Narayana Health, Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation launch MSMF MedTech Innovation Centre in Bengaluru

Ms. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Founder, Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation (MSMF) and Chairperson, Biocon said, "India has the potential to become the next global R&D hub for biomedical devices and health technologies, and the Mazumdar Shaw Medical Foundation (MSMF) MedTech Innovation Centre at Narayana Health City, in collaboration with BIRAC will help explore this potential. It will provide health tech entrepreneurs a well-equipped incubation space and a collaborative ecosystem. Through MSMF MedTech Innovation Centre we aim to fill the gap in healthcare innovation to have a single platform for entrepreneurs to co-create and identify clinical challenges in conjunction with doctors, scientists and technology enthusiasts. The wealth of research and medical data generated at Narayana Health will provide a translational science model, accelerating the lab to market journey of innovative and promising solutions discovered and developed at MSMF MedTech Innovation Centre."

Inaugurating the centre Dr Devi Prasad Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Narayana Health said, "Innovation is key to solve the healthcare concerns that we are currently facing and I am very glad that we have been able to create a platform that nurtures the creation of innovative solutions. MSMF's vision is to fill the gap in healthcare innovation by creating a single platform for entrepreneurs to co-create solutions in conjunction with doctors, scientists and technology enthusiasts. We are hopeful the physical incubator will provide the much needed facilities that startup look for to progress with their innovation. While we have been able to support over 25 startups through our other programs like Clinical Immersion Program (CIP) and our partnership with VC Firms like, Villgro and Axilor. We also have international collaborations too with Japanese and Korean startups through JETRO and GAIN respectively.The physical infrastructure will help us to further strengthen our mission as the infrastructure can support 39 start-ups at any given point of time with the total seating capacity of 82. We are looking at nurturing 10 startups in 2021."

Dr Paul C Salins, Medical Director & Sr. Vice-President - Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre, Narayana Health and Managing Director, MSMF, added, "COVID 19 stress to healthcare has exposed its weaknesses as never before. Engineering science must now play an increasingly powerful role, reducing dependence on doctors for healthcare and empowering individuals and communities to take ownership on Health. The future of healthcare will be exciting, because we will see diagnostic and treatment possibilities never before imagined within a purely Medical sciences hospital paradigm".

An extension of the existing CIP, apart from providing physical infrastructure, the centre will continue to provide start-ups access to the clinical expertise of Narayana Health. Each of the startups incubated in the centre will be paired with a clinician with whom they can co-create the innovation, device the right clinical validation pathway to prove the product in a hospital setup.

The centre is also recognised by both Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology-BIRAC, hence the startups get access to multiple grant opportunities through these agencies. The Centre also has a prototyping lab comprising of - mechanical, electronics and AI labs. These labs give the startups a facility to build and iterate medical devices or healthcare AI platforms and test it within the departments of Narayana Health.