The Innovation Jam is a “Shark Tank” style event which solicits and identifies high-potential healthcare and health innovations ready for commercialization that is open all Duke faculty, staff, trainees and students.

Applicants submit pragmatic health innovations with an immediate application at Duke and/or commercial potential. Proposed ideas can be a concept or a simple prototype, but must have a clear business and value proposition.

In the first five years of jamming, we heard 30+ pitches and helped incubate 8 companies including:

  • InnAVasc: Jeff Lawson and Shawn Gage
    • A medical device company that designs and develops products for vascular and hemodialysis access
    • $2.9M raised through DAN and MedBlue
    • Working through regulatory approval process
  • kelaHealth: Erich Huang, Katherine Heller, and Jeff Sun
    • Analytics / machine learning platform to optimize surgical outcomes
    • STTR funding $225K (NOA anytime), NC IDEA matching -$65K
    • Final due diligence at Duke Angel Network & a seed-stage fund – Another likely angel investment (Greenbox ventures)
  • SCANSLATED: Ryan Short, Nick Befera, and Raj Gondalia
    • Software platform transforms technical radiology report into a diagrammatic, simple document to enhance patient comprehension and engagement
    • Acquired ~4M radiology reports for training and testing machine learning algorithms
    • Finalist in the SIIM 2017 Innovation Challenge