Ideas That Heal

“We get a new idea [from employees] every day in our office,” says Steve Van Nurden, vice chair of Mayo Clinic’s Office of Intellectual Property. “It could be a new device, a potential drug, a software program, an idea for changing the way medicine is practiced. A little better than half the time, we can take an idea or invention and bring that to the marketplace to help patients.”

And bring in a little extra money for Mayo.

To begin turning a Mayo staffer’s idea into a product, Mayo first documents the idea to make sure that credit goes to the employee who originated it. That employee has to be willing to participate in the entire development process—a sign, Mayo feels, that he or she believes in its potential.

Next, the in-house patenting staff, which consists of a patent attorney and four patent liaisons, investigates whether or not Mayo can protect the idea. “We may still commercialize it, even if it’s not patentable,” Van Nurden says.

From there, the idea goes to one of Mayo’s 12 licensing managers. “Their responsibility is to look at the technology and see if they think it has commercial potential, and if so, what pathway that commercialization might take,” Van Nurden says.

Sometimes an idea is ready for market as is. Other projects may need funding to develop them. If interest is strong, early-stage ideas can get the money they need through the Office of Intellectual Property’s Innovation Loan Program, which funds studies, prototypes, and other conceptual tryouts. “If the product eventually becomes commercially successful, they pay the program back,” Van Nurden says. More-developed concepts can obtain grants from Mayo’s Translational Research Fund.

When an idea is ready for market, it can take a variety of possible pathways. Mayo might license an idea or technology to an existing company, a process the clinic has successfully pursued about 1,500 times, Van Nurden says. In 2005, for example, it licensed the patent for a continuously moving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) table to Siemens’s Medical Solutions division. This technology allows the MRI operator to track instantly the passage of the intravenously administered dye (for making images) through the body. The table can reposition itself precisely to match the dye’s position in the body.

In pursuing licensing agreements, Mayo looks for partners who will quickly get a product to the maximum number of potential patients and not compromise the Mayo “brand’s” reputation for quality. Sometimes that company is large and established, such as Siemens; in that case, the licensing agreement is a flat-fee arrangement. But when the right company is small or a start-up, Mayo may agree to financial arrangements other than a simple pay-up-front deal.