Morehouse School of Medicine and Georgia Institute of Technology Announce Collaborative Effort for Health Technology Startup Development
Initiative aims to expand Morehouse School of Medicine’s research commercialization efforts, and support focus on the needs of underserved minority and rural populations.
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Péralte C. Paul
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For inquiries about Morehouse School of Medicine, contact:
Ronna Charles
rcharles@msm.edu
(404) 752-1717
ATLANTA (July 9, 2019) — The Georgia Institute of Technology (GeorgiaTech) and Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) today announced the launch of a new initiative that will support MSM’s commercialization efforts to create health technology (HealthTech) startups.
This initiative leverages the researchrigor and innovations developing at Morehouse School of Medicine with Georgia Tech’s proven ATDC model of helping technology entrepreneurs create viable, scalable companies.”
James W. Lillard, Ph.D.
The effort brings the Institute’s globally recognized technology incubator — the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) — to the MSM campus, ranked the number one medical school in the nation in fulfilling its social mission and the top ranking historically black college or university for producing patents (2009-2019).
“We’re excited to forge this effort between our two schools that will help translate ideas that may start in the lab to real-world solutions for minority and rural populations in healthcare,” said James W. Lillard, Ph.D., MSM’s associate dean for research and director of the Office of Translational Technologies. “This initiative leverages the research rigor and innovations developing at Morehouse School of Medicine with Georgia Tech’s proven ATDC model of helping technology entrepreneurs create viable, scalable companies.”
The collaboration with MSM, the eighth for ATDC through its ATDC @ program, continues the incubator’s mission of working with technology startups across Georgia.
The ATDC @ MSM will provide the medical school with a full suite of services and educational programming to support entrepreneurship in the HealthTech arena among faculty, staff, and students on the MSM campus. The core goal is to help entrepreneurs gain insight into successful HealthTech commercialization, through the program, which includes curriculum, connections, and coaching.
ATDC was founded in 1980 to help technology entrepreneurs learn, launch, scale, and succeed in the creation of successful businesses in the state. Since its founding, ATDC has developed a global reputation for fostering technological entrepreneurship, with Forbes naming ATDC to its list of “Incubators Changing the World” in 2010 and 2013, alongside Y Combinator and the Palo Alto Research Center.
Kirk Barnes, ATDC’s HealthTech catalyst, said the effort is a great example of how two world-class institutions can collaborate to create a medically oriented innovation ecosystem. It also brings focus to the needs of minority and rural populations that are traditionally underserved from a medical standpoint, just as state leaders in Georgia are looking at the issue more closely.
“This is a great collaborative undertaking that takes our "Startup Success, Engineered" model into the clinical setting and gives particular focus on black entrepreneurs who are an underrepresented community in tech,” Barnes said.
“This will help expand the pace and flow of innovation and commercialization of research coming out of the Morehouse School of Medicine as well as give them access to the broader resources at Georgia Tech and the ATDC model will formalize and expedite how that happens.”
About the Advanced Technology Development Center
The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a program of the Georgia Institute of Technology, is the state of Georgia’s technology startup incubator. Founded in 1980 by the Georgia General Assembly which funds it each year, ATDC’s mission is to work with entrepreneurs in Georgia to help them learn, launch, scale, and succeed in the creation of viable, disruptive technology companies. Since its founding, ATDC has grown to become one of the longest running and most successful university-affiliated incubators in the United States, with its graduate startup companies raising more than $3 billion in investment financing and generating more than $12 billion in revenue in the state of Georgia.
About Morehouse School of Medicine
Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM), located in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in 1975 as a two-year Medical Education Program at Morehouse College with clinical training affiliations with several established medical schools for awarding the M.D. degree. In 1981, MSM became an independently chartered institution and the first medical school established at a Historically Black College and University in the 20th century. MSM is among the nation's leading educators of primary care physicians and was recently recognized as the top institution among U.S. medical schools for our social mission. Our faculty and alumni are noted in their fields for excellence in teaching, research, and public policy, and are known in the community for exceptional, culturally appropriate patient care.
Morehouse School of Medicine is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award doctorate and master’s degrees.
About the Office of Translational Technologies
The Office of Translational Technologies at MSM was established in 2011 to leverage MSM’s intellectual property, research and infrastructure to develop and commercialize product and services that advance health equity.