Invention Accelerator Program

Stronger Together

A long-time partner of Stanford Biodesign, Fogarty Innovation is an educational incubator that provides hands-on training and mentoring to help innovators transform promising product or service ideas into successful, sustainable businesses. Their team of seasoned executives and innovators have created and/or brought to market a wide range of health technology innovations that provide significant benefits to patients.

Working together, we have developed an invention accelerator program (IAP) to address the gap between promising translational projects and their ability to launch as viable businesses that can deliver innovative new technologies to patients.

Invention Accelerator Program

The IAP is a competitive program that helps entrepreneurs early in the innovation process to accelerate the time from discovery to actual deployment of their inventions into patient care.

The IAP identifies promising ideas sourced from hospitals, universities, and individual inventors, and then collaborates with the entrepreneurs to validate their needs and advance their concepts. Specific goals include maturation of the technology, an assessment of the drivers and obstacles to commercialization, and exposure to a broad network of partners and other resources to fuel swift progress.

Over the course of four to six months, project teams participate in high-touch mentoring from seasoned industry veterans to address:

• Needs validation
• Product design
• Prototype refinement
• Early preclinical/clinical testing
• IP assessment and strategy
• Market size and segmentation
• Regulatory pathway
• Payment/reimbursement
• Business model development
• Fundraising
• Team development

Current Projects

Our currently active projects include:

• A novel compound to prevent unwanted tissue adhesion during the healing process. Spearheaded by Eric Appel, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University, the project (nicknamed “Applesauce”) has shown promising results in preclinical studies in two different applications.   The IAP is helping the team develop a related technology, expand their network, and understand the market.
• A minimally invasive extracochlear neurostimulation device. Led by 2019-20 Innovation Fellows Francis Wong and Jay Dhuldhoya, the project, named Auricle, is designed to restore hearing and improve speech perception in adults with severe high-frequency hearing loss. Unlike cochlear implants, the device doesn’t pose a risk to residual hearing and is reversible. The IAP is providing guidance and mentoring in multiple areas, including market strategy and patent claims.
• A novel system using transmural ablation to address atrial fibrillation. The project is being led by Paul Wang, the director of the Stanford Cardiac Arrhythmia Service and a professor of medicine and bioengineering, and Meg Babakhanian, a Faculty Fellowship alum and CEO of their company, EpiEndoAF. The IAP is helping the team refine their project plan, develop their procedure in a bench model of representative anatomy, and assess and protect their intellectual property.

Current projects were identified from Stanford and Fogarty project portfolios. In 2022, the program hopes to support a larger number of projects from a diverse pool of sources.

Admission Guidelines

To learn more about the IAP or apply, contact James Wall or John Morriss.