FAST FACTS Event: The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology’s ninth annual Innovation Congress Mission: The conference aims to connect physicians with transformational ideas and tech specialists to help them solve medical technology problems. Attendance: Over 600 attendees; approximately 70 companies; 35 research and development teams; as well as 60 moderators, panelists and speakers. Sponsors: Siemens AG, Merck & Co. Inc., the Epilepsy Development Therapy Project, General Electric Healthcare and Cordis Corp. Quote: “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s definitely revolutionary. It’s definitely a conference that should be emulated and will be emulated  because it’s where it’s happening,” said John Cullinane, chairman of LiveData Inc.

BOSTON – The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology’s ninth annual Innovation Congress took place in Boston and featured some of the latest emerging medical technology and brought together some of the most cutting edge researchers in the field.

“This is where we meet new players. About half the people who are at this meeting are already a part of the CIMIT extended family, they participate with us in some way, but the other half are new. We’ve never met them and they’ve never met us. So this is a way we network and bring new players in to collaborate,” said Dr. John A. Parrish, the director and founder of CIMIT.

Started in 1998, the Boston-based CIMIT’s mission is to identify physicians with transformational ideas and match them with appropriate technologists to help them solve problems in medical technology.

“Once we make that match between physician and a technologist, then [CIMIT] provides facilitation, coaching, advice – because most of the time, neither one of them has done research in health care. The physician is usually the kind of person who has been taking care of patients and doesn’t have research experience. The technologist doesn’t know anything about health care. So our full-time faculty, their job is to identify the players, make them into teams, and then facilitate every step marching the idea to a prototype and even start laying the ground for commercialization,” Parrish said. 

He added that it was helpful to start in Boston because the three areas that CIMIT works with – the private sector, hospitals and academic institutions – all have good foundations in and around the city.

CIMIT receives its funding from federal, philanthropic, industrial and international sources. Fourteen companies have either been created with the help of CIMIT or have been redirected elsewhere in the field and are working in this area, according to Parrish. 

This year’s conference theme was “Driving Change in Healthcare.” It was held on November 13 and 14, and over 600 people attended. Nearly 70 companies attended the conference, including 40 private firms and 35 investigator teams. There were also more than 60 moderators, panelists and speakers. The conference was sponsored by Siemens AG, Merck & Co. Inc., the Epilepsy Development Therapy Project, General Electric Healthcare, which is a part of the GE Co. and Cordis Corp., which is a Johnson & Johnson company.

The conference’s increased attention and sponsorship reflects CIMIT’s progress over the past nine years. Parrish said the organization’s first conference only brought in about 80 people, when there were about four people working for CIMIT at that time. Now the organization has a faculty of 20 people. 

CIMIT has also come a long way in terms of funding. Parrish said the group’s first investment of $6 million came from Massachusetts General Hospital. Today, the group spends about $12 million per year on funding research, as well as paying for its faculty and administration. Parrish said most of the money goes towards funding research projects. Parrish said that CIMIT’s funding is going so well that it raises $3 for every $1 the organization invests in research.

“CIMIT is a wonderful and different audience. Very often, myself as a health-care provider, and coming at most health-care issues and policy issues from the provider side, this is a place that pulls together people that I don’t meet every day, and these are people who think very differently – everything from MIT engineers to people who are starting up small companies to major industrial leaders and leaders in military medicine – and there really isn’t a forum to focus in on innovation in technology health care that really matches this,” said Dr. Gregg Meyer, senior vice president for quality and safety at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and a member of CIMIT’s panel, “Perspectives on What’s Driving Change in Health care.”

One of the features at the CIMIT conference was the Exploratorium, which was a room dedicated to exhibiting more than two dozen demonstrations of medical technology, from areas like the patient’s room, neurotechnology, and the operating room to battlefield technology, global health and image-guided therapy.

Janice Crosby, the director of business development for CIMIT, said the exhibits at the Exploratorium displayed some new innovations helping conference-goers understand how this technology will be used to improve patient care and identify  what kind of new innovations are being used in different areas.

“What we’re trying to do, like with our Exploratorium, is to demonstrate for people where technology fits within the context of either care environments or within some of the new programs that we have,” said Crosby.

One company, Avancen LLC, was in the patient room part of the Exploratorium, displaying its new device, The MOD (Medication on Demand), which dispenses oral pain medication electronically. The device eliminates the waiting period a patient has to endure for pain medication by waving a radio frequency identification wristband in front of the circular plastic device that holds a disposable plastic tray of pills, and releases the prescribed medication. The device also has a security feature that only releases new medication at physician-determined times. 

Ned Buffington, the vice president and chief operating officer of Ormond Beach, Fla.-based Avancen, said this device was introduced in August, and this is the company’s first time at the CIMIT conference. “CIMIT’s a great organization just because of the institutions that make up CIMIT. They’re all nationally-recognized names so it’s always great to be a part of that,” he said.

There was another display room at the conference that looked more like an arcade than something found at a medical technology conference. The display room, called “The Power of Virtual Experience,” featured video games like Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, and the game console, Nintendo Wii.

According to Beverly Brown, CIMIT’s chief development officer, the point of the room was to show how some of these games could have medical applications, like Guitar Hero, which could be made into a rehabilitation tool if it is configured a little differently. She said the room was inspired by John Abele, the founder of Boston Scientific, who is working with CIMIT’s computing education program to explore adult learning, and how gaming for adults is a low-risk way for people to learn quickly because there is not a lot of fear of not succeeding or any permanent repercussions for failure.

The conference also honored its latest recipient of the Edward Kennedy Award, which went to a team of researchers working on patient safety in the operating room. Their technology focuses on the interoperability of systems within the operating room and other hospital areas, allowing all devices and systems to work in sync, which minimizes mistakes.

One of the members of the team of researchers is Cambridge, Mass.-based LiveData Inc. John Cullinane, the company’s chairman, said LiveData provides the engine that allows the interoperability access to all different devices and assimilates them, which does not happen with today’s devices and databases.

Cullinane said CIMIT made the research possible by providing access to clinicians, surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists, which LiveData would not have had access to. He added that LiveData has been involved with CIMIT for about four years.

In addition to helping LiveData, Cullinane said the conference was also outstanding for networking because it is a great combination of people who are trying to transform the health-care industry and entities that are encouraging those people to try something new and different. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s definitely revolutionary. It’s definitely a conference that should be emulated and will be emulated because it’s where it’s happening,” he said.