Apex Landmark, Texas 4000 and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

How It Works

Texas Health Catalyst publishes health problems identified by clinical, industry and community health experts. Innovators with ideas for new health products to address these problems compete for funding from Texas Health Catalyst. Panels of these experts convene to advise finalists on how to move their products forward and, eventually, select which finalists will receive awards and nonfinancial support. Both university researchers and companies in Central Texas may participate, although only those affiliated with The University of Texas at Austin can receive financial awards.

The program, now in its third cycle, has supported more than 50 projects with feedback and expert guidance and provided financial support to 12 projects. The financial awards to date total $490,000, which includes funding from donors as well as matching funds provided by the UT provost’s office, Cockrell School of Engineering, College of Natural Sciences and College of Pharmacy. The true value of the awards, however, cannot be measured in dollars. Including the current cycle, 24 Texas Health Catalyst finalists have received in-kind support from key industry and clinical advisers, around 3,000 expert adviser hours so far.

Like its supporters, including Founