Innovation Ventures Successfully Accelerates Inventions to The Bedside
2018 marked the start of a new era for Cincinnati Children’s commercialization team, Innovation Ventures.
Under the leadership of vice president Andrew Wooten, MST, MTM, the Innovation Ventures team achieved outstanding results while staying focused on its triple bottom line: impact to patients, bringing value to Cincinnati Children’s, and positively impacting our region.
The Innovation Ventures team plays a key role in facilitating the translation of discoveries into improved outcomes for children. The team is responsible for advancing discoveries from the bench to the bedside by protecting innovations through patent filings; assisting in further developing technologies through commercially-driven funding and research partnerships; and delivering products to the market through licensing and the creation of start-up companies.
Innovation Ventures reported 119 new invention disclosures this year and $8.9 million in commercialization revenue.
Innovation Ventures’ new commercial model focuses on co-innovation and co-development of new collaborations with a wide range of stakeholders (industry, venture capitalists, foundations, government, etc.) to drive projects to a higher value.
One example is Clarigent Health, a disruptive new spinoff based on Cincinnati Children’s research. This platform company has the ability to differentiate suicidal ideation in an emergency room setting and it plans to expand into other clinical and non-clinical indications.
To advance commercially viable research, the Innovation Ventures team established an Innovation Fund that awarded $1 million to projects last year. The organization also helped secure a $2 million investment to further develop a promising method developed here to make cold storage possible for donated platelets.
The Innovation Ventures team continues to nurture, accelerate and commercialize promising innovations from across the institution.
“Our acceleration function is just one aspect of the work that we’re doing to nurture a culture of innovation at Cincinnati Children’s and translate early stage health research into technologies that can impact patients, our institution, and our region,” Wooten says.
