Sophia Koo is, in her own words, a “home grown” Brigham physician. She completed medical school at Harvard, and subsequently, her residency in the Department of Infectious Disease at the Brigham. Throughout the early stages of her career in Infectious Disease, Koo was constantly reminded of the poor diagnostics for the diseases that doctors like herself treat nationwide. She describes the diagnostics for infectious disease doctors as “empiric therapy” – mostly consisting of doctors taking educated guesses at the patient’s condition, prescribing medication, and seeing what happens. Needless to say, Koo identified this significant issue in infectious disease treatment, which eventually sparked her idea for a new diagnostic method for aspergillosis, and potentially other diseases.

The Inspirational Spark…

After seeing an inspiring speech about an interesting new use for a breathalyzer, Koo immediately understood the potential of such a device as it applies to infectious disease diagnosis. Fungal infections leave a very clear signature in the breath, and Koo was very aware of this fact at the time – even joking that “Hippocrates could supposedly smell infections on a patient’s breath.” Weeks later, she approached the speaker – who already had a similar pilot program going – and began working to repurpose his device to detect invasive aspergillosis simply through having the patient breathe into a breathalyzer. Koo describes, “the device is essentially smelling something that isn’t supposed to be there.”

Time to build…

Koo recalls it taking around four years to move from the inception of her idea to her current state. She says that her process began in a traditional way; she was granted NIH funding to prove that her device could actually function properly, and this work took around two years. At that point Koo was able to file her patent and began the process of starting a company. She notes, “I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of a timeline, but it was definitely shorter than I expected.”

It works! What’s next…

Koo attributes much of the success of her device’s campaign to the help of the Innovation Hub. She notes, “I wouldn’t have known what to do with the idea without the iHub’s help.” She continued, “there is a huge barrier between ‘academic’ and ‘business builder’ and the iHub can really help in bridging that gap.” Koo also commented on the lack of support for clinicians/researchers after getting Intellectual Property – a step in the commercialization process that she felt the iHub could help facilitate. Koo remarks, “there will always be a lot of ‘learning by doing,’ but the iHub can certainly help map [the process] for people looking to act on an idea.”

To learn more about this innovation, email us at ihub@partners.org.

Dr. Levy was looking for a way to bring his faculty together in a new way, “to bring about cohesion within the division” said Levy.  He decided to work with the Innovation Hub on a division “Innovation Series.”  He described the effort as having two main goals: the first was obviously cohesion, but the second was innovation itself.  Levy noted, “We added innovation to the department’s mission statement when I came on board, and after hearing about the hospital-wide hackathon, I was compelled to speak with the Innovation Hub about doing a division-based hackathon.”

He described the process, “within the department we held meetings with innovation leaders to form early concepts, which were followed by formal brainstorms.”  “In the faculty meetings about thirty people pitched problems.  Then, we gave everyone a few stickers to vote on which problems they felt were most important, or that needed the most attention.  After coming together with the iHub team, about six problems emerged as the subjects for the half-day hackathon,” Levy continued.

When asked about the experience, Levy recalled the excitement of the innovation series: “people within the department who had never really worked together before, starting working together in their innovation efforts.  People really came together under the leadership of the Innovation Hub.”

While three of the final ideas were identified as the winners, Levy felt that the most exciting result of the Innovation Series was the team-building and camaraderie that his department experienced.  Levy noted, “other departments should absolutely think about doing this – BWH is an exciting venue for innovation.  We should use the Innovation Series to enable and empower physicians, while providing the opportunity for physicians and researchers to work together.”