U Michigan medical school creates its own TTO to boost commercialization

摘要

The University of Michigan Medical School has created a new initiative, Fast Forward Medical Innovation, and will now have its own TTO to enhance commercialization opportunities for its research, providing more effort and focus than could be applied to medical staff innovations by the university TTO. "Our rationale is to provide assets and knowledge to our biggest talent innovation resource -- our faculty - and to help them think about their science in a slightly different manner that accelerates their ideas to final impact," says the new TTO executive director, emergency medicine professor Kevin Ward. In the past fiscal year, the university's medical school researchers successfully pitched 133 inventions and were awarded 41 patents, which represents one third of the university's total. According to a report from the university's Office of Technology Transfer, $11.1 million of the $14.4 million that UMich collects each year from past patents and licensing agreements is directly attributable to innovations from medical research.