Life Sciences cluster report released
The Hamilton Chamber of Commerce (@HamiltonChamber) released a report entitled “Building a Life Sciences Cluster: A Case for Hamilton”, you can read the report in full here: dropbox.com/s/08yj8tfsc1oub3l/LifeScienceClusterReport2014Final.pdf. I’m on the InnTech committee at the chamber and we were asked to disseminate the report to our networks.
Life sciences definitely overlaps with the software industry in Hamilton. For example health tech startups like MedTel, ISIS Insights, VitaSound, Rincon Technologies, and Clinical DataFax Systems. And of course the annual AppsForHealth (@AppsForHealth) conference and MEDIC at Mohawk College. Though I suppose I’m biased now that I’m at Mohawk College, AppsForHealth pulls speakers and attendance from all over Ontario and beyond, and attending the conference is highly recommended if you have any interest in health tech.
We have an aging (and wealthy) boomer population and an increasing amount of devices capable of taking measurements and reporting data (“Internet of things”). Combining these and other factors, there’s obviously a huge potential for disruption and industry growth in health tech.
The problem for health tech startups seems to be political, institutional and regulatory type barriers. Even if you have some sort of health tech innovation, it’s difficult to get “users” and to get paid.
A lot of the health informatics space seems to be dominated by existing, long-term players. And a lot of the more sophisticated and advanced health tech seems to take years of research and/or large amounts of funding to develop and test the product(s), which makes it difficult for startups without funding to tackle these problems.
For Hamilton startups looking to pursue health tech I’ve thought there’s potential in the lower hanging fruit of health tech – so things like educational / informational apps, or maybe self-diagnosis or self-treatment type apps. New innovations that don’t compete against existing players, don’t require huge amounts of funding, don’t require navigating political barriers to be successful, and that could be sold directly to the patients themselves. So startup products that look more like Fitbit than trying to 3D print organs. Easier said than done I’m sure.
I don’t want to comment too much on the report itself, as I know little about creating a life sciences cluster. But I’m glad the report correctly identified “Infrastructure & Funding” and “Driving Force” as Fair/Poor in the “report card”. I agree that’s where the challenges are going to be. These two points in particular struck out at me:
We need programs designed to instigate a culture of commercialization within the existing research community.
Initiative in Hamilton’s life sciences sector is still to diffuse, and the progress made is too insignificant to keep pace with other regional clusters.
Creating a physical incubation space and an arms-length organization focused on commercialization and innovation in life sciences are two of the solutions proposed. Innovation Factory is cited as having the potential to play the role of this arms length organization, if it enhanced its life sciences commercialization capacity and expertise.
Growing the culture of commercialization seems like the most important challenge to tackle from my perspective.
Researchers build their interests and careers around certain lines of study that may not always be compatible or easily compatible with commercialization, and so they can’t necessarily just quickly switch gears, even if government funding models change to favour commercialization over pure research. Researchers that developed their talents in an era where pure research was favoured acted rationally and became skilled at producing pure research. I don’t know how big the difference between pure research and commercializable research is in life sciences, but if it’s anything like software it’s a very big difference.
So my thought would be to focus on the next generation of researchers: graduate students. Encouraging a commercialization focused view of research while the researcher’s interests, line of study and skill set are all still developing is the right time. Students completing their masters, PhD, and/or MD could be encouraged to shape their research towards commercialization and supported accordingly both during their programs and after graduation. So after completing a thesis aimed at discovering some commercializable innovation, the graduates could enter into accelerator type programs to help them build a product and company around the innovation. I know that’s taking a more bottom-up approach, but I suspect that’s a good approach. I’d caution that I might not understand enough about life sciences to know why that isn’t possible, but I don’t see why not.
There’s a lot more to creating a culture of commercialization. Particularly important is the idea that a critical mass of entrepreneurial researchers must become active leaders in the ecosystem that is then supported by government, institutions, funders, etc.
What do you think? How can we better foster more health tech innovation in Hamilton? How can a life sciences cluster intersect and benefit the tech industry?
