Since opening in the fall of 2013, the iHub team has worked to “provide resources and support to accelerate the development of devices, diagnostics and digital health applications from ideation to commercialization,” said Solomon.

A survey administered just after iHub’s launch in 2013 revealed that 72 percent of BWH clinicians had an idea on how to improve health care.

“The number one thing that they needed in order to move those ideas forward was clarity on next steps,” said Solomon. “That was very eye opening to us.”

The iHub works to gather designers, entrepreneurs, business people, project managers and other professionals to take a clinician’s idea or invention to the next level. In one example Solomon cited, Sophia Koo, MD, a physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases was able to develop a breathalyzer to avoid performing high-risk lung biopsies on immune compromised patients to detect aspergillosis. Koo had the vision, but needed help thinking about how to move the idea from a research project to a product that might be commercializable.

 

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