As India’s first corporate hospital-based technology business incubator for MedTech entrepreneurs, Narayana Health and Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation give startups a facility to build and iterate medical devices or healthcare AI platforms and test it within the departments of Narayana Health
Narayana Health in association with Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation announced the launch of a physical incubator called Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation (MSMF) MedTech Innovation Centre – BIRAC BIONEST.
A centre with a dedicated space of around 8000 sqft MSMF MedTech Innovation Centre – BIRAC BIONEST will help MedTech entrepreneurs who are looking to address affordability, access and innovation challenges in the healthcare eco-system.
The MedTech Innovation Centre will also augment further the initiatives undertaken by Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation and Narayana Health towards identifying, mentoring and handholding entrepreneurs and innovators in their journey to success. The space will facilitate close interaction and prototyping facility too for startups.
The centre was inaugurated in the presence of Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Executive Chairperson, Biocon, Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Narayana Health, Dr. Paul C Salins, Medical Director & Sr. Vice-President – Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre, Narayana Health and Managing Director, MSMF along with Dr. Manish Diwan, Head of strategy BIRAC.
Explaining the rationale for the initiative, Mazumdar-Shaw said, “Through MSMF MedTech Innovation Centre we aim to fill the gap in healthcare innovation to have a single platform for entrepreneurs to co-create and identify clinical challenges in conjunction with doctors, scientists and technology enthusiasts. The wealth of research and medical data generated at Narayana Health will provide a translational science model, accelerating the lab to market journey of innovative and promising solutions discovered and developed at MSMF MedTech Innovation Centre.”
Inaugurating the centre Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Narayana Health said, “We are hopeful the physical incubator will provide the much needed facilities that startup look for to progress with their innovation. While we have been able to support over 25 startups through our other programmes like Clinical Immersion Program (CIP) and our partnership with VC Firms like, Villgro and Axilor. We also have international collaborations too with Japanese and Korean startups through JETRO and GAIN respectively. The physical infrastructure will help us to further strengthen our mission as the infrastructure can support 39 start-ups at any given point of time with the total seating capacity of 82. We are looking at nurturing 10 startups in 2021.”
An extension of the existing CIP, apart from providing physical infrastructure, the centre will continue to provide start-ups access to the clinical expertise of Narayana Health. Each of the startups incubated in the centre will be paired with a clinician with whom they can co-create the innovation, device the right clinical validation pathway to prove the product in a hospital setup. The centre is also recognised by both Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology-BIRAC, hence the startups get access to multiple grant opportunities through these agencies. The Centre also has a prototyping lab comprising of – mechanical, electronics and AI labs. These labs give the startups a facility to build and iterate medical devices or healthcare AI platforms and test it within the departments of Narayana Health.
Dr. Paul C Salins, Medical Director & Sr. Vice-President – Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre, Narayana Health and Managing Director, MSMF said, “COVID 19 stress to healthcare has exposed its weaknesses as never before. Engineering science must now play an increasingly powerful role, reducing dependence on doctors for healthcare and empowering individuals and communities to take ownership on Health. The future of healthcare will be exciting he said, because we will see diagnostic and treatment possibilities never before imagined within a purely Medical sciences hospital paradigm”.
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