Visit to Cedars-Sinai Medical Accelerator in LA
Exploring how we can apply learnings from other medical innovation groups at Te Whatu Ora Te Toka Tumai Auckland and Ara Manawa.
Late last year, our Principal Strategist - Sarv Taherian got an HRC grant to explore what might health innovation look like within the hospital and the broader Te Toka Tumai. We have been interviewing health start-ups, health and medical innovation groups and other partners within Aotearoa, learning about their experiences developing, scaling, funding and piloting their ideas in the sector. As you can imagine, a lot has been learned and innovation programmes (incubators and accelerators) took a prominent spot in our findings.
In September 2022, we decided to focus our research and see what international and local innovation programmes looked like and what learnings and wisdom can they impart.
There are a lot of amazing programmes that operate within hospitals in the States and as I was going to the States for a 3-week holiday I took the opportunity to connect with health incubators, and learn from those who are further along in their journey.
I made a wish list of three places that were all on my travel route and did a cold outreach – filling out website forms and stalking people on LinkedIn. All three got back to me but only one person was free on the dates that I gave them, and it was Samantha Shobash, manager at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Accelerator in Los Angeles.
After consuming my weight in pizza in New York and heading to the hotter Los Angeles, I was very excited to be shown around and visit the space.
“This three-month program, based in Los Angeles, California, provides companies with $100,000 in funding, mentorship from more than 300 leading clinicians and executives, access to Cedars-Sinai, and exposure to a broad network of healthcare experts, including health system executives from a wide range of organisations, experienced healthcare entrepreneurs, other industry advisers, and healthcare investors. Since 2016, the accelerator has helped dozens of companies transform healthcare delivery and patient care.”
Samantha and I met outside of their building and headed to Starbucks. She shared how they are onto their 8th cohort, that invites external innovator companies into a programme that solves pressing needs that hospital prioritised that year.
Even though our health system operates quite differently to the one in California, most of the learnings were directly applicable to our context:
Navigating lack of time that clinical staff have while amplifying their passion and working around their schedules to involve them in innovation development
Realising that not every innovation idea will turn out to be great, but embedding that into the programme learnings and allowing space for failing
Needing strong leadership buy-in and support that ultimately helped Cedars-Sinai accelerator to get off the ground and being championed within the hospital
Needing a fully dedicated team: at least one exec sponsor, one manager and one operational lead to run the programme. Experience in start-ups and health innovation design is a must
COVID-19 pandemic surfaced an insight that running online programmes aren’t ideal.
“People should be based in the building with you, working together close by, collaborating. Would not recommend running an online programme over an in-person one” - said Samantha.
The lobby of the Cedars Sinai Accelerator office building.
I then got shown around their main building where clinical staff and companies come to work together. It was a big space, not that different from ours, at 160 Grafton Road. A few companies were working away on the computers alongside freshly hired associates (Sam brings six of them each year for three months to support the cohorts).
It was an awesome experience that got me so excited for the possibilities back home. What would an innovation programme look like at Te Toka Tumai? How could we build something similar in collaboration with Te Aka Whai Ora (Māori Health Authority)? What would it look like to have our clinical innovation pathways clear? How can we get people more excited about what we do here?
Cedar-Sinai has two little robots that roam around the hospital delivering medications – they are a visible representation of innovation that gets people curious and leaves them wanting to visit the accelerator space and get involved.
So what are our next steps:
Interview more innovation programmes around the world to learn from them
Incorporate those learnings into our broader research
Get into designing... 🤩 (and maybe build some cute robots)
November 2022
THANKS TO
Samantha Shobash for her incredible insight and hospitality
AUTHOR
Elina Ashimbayeva, Senior Experience Designer