CIMIT blog

Podcast: A Catalyst for Global Health

We spoke with Dr. Trish Coffey of Path about how to develop innovative and useful devices for the developing world. Specifically, medical devices that can become sustainable parts of a communities culture. Trish explains the process behind community collaboration, choosing the right devices, and making a better female condom, or as they call it: 'the woman's condom.'

CIMITblog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Rapid Prototyping of Life Changing/Life Saving Inventions @MIT

Things you won't find coming out of MIT

ENGINEERING MEDICAL DEVICES AT MIT

With the goal of accelerating crucial clinical ideas into prototypes, teams of MIT graduate engineering students spend a semester collaborating with clinicians in CIMIT-affiliated hospitals to develop innovative medical devices. Clinicians (physicians, nurses, and scientists) present clinical problems and initial ideas. Students form teams to work with the clinicians to turn these ideas into reality. The goal is for the students to deliver a working prototype and a journal-quality article in one semester. The course has been a great opportunity for clinicians to test out new ideas and to stimulate new collaborations. 

The students have one semester, $3,500, and all the tape and bubble gum they can muster to get the devices ready for prime time.

Alex Slocum 'Boston 2009, Fashion Award Nominee' and maestro for the mission explains.

Alex Slocum, PhD, Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering and MacVicar Faculty Fellow, MIT

CIMITblog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Follow up to FDASM

A few weeks ago we shared our friend Zen Chu's testimony at the FDA's November 2009 conference on Social Media. Today we ran across these slides, which do a little more to frame what Social Media and the FDA really means... Kind of.

Introduction to the FDASM

View more presentations from University of Michigan Health Sciences Libraries.

The Conversation Prism

Check out the Conversation Prism. This display is great in helping to provide people with the knowledge and access to small tools that exist to them. Just apply this to healthcare, physicians, nurses, patients...

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

#FDASM - The FDA's Public Hearings on Social Media

19 NOVEMBER 2009, BOSTON - Zen Chu (Accelerated Medical Ventures and CIMIT's Innovation Grand Rounds) recently testified at the FDA's public hearings on Social Media and Internet (#FDASM). The FDA is grappling with a number of questions centered around regulation and accountability for Healthcare and the use of Social Media, with implications for direct-to-consumer advertising, patient safety, adverse event reporting, disease management, and new technology innovation.

The FDA thought it wise to bring together qualified experts from a wide range of areas to give testimony. Streaming video available for the next 20 days: http://www.fdasm.com/

I thought Zen had an interesting testimony, perspective and has shared it with us.

Zen Chu: My purpose was to lend an innovation and new ventures perspective to the FDA panel:

• FDA should lend clarity to regulations and exercise restraint to enable new technologies and services to engage patients
• FDA needs to distinguish between ads and messages delivered to benefit wellness, compliance, adherence
• FDA must hire more expertise in new media and technology to understand and provide more timely guidelines
• A New Media & Technology Advisory Board, comprise of both industry, academia and patient advocates should be created to advise FDA

Zen Chu Healthcare Innovation FDA Testimony DDMAC Public Hearings on Internet & Social Media #FDASM

View more documents from MedicalVentures.

Socialnomics & Healthcare

18 NOVEMBER 2009, BOSTON - Nice old piece on Socialnomics, which has been seen a lot by now, but with the FDA Public Hearings on Social Media (#FDASM) I think it is appropriate to bring it back and refresh us. The Social Media Revolution...

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology

Farewell, Don Baim

10 NOVEMBER 2009 - BOSTON  It is with a heavy heart that CIMIT says goodbye to our friend and colleague Dr. Don Baim. Don passed away last Friday, 6 November 2009, following complications of surgery to treat adrenal cancer.

We will remember Don as a former CIMIT Site Miner (one of many roles here) and as someone who continually pushed medicine forward -- be it from Harvard Medical to Boston Scientific. He was a Forum speaker, a panelist multiple times and from time to time we found him in the audience of Forums focused on Venture Capitalism in Medicine. 

This morning John Parrish called a moment of silence for Don here at CIMIT and we remembered how much he gave to medicine and the better outcomes he helped produce.

