcomes for patients with neurodegenerative disease.
After joining the exchange in 2021, Neuroglee was able to deliver a digital treatment that combines its software and AI solutions with Mayo’s clinical expertise. Soon after the partnership, the startup raised $10 million in Series A funding and has now moved its headquarters to the US.
Alliance of Forces
The goal of the Innovation Exchange aligns with the value of collaboration at the heart of Mayo’s ethos. Royston Lek, chief executive officer of APAC, Mayo Clinic, Singapore told the conference how in 1910 the founding father, Dr William Mayo, emphasized the “alignment of forces” to deliver patient care services.
“The sum total of medical knowledge is so large and broad that it is futile for an organization or individual to attempt to acquire or assume a good and complete working knowledge of it,” Lek said.
For this reason, Mayo seeks to create centers of excellence through clinical practice, education and research, digital health and patient care solutions, innovation and the Mayo model of care. Clinic.
One example is the partnership with partners in Asia and Latin America to showcase digital health and patient care solutions – particularly in telemedicine 2.0 and digital pathology. . Also, through it Mayo’s Clinic Platform Services division provides scalable digital solutions to help validate clinical AI tools using Mayo’s database.
