Advancing Laboratory Medicine through Innovation: A Tale of Six Inventors Moderator: Nader Rifai 1* Inventors: Eleftherios P. Diamandis, 2 Y.M. Dennis Lo, 3 Larry J. Kricka, 4 Peter Wilding, 5 Jack H. Ladenson, 6 and Carl T. Wittwer 7 “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and think- ing what nobody has thought.” Albert von Szent-Gyorgy (No- bel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1937) In a recent issue of Science Translational Medicine (1 ), Yock and colleagues of Stanford University discuss the merits and challenges of developing a discipline of medi- cal technology innovation. Innovation is defined as “in- ventiveness put to use”; a discovery that results in a com- mercial product or service. In this provocative article, the authors discuss two main streams of educational theory and practice that together form the basis for teaching in- novation: design thinking and entrepreneurship educa- tion (Fig. 1). Design thinking focuses on identifying the opportunity and need, developing the idea to solve the problem, building the prototype, and testing the product, while entrepreneurship education provides an introduc- tion to the skills and approaches required to take a prod- uct or a service and successfully commercialize it. The authors argue that medical technology innovation is the ideal environment for interdisciplinary team building combining physicians, engineers, scientists, and business professionals. In laboratory medicine, numerous scientists and physicians have been able to successfully launch their inventions into the marketplace; inventions that changed the practice of medicine. Six of those inven- tors were invited to share their success stories with the readers of Clinical Chemistry. How did they do it? What influenced most their success? What were the major drivers for their pursuits? Did they have formal train- ing in the innovation process? In addition, they were asked to score, in terms of relevance, 20 factors that influenced their endeavors (Fig. 2). My Personal Journey in Laboratory Medicine Innovation: From Industry to Academia. Eleftherios P. Diamandis There is no single recipe for success in innova- tion and there is a myr- iad of examples of highly successful entre- preneurs who have not taken a single course in entrepreneurship. I will summarize some of my own experiences as a scientist and innova- tor and comment on competencies that I acquired. I believe that the cornerstones to my apparent suc- cesses were my undergraduate degree in chemistry (1976) and my PhD in analytical chemistry (1979). This training made me an analytical biochemist, versa- tile in the art of quantitative measurements. These skills were complemented nicely with my postdoctoral training in clinical chemistry (1982–1984) and my medical degree (1986). My desire to return from Greece to Toronto as a professional was hampered by the Canadian immigra- tion laws of that time, which stipulated that recruit- ment of foreign individuals must be sponsored by companies that needed unique skills. Although at that time I was concerned about working in industry, I had no choice but to accept a position as director of re- search and development of a small biotechnology com- pany, CyberFluor, in 1986. CyberFluor was interested in developing highly sensitive nonisotopic immuno- 1 Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston, MA and Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; 2 Depart- ment of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Department of Clinical Bio- chemistry, University Health Network, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 3 Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences and Department of Chemical Pathology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong; 4 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Penn- sylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA; 5 Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia, PA; 6 Division of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO; 7 Department of Pathology, University of Utah Health Sciences Center, Salt Lake City, UT and ARUP Institute for Clinical and Experimental Pathology, Salt Lake City, UT. * Address correspondence to the moderator at: Children’s Hospital Boston, Department of Laboratory Medicine, 300 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA, 02115. Fax 617-730-0383; e-mail nader.rifai@childrens.harvard.edu. Received October 31, 2011; accepted November 1, 2011. Previously published online at DOI: 10.1373/clinchem.2011.178582 Clinical Chemistry 58:3 502–510 (2012) Special Report 502 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/clinchem/article/58/3/502/5620549 by guest on 06 May 2021