Don was a friend to all of us here and his loss is a tremendous one.

CIMIT

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology

Innovation Congress 2009 Keynotes!

Last week headed off to the CIMIT Innovation Congress 2009 in Boston. There we found ourselves at the intersection of academic medicine, government and industry with clinicians and researchers doing groundbreaking work. The conference was a tremendous success with the Focus Session breakouts, the Exploratorium, and the Keynotes. Embedded below you'll find a few great keynotes and links to all the rest.

For full versions of the CIC09 Keynotes, including additional speakers please click here

Clay Christensen Harvard Business School - Talks about Disruptive Innovation and healthcare reform

Maj. General James K. Gilman Commander of Medical Research and Materials Command at Fort Detrick - Tells us how we take care of today's Wounded Warriors

Susan Axelrod President and Founder, CURE - Tells the story of her daughters struggle with Epilepsy

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Social Networking Scientists and Researchers

Social Networking and Knowledge Sharing for Scientists and Researchers  

Moderator: Rajiv Gupta, MD, PHD, Director, VCT Lab and Assistant Radiologist, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital

Sharing Knowledge: Institutional and Technological Facilitators and Inhibitors  
David Lazer, PhD, Associate Professor of Political Science and Computer Science, Northeastern University & Director, Program on Networked Governance, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University
 
 
What are the factors that affect how people search for information, and in turn, whether others provide information?  This presentation will examine three case studies of information sharing:  regarding the use of DNA in the criminal justice system, regarding the use of the Internet by members of Congress, and among State Health Officials, focusing on the questions of what facilitates and inhibits knowledge sharing. 

 
 

ResearchGATE: A First step towards Science 2.0 
Ijad Madisch, MD, PhD, ResearchGATE CEO and Co-Founder and Researcher in the Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University

ResearchGATE is a no-charge, online research platform focused on the sciences, but open to all disciplines. Improving collaboration among scientists is the top goal and ResearchGATE offers many tools to encourage this. First, with its social networking platform, researchers create profiles, form groups, upload papers and network with each other.  Within the groups, members can use a smart file and data sharing tool to co-edit documents. For institutions or associations, the platform offer Subcommunities. These are essentially smaller, (password-)protected versions of the ResearchGATE platform that are open only to members of the respective institution. ResearchGATE also assists individual researchers in managing their literature resources. The platform provides extensive search capacities - including a semantic search engine into which entire abstracts can be pasted – that help users locate papers both within the internal resources and in all major external databases, including PubMed and CiteSeer. ResearchGATE’s new Job Board helps keep members working in the physical world; employment-seekers can find extensive academic postings here. The team's commitment to serious research is reflected by its scientific advisory network of more than 140 leading scientists. Currently, over 150,000 registered scientists from more than 200 countries form the network.

CIMIT blog is a publication of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)

Changing Relationships between Academia and Industry in a Transforming Economic Climate

Changing Relationships between Academia and Industry in a Transforming Economic Climate

Moderator: Mark Chalek, Chief Business Ventures, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Panelists/Speakers: 

Peter Barrett, Partner, Atlas Venture

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PHD, Professor in Neurology, Director, Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation and Harvard-Thorndike Clinical Research Center, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Stan Lapidus, Chairman, Helicos Biosciences Corp.

Jeffrey M. Arnold, Founder and President, Arnold Strategies, LLC

There is no doubt that the current economic downturn has wreaked havoc in medical device investment. Smaller device companies are cash strapped, and have little hope to enter the public market. Venture investors are reluctant to invest as a result; new regulatory and medical reimbursement issues continue to add complexity into the mix. The pace of discovery of innovative medical solutions made in academia remains unchanged, however.  Is this a matter of waiting out the storm, or is there a need for a new model of academic/industrial relations?

This CIMIT Forum will showcase the perspectives of diverse stakeholders in the device space: the VC, the small company CEO, the life sciences entrepreneur, and the academician. Some of the issues to be explored will include: nature of collaborations between academia and industry; the maturity level of academic innovations needed to attract industry attention; and new/creative ways of structuring alliances/deals.

CIMIT Blog is a publication of the Center for Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT)