This article is a part of a larger series looking at the First Coast's emerging startups, tech innovators, lenders and players in the region's ecosystem.
Mayo Clinic's Innovation Exchange, a membership-based platform created to further industry collaboration and accelerate commercialization, has been working for more than a year on the First Coast shaping the future of medicine.
Mayo Clinic Innovation Exchange was launched to provide internal innovators and external entrepreneurs and startups throughout the health care industry with premier medical and business insights, as well as the connections needed to bring their breakthrough innovations to market. To better understand what they do, the Business-Journal sat down with Innovation Exchange Director Jared Mueller to talk about successes and their vision for the future.
Tell us a little bit about the Innovation Exchange and your goals?
We really operate by connecting entrepreneurs with Mayo Clinic's physicians, scientists and technical experts who can fill that missing piece for them. And oftentimes, Mayo will work with them to co-develop a solution that'll serve patients better. Clinicians themselves who don't have technical expertise in the company, or the company working on its own, or to try to solve the problem working in a silo. We also are also working to bring investors into the fold.
Many of these are investors in Florida. They're folks who might be connected to an educational institution -- we have a really exciting partnership with Florida State University that was announced in the last year or two and is only expanding -- or professional advisors at Holland & Knight, for instance.
We're trying to bring as many people as we can into the center here and lead to some kind of really fruitful collaborations.
At Mayo, you're in a unique position, because you have Arizona and Minnesota campuses. Are you able to leverage those facilities to help your mission on the First Coast?
We always start in Florida, in part because we have space in Florida. Our team is currently 100% in Florida. But then, for example, there's not a dedicated large pediatric practice in Florida. And sometimes someone says, 'Well, I wonder how this would impact a large Children's Hospital,' and Mayo does have a children's hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. So we are able to use our facilities to better serve patients.
What are your thoughts on the ecosystem here in North Florida, as it relates to startups, investors and technology specifically in the medical space?
I think it's really a special business culture. And we actually hear this from folks who might be working in California or in Boston, there's such a collaborative and warm environment here. We've got a ton of expertise, a ton of investors, and executives. Including retired executives who worked for J&J, for instance, already in the region.
So there is really a mature, business-oriented community with real commitment and real excitement around the growth that has been going on for decades. But in the last couple of years, growth has really begun to accelerate.
So looking at the future, where do you see the Mayo incubator going in the next two to five years? What's the next step?
We're really excited to see how these relationships with Florida State and with other institutions in the region can really grow and enhance our partnerships.
So I think we're just scratching the surface on some of these really fantastic assets. We've seen some of the students who've been in our programs with Florida State, Georgia Tech, apply to work for us and then take jobs. That is exactly what we're hoping for. We want them to stay and we want them to stay in the region.
