Re-inventing the Academic Hospital for Biodesign Co-Creation

What if companies could understand a clinical problem before they started designing the solution? Mark Richardson MD, PhD moderated a conversation with Atsuhiro Nakagawa MD, Masaki Kato, Akiko Okubo and Heinz Lubenau PhD about a model at Tohoku University Hospital built around exactly that idea.

Since 2014, Tohoku has brought corporate R&D teams directly into clinical settings to observe care, work with physicians and identify unmet needs before large amounts of time and capital are committed to product development. Kato and Okubo described how that immersion changed how their companies think about development, including moving away from building prototypes internally and then asking clinicians for feedback. Lubenau discussed the value of academic partnerships for clinical development, scientific advice and faster experimentation.

Nakagawa framed the hospital itself as innovation infrastructure. The discussion quickly became relevant to Boston: could Mass General Brigham create a similar environment for industry co-creation? Doing so would require practical solutions around clinical space, protected physician time, research funding, intellectual property and incentives. Tohoku's experience suggests the first step can remain relatively simple, with deeper research and commercialization relationships developing once the partners understand the problem they are trying to solve.