The Center for Biomedical and Interventional Technology (CBIT), YCCI’s newest emerging core, is dedicated to catalyzing biomedical technology development and commercialization at Yale. Education is built into CBIT’s activities of facilitating team formation across schools and institutions to find solutions to unmet clinical needs.
CBIT is training students and faculty to become innovators through activities that encompass the School of Medicine, the School of Management, and the School of Engineering & Applied Science. CBIT’s unique relationship with Yale-New Haven Hospital and connection to more than 150 mentors at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute and in industry offers unprecedented opportunities to learn how to develop medical devices and technology that benefit patients.
“CBIT is creating a culture of innovation that spans the entire university and even the state,” said Peter Schulam, MD, PhD, director of Yale Cancer Center and chair of the department of urology, who co-founded CBIT with W. Mark Saltzman, PhD, Goizueta Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemical and Environmental Engineering and Physiology.
CBIT regularly hosts Clinician Pitch Nights in which students, staff, and faculty from across the medical campus and university gather to listen to five-minute pitches by clinicians on novel solutions to clinical problems. Their purpose is to form interdisciplinary teams that collaborate to develop and commercialize these ideas to improve patients’ experiences.
A Pitch Night held last spring partnered School of Management students with projects that were awarded Stage 1 funding under a new pilot award mechanism created by CBIT and YCCI. Ten faculty members, clinicians, and scientists from the Yale School of Medicine, Yale-New Haven Hospital, and the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science presented their ideas to an audience of over 60 who attended the event.
The response to the call for proposals under the new mechanism illustrates the untapped potential that CBIT is leveraging. CBIT received 40 Stage 1 proposals, 17 of which were awarded $1,500 to further develop their projects, and 18 Stage 2 proposals for as many as four awards of up to $50,000 each. The awards are used to fund prototype activity, preclinical and clinical evaluation, and to create a strong business strategy for commercialization of biomedical technologies – efforts that involve teams of students from the various schools.
CBIT is creating a culture of innovation that spans the entire university and even the state.
Peter Schulam, MD, PhD
The more than 50 projects that have emerged from CBIT’s work with clinical and engineering departments include:
- A swallowing assist device for stroke patients.
- A simpler and less painful method of performing bone marrow biopsies.
- A novel device for treating sleep apnea.
- A device to diagnose motor weakness in real time for ischemic stroke patients.
- A safer, more reliable “smart shunt” for patients with hydrocephalus.
CBIT also sponsors biomedical innovation coursework in medical device design and innovation, and new ventures in health care designed to tackle real-world clinical needs and bring solutions to market. Other events include lectures that provide practical advice on such topics as conducting market analysis, obtaining funding, and getting a medical device through the FDA, which helps promising technology companies get off the ground. CBIT has also hosted a series of Healthcare Hackathons— three-day events held to find solutions to a range of health care problems—which have been widely attended.
All these activities highlight CBIT’s commitment to educating tomorrow’s clinicians, engineers and entrepreneurs. Said Schulam: “We’re training people to be innovators.”