Do you have an innovative idea? Are you already advanced in your innovation route? The Innovation Center can support in various ways, such as:
Develop your idea
Implement your idea
Collaborate with stakeholders
Having an idea is exciting and challenging at the same time. The road from idea, to a viable, actual product, or service may be challenging yet promising. We’re here to support your project at any stage, with the best results starting early. We streamline the process, bring clarity, and save you time and effort.
We start this process by asking key questions about your innovative idea, such as what problem it solves, its current development status, and your vision for the final product or service. We also explore its uniqueness, potential users, similar solutions on the market, and whether you have the expertise within the UMCG and your network to further develop it.
File a patent
The purpose of Intellectual Property (IP) protection is to increase the chances to develop your idea further. This is possible by setting up a startup or out licensing the IP rights to an existing company.
Set up a license agreement
Once a patent is filed, the IP rights can be out-licensed to a company. The company will obtain the rights to use the patented finding or innovation for commercialisation purposes. If a company has interest to develop the idea further, we help setup and negotiate the terms for license agreement. These agreements make sure that both the interests of the UMCG and its employees are covered. License agreements are always established in collaboration with UMCG’s Legal Support Contract Research.
If you want to bring your own idea further, you may want to consider setting up a company. The spin-off company can obtain a license from the UMCG on the patent and take the next steps in the product development. The Innovation Center can support you through each of the following phases towards running your own company.
Do you want your healthcare innovation adopted into the routine clinical setting of the UMCG? This implementation process includes going through many steps and including many different parties within the UMCG. The Innovation center can guide you through this process, by (…)
During this process of implementation of a healthcare innovation, the Innovation Center supports the implementation of healthcare innovations by assisting you with your project plans, identifying bottlenecks, guiding initiatives through key phases and procedures, enabling internal collaborations, and connecting you with relevant parties and communities within UMCG.
Telemonitoring solutions
Telemonitoring is a rapidly moving field, consisting of many different new tools and applications to enable remote patient monitoring and care. We can help you identify the right steps to take towards the development and/or implementation of your telemonitoring tool.
When assessing a telemonitoring tool, we consider the problem it addresses, its intended users, and its specificities. We also take into consideration how and where it will be implemented, the Departments and/or external parties involved, and its compatibility with the UMCG’s organisational and technical framework.
As a knowledge institute, we collaborate frequently with industry partners to create societal impact. Having an industry partner involved in a defined research area reinforces the societal need associated with the research line. This gives the UMCG confidence that the results generated through the collaboration are likely to address a societal need and the existence of a partner capable of bringing the product or service to the market. Moreover, the industrial partner is willing to take a risk to fund the defined scientific field with no guarantee of success (science can be unpredictable).
Tackling societal problems often requires a multidisciplinary approach and various partners. In some cases, it is valuable to create an Innovation Node or ecosystem on a specific topic, to facilitate the connection between partners. The Innovation Center can support setting up an Innovation Node or ecosystem; we have a leading role in the ecosystems originating from SNN subsidies (Samenwerkingsverband Noord-Nederland), projects under the National Program Groningen (NPG), and Nij Begun program. Have a look at the running projects: Collaboration partners (umcgresearch.org).
As many colleagues of the UMCG are looking for similar answers, we aim to bring people together to share experiences and identify shared problems. The Innovation Center creates communities within the UMCG. These communities cover topics regarding innovation, valorisation, and implementation (e.g. telemonitoring) to inform and facilitate researchers and clinicians.
