Heres a group getting it together in the murky world of healthcare collaboration

The landscape for how to turn life science and health care technologies into viable companies has changed more in the last 3 years than in the last 30. New approaches to translational medicine have emerged. Our Lean Launchpad for Life Sciences is one of them. But a new class of life science/healthcare co-working and collaboration space is another.

The National Institutes of Health recognizes that Life Science/Health Care commercialization has two components: the science/technology, and the business model.TheLean Launchpad for Life Sciences (the I-Corps @ NIH) uses theLean Startup Model to discover and validate the business model.

The classprovides Life Science/Health Care entrepreneurs with real world, hands-on learning on how to rapidly:

This user/customer-centered approach is a huge step in the right direction in the life science/health care commercialization. However, one of the bottlenecks in actually doing Customer Discovery for medical devices/health care is testing how minimal viable products work in-context. Testing hypotheses with doctors, patients, payers, providers, purchasing departments, strategic partners is hard. It can involve traveling hundreds of miles and can consume months of time and loads of money. Scheduling time to look over a surgeons shoulder in an operating room is tough. Getting time to brainstorm with payers or experts in clinical trials is hard.

It would be great if there were a way to first test these hypotheses and minimal viable products in a realistic setting locally. Then after a first pass of validation, take them on the road and see if others agree.

A new life science/healthcare co-working and collaboration spaceIt looks like someone is actually pulling this together in a life science/healthcare co-working and collaboration space in Chicago called MATTER.

Co-working spaces seem to be evolving into the startup garages of the future. Its a shared work environment (typically a floor of a building) where individuals (or small teams) rent space and work around other people but independently. Yet they share values and hopefully some synergy around topics of mutual interest (same customers, or technologies). Incubators are designed for teams with an idea. They add mentors and additional services and some offer free space in exchange for equity. Accelerators take teams with fairly focused ideas and offer a formal 3-4 month program of tutoring/mentoring with seed funding in exchange for equity.

The MATTERco-working space will havefive unique things specifically for life science/healthcare companies:

By building a co-working space that includes all of these stakeholders, MATTERallows startups (and companies) to get in front of customers and other members of the value chain first, before they leave the building.

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Heres a group getting it together in the murky world of healthcare collaboration