New Hampshire Business Review | California Incubator Supports Health Care Professionals’ Innovations

Innovation in health care takes longer and costs more than some investors are willing to take on. And beyond regulatory hurdles, health care institutions are cautious when considering new products and services, leading to slower adoption rates than in other industries.

In response to these hurdles, The Innovation Institute in La Palma, Calif., was founded in 2013, creating a model that involves health care professionals on the inventor and investor side, better aiding the advancement and adoption of health care technology.

The Innovation Institute serves as both a health care technology incubator, with its Innovation Lab in Newport, Calif., and a venture capital firm, with a shareholder base of seven nonprofit health care systems, 130 hospitals, 700 clinics, 58,000 physicians and 180,000 health care workers in 22 states.

“What the institute does is provide [health care professionals] with a way to commercialize an idea,” Barry Didato, chief investment officer at The Innovation Institute, explained to NH Business Review. “What we see at the lab comes from mostly organic channels. Think of a physician [or] nurse clinician, someone who works in a health system. Their idea may constitute nothing more than an idea [written] on the back of an envelope, and there are ideas like that we’ve been able to bring to market.”

Operating on this model, The Innovation Institute was able to reach profitability in just four months, and now has 16 portfolio companies with revenues exceeding $206 million. More…