CHOP’s Successful Academic Entrepreneurship Training Goes National

The Innovation Ecosystem’s approach to academic entrepreneurship is focused on how to better prepare people and teams to advance ideas.

Born out of the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation seven years ago, the Innovation Ecosystem is growing and thriving, providing resources, education, and training to those eager to learn about academic entrepreneurship — the focus on translating science and technology developed in the academic setting into health impact via commercialization routes.

"It's a discipline of learning not taught in medical school," said Daria Ferro, MD, Co-director of the Innovation Ecosystem at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "We have a whole program that teaches people what they need to know about the role of entrepreneurship in moving science forward into medical innovation."

With a different approach than most accelerator incubator programs that focus on an already established idea, the Innovation Ecosystem focuses on how to better prepare people and teams to advance ideas. Their success is captured in a paper published in Nature Biotechnology about their basic course in academic entrepreneurship and with a new grant from the National Institutes of Health to grow a diverse, national biomedical research workforce adept in medical device innovation and entrepreneurship.

'Fundamentals' Course Proves Successful

Within their cache of training classes and resources is a seven-week basic course entitled "Academic Entrepreneurship Fundamentals: A Professional Development Course," which was developed for the busy clinician or researcher. This course covers essential elements of academic entrepreneurship taught by experts from CHOP, University of Pennsylvania, and those outside of academia.

In-person participants build the skills necessary for academic entrepreneurship so they can take their next step in innovation with knowledge, resources, and mentors. They refine business acumen, to recognize and de-risk potential commercial products, and people skills to build and maintain teams. They gain the knowledge of how to form industry-academia relationships while navigating the academic environment.

"Innovation is a relay race, starting at the bench and ending at the bedside," said Flaura Winston, MD, PhD, Director of the Innovation Ecosystem. "Scientists need to know how to move their work forward — whether this involves refining a product for licensing, partnering with industry, or securing funding. The effective academic entrepreneur needs an understanding of the product lifecycle, what issues they will face, and how to choose and collaborate with commercialization partners."

Of the initial cohort of 30 people who participated in fall 2023, 28 completed the course. There was a broad range of representation in terms of their roles at CHOP and in their education. Job areas varied from radiology to medicine, surgery, anesthesiology, critical care medicine, and biomedical and health informatics. As for education, 40% were physicians/surgeons, 32% had doctorates, 14% were master's recipients, and 14% were bachelor's recipients.

Post-course survey results revealed students, on average, felt they gained knowledge of key topics new to them such as communication, funding, business planning, and legal and regulatory concerns.

Direct participant feedback collected alongside quantitative evaluation data included glowing reviews:

• "The IRB/FDA presentation has dramatically impacted my work. I immediately implemented the learning to one of our IRBs under consideration that had a device. The device was being considered investigative, and the course definition allowed us to challenge this consideration and was changed to a non-investigative device status!"

• "[This course] helps me to better understand most of the process for healthcare startup. I've applied some of the knowledge from this course for applying to get funding for my project."

• "As a project manager, I utilize almost all of this knowledge on a daily basis."

"Most telling about the success of this course is that so far four participants from our course have moved on to the Penn Health-Tech Accelerator to further work on their teams' products and ideas," said Vicki Bartek, MSW, Project Manager of the Innovation Ecosystem.

Information regarding the 2025 cohort is coming soon.

Boot Camp-type Course Reaches Out to National Audience

With a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Innovation Ecosystem multidisciplinary team is expanding their work beyond the walls of CHOP and will be offering a new two-year educational program on a national level.

Like their CHOP offerings, the team plans to engage trainees from diverse backgrounds by bringing them to the CHOP/Penn campus for a concentrated version of their academic entrepreneur training called, "Translating Discoveries to the Bedside: A Medical Devices Course."

"Traveling for a three-hour class for seven weeks is not a model that is going to work for a national audience," Dr. Ferro said. "So, we turned it into a boot camp model."

"Translating Discoveries to the Bedside" is an in-person five-day boot camp, focused on a core curriculum built on the Innovation Ecosystem's free, open-source, interactive e-book, "Academic Entrepreneurship for Medical and Health Scientists." The e-book was edited and published in collaboration with colleagues from Penn's Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics.

The boot camp is followed by a two-year mentoring program that includes an individual development plan to identify and accomplish goals such as applying for/participating in an accelerator program, applying for Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer grants, or writing a business plan as a member of a project team.

"Through skill-building, mentorship, and networking, participants will be empowered to embark on careers translating new research findings and technologies, including artificial intelligence, into market-ready medical devices for children and adults," Dr. Winston said. "That's the goal."

Applications are open for the Spring 2025 boot camp course.

The Innovations Ecosystem team also offers a series of virtual one-hour classes, held four times a year and available for CHOP employees and beyond. These interactive sessions will explore how entrepreneurial thinking can revolutionize medicine and introduce strategies for building interdisciplinary collaborations that bring ideas from the bench to the world.

The first class is scheduled for Feb. 26. Join Dr. Ferro and discover this new discipline. Registration is open.