Orange County Catholic | Smart Thinking

More than 90 juniors and seniors and 10 teachers from Santa Ana’s Mater Dei High School got a hands-on experience about what it’s like to be an inventor on April 4, when they visited the Innovation Lab in Newport Beach.

Working in small teams, they designed and built mini prototypes of a medical-related product, then had to come up with creative ways to pitch their invention to others.

“We wanted to show them that the journey doesn’t end with making a good product,” says Marc Habib, executive director of Operations and Product Development at the Innovation Lab, who helped organize the day. “These are skills that apply to making anything, whatever career you choose.”

The Innovation Institute, founded by St. Joseph Healthcare, is a for-profit partnership of five health care systems, led by Joe Randolph, former COO of St. Joseph. One arm of the Institute is the Innovation Lab, an “incubator” dedicated to identifying and developing creative new ideas to improve healthcare, from medical devices to software.  More…