By KELLI MURRAY,
Founder, MedSpeaks
As you may have heard, the University of Central Florida has chosen to partner with Nashvillebased HCA Healthcare to build the first academic teaching hospital in Lake Nona.
This exciting and long overdue venture will create a proposed 580+ residencies.
So why exactly are teaching hospitals so critical for emerging innovations? The stark reality is that startup companies fail at an astounding rate, in part, because of severe barriers to entry in obtaining access to hospital resources, where reallife testing and refinement of solutions can be made to address the complex needs of clinicians.
Academic centers often offer emerging technology companies access to critical resourcessuch as data, clinical and technical expertise and mentorship across the continuum of product development through the gotomarket continuum. For Central Florida healthcare entrepreneurs, this is one of the most groundbreaking opportunities to happen this decade.
We recently had the honor of speaking with one of the world's foremost experts on Surgical Robotics, Dipen Parekh, MD. Dr. Parekh gave personal insight into how to begin innovating inside of the healthcare industry.
"If you look at most of the surgical medical innovations, these did not happen to the layperson sitting in Starbucks thinking of ideas. This happened because this person was somehow affiliated with healthcare. If you really want to make an impact on healthcare technology, you have to be in healthcare. That doesn't mean you work in it fulltime, but that you have reasonable access to healthcare. Through your connections, find out if youcan be an observer, visit and view procedures in a clinic, their workflow, an operating room. In academic practice it's even more simple; go to the website see the spectrum ofwork in this field that a lot of us are doing. Send us an email. Come and visit us. Talk to us. We open our doors to the operating room and clinic. Come and see what we are doing."
If you'd like to lend a mentoring hand to our local startup community, please email your contact information and innovation areas of interests to info@medspeaks.com
