Navigating the “dangerous path” of healthcare innovation | So Good News

“Healthcare innovation is not easy – no matter where you are in the world,” Jenny Kung, senior director of the Mayo Clinic Innovation Exchange, told HIMSS22 APAC delegates.

In this keynote session last week Tuesday, Kung highlighted the many challenges that can hinder innovators, such as navigating IP strategy, clinical validation processes, the regulatory landscape, commercialization strategy and investment.

“The only truth we really know is that healthcare innovation faces a dangerous path, and patient care will only advance if we can help innovators at every step of their innovation continuum,” Kung said.

Innovative exchange

In 2020, Mayo Clinic launched its Innovation Exchange virtual platform to support innovators around the world on this journey.

Through the platform, Mayo offers a network of business and educational resources to support innovation. Leveraging Mayo’s personal expertise, innovators connect with government agencies, industry partners, professional advisors, academic peers and investment committees.

“We are laser-focused on helping innovators outside of Mayo achieve their goals because when we can work together, we can accelerate innovation much faster and bring these results to patients,” explained Kung. “Sometimes it looks like a partnership with Mayo, and sometimes it’s helping innovators better define and understand their problems.”

Successful collaborations

Over the past two years, Innovation Exchange has worked with more than 65 founders and companies around the world, including in India and Singapore.

“There is no perfect founder or startup. The needs for healthcare innovation are vast, and as a result, we keep our doors wide open,” said Kung.

One of the successful collaborations is with a Singapore startup Neuroglee Therapeutics aims to improve outcomes for patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

After going public in 2021, Neuroglee was able to offer digital treatments combining 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.

union of forces

The goals of the Innovation Exchange align with the value of collaboration underlying Mayo’s ethos. Royston Leck, Executive Director, APAC, Mayo Clinic, Singapore, told the conference how founding father Dr. William Mayo in 1910 emphasized the “joining of forces” for patient care.

“The body of medical knowledge is so vast and vast that it is futile for any one organization or individual to attempt to acquire or adopt a good and complete working knowledge of it,” Leck said.

For this reason, Mayo is committed to building centers of excellence through clinical practice, education and research, digital healthcare and patient care solutions, innovation and the Mayo Clinic model of care.

One example is collaboration with partners in Asia and Latin America to implement digital health and patient care solutions, particularly around telemedicine 2.0 and digital pathology. Also, through it The Mayo Clinic Platform Services Division provides scalable digital solutions to help validate clinical AI tools using the Mayo database.