Aidan Petrie is a co-founder and managing partner for the New England Medical Innovation Center, a technology hub for the medical industry started by Lifespan Corp., Ximedica and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Its Providence innovation center offers working and event space, but its programs – revolving around innovation, leadership and funding – help early-stage businesses navigate the path to marketability. For medical products, it’s a path that can have many twists and turns.
PBN: The New England Medical Innovation Center has been partnering with the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health – a relatively new collaboration between Lifespan and Brown University – on the Digital Health Accelerator. How has that collaboration been going?
PETRIE: Well, both organizations are quite new, and Megan Ranney has been our clinical adviser since day one. What is great is that the Brown-Lifespan Center for Digital Health complements our work by providing and focusing on the clinical validation for a technology, while our focus is really on its development, commercial viability and market adoption. A successful medical product on the market requires both.
Regarding our Digital Health Accelerator, we have four early-stage Rhode-Island-based startups enrolled in the program: A clinical psychologist developing a wearable device in the field of child psychiatry; a wearable technology out of the University of Rhode Island that is digitizing patient-reported outcomes; an [Internet of Things] technology for health care and a mental-health wellness technology. We still have one spot open in the accelerator for a Rhode Island-based digital health startup to join the accelerator. Interested parties can learn more here: https://bit.ly/DigHealthA2021.
PBN: What are some of the biggest challenges for startups in the digital health space?
PETRIE: I suppose the biggest challenge is that an entrepreneur needs to be able to align a series of equally important, unaligned needs together. A startup needs to demonstrate clinical relevance … that it does something that is medically relevant. They also must demonstrate a commercial value proposition, understand their regulatory path and – sometimes the hardest part – make sure that a product will be used.
PBN: Your upcoming COVID-19 Response Innovation Hackathon sessions include Immersion Days. Could you describe what these are and how they will impact the ideas and solutions that result?
PETRIE: Immersion creates the context for the Hackathon, as oftentimes the innovation teams are not embedded deeply in the ecosystems of care delivery. COVID-19 has really shone a light on both the strength of parts of our system, but also the weaknesses.
We have helped build out the vaccination program in Central Falls, a dense community that was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and virus with high transmission rates since December. We will use that example as a jumping-off point to ask how communities might be better prepared in the future, understanding the challenges at a visceral level. We are collaborating with multiple organizations and subject matter experts from Rhode Island, including Ximedica, Loft, DESIGNxRI and more.
PBN: Your Med Tech Leadership Program offers the opportunity to learn how to commercialize regulated medical technology. What are some examples of technology that students in those cohorts have in development?
PETRIE: The leadership program is targeted at four groups primarily: industry learners who might be moving into the field or advancing their careers within it; academics and students who want to understand the industry outside of academia; physicians who are thinking that they might start a company or create a technology in the future; and individuals who have already taken the entrepreneurship leap and want to understand the road ahead.
Our companies cover radical improvements to existing devices; inventions related to infant health; behavioral-health companies; wearable devices; and more. This program goes pretty deep in content, and we are incredibly fortunate to have both the support of the [R.I.] Department of Labor and Training’s Back to Work Program and R.I. Commerce [Corp.] alongside industry veterans who lead our courses and have lived through what they teach.
PBN: Any program expansions or additions planned for this year or next?
PETRIE: There is a lot that is bubbling right now. The most exciting and immediate thing is that we are the education partner to MagpieX, a new medtech accelerator fund. Targeted at New England’s medtech startup community, it’s filling a clear gap in the market. The goal is to boost a company’s momentum with cash, knowledge and network. We expect that some of those companies will locate in Rhode Island as they see the richness and accessibility of the local community.
We have multiple other activities in play with large strategics, smaller companies and multiple overseas groups. Frankly, it’s a bit overwhelming as we want to do everything but are somewhat time- and resource-constrained. Nonetheless, it shows there is interest in what we do and Rhode Island as a place to do it! Not a bad problem to have.
Susan Shalhoub is a PBN contributing writer.
