The BioInnovate Fellowship is a specialist medical device innovation programme affiliated with the Stanford BioDesign programme.
Our 10-month, full-time, programme combines teams of high-calibre, experienced fellows from medical, engineering, business and technical backgrounds whose aim is to discover unmet clinical needs and align them with market opportunities. The Fellows are rigorously selected to contribute their skills, knowledge and expertise as part of multi-disciplinary teams. During the process Fellows focus on one specific clinical area, and continuously receive mentorship from Industry, Clinicians, Venture Capitalists, Domain Experts and Academics with stipend support from Enterprise Ireland.
Fellowship teams are physically located at the University of Galway. The teams perform their clinical immersion phase in Galway but may visit other hospitals across the country. To date, Fellows have interacted with hundreds of clinical staff in over 50 hospitals. The programme commences in mid-August each year, and has an associated post-graduate award of either a Post Graduate Diploma or a Research Masters.
Sarusha Pillay made the move from South Africa to the University of Galway in 2020 to complete the BioInnovate Ireland Fellowship. Hear about her passion for women’s health and her journey to date as she now leads an Enterprise Ireland commercialisation fund project at UCC to improve foetal health monitoring.
Jonathan Bouchier Hayes completed the BioInnovate Ireland programme in 2014/15 and from there has developed a world-leading technology to treat lung cancer without the need for invasive surgery. Hear about Jonathan’s journey from BioInnovate to becoming CEO of Endowave, which currently employs 20 people in the Galway region.
The Fellowship follows the Identify, Invent, Implement Model developed by Stanford Biodesign.
Identify unmet clinical needs
The programme begins with a five-week intensive Bootcamp in which the Fellows are introduced to observation and needs finding, meet a network of mentors and experts, receive in-depth anatomy training and lectures from the clinical teams, and begin team training.
The following eight weeks are spent in clinical immersion where the Fellowship teams are immersed in the clinical environments across Ireland. This process involves observing patients and healthcare professionals in a range of clinical settings including: specialist diagnostic clinics, surgical and interventional procedures, post-operative care and rehabilitation. At this time, these elite multi-disciplinary teams observe a variety of health-care professionals and their interactions with patients in a clinical environment. This is a unique opportunity for the Fellows to observe and document the day to day challenges.
Invent solutions
The Fellowship teams now focus on processing the unmet clinical needs through the BioInnovation process, ultimately brain-storming to develop a range of potential solutions. During the "Invent" period, the Fellowship teams are intensively monitored and advised by a range of experienced and committed clinical, academic and entrepreneurial mentors.
Implement (commercialisation)
Once the clinical needs are filtered and potential solutions developed through the concept phase, the teams then consider and agree the Implementation strategy and options which involve prototyping, business & financial planning, regulatory affairs and reimbursement strategies. The Fellows are encouraged to move concepts forward to business planning with the aim of advancing the most promising concept to be pitch ready and apply for funding opportunities. Upon completion of the 10-month programme, the Fellows are able to address the 'big questions' associated with the commercialisation of a new technology.
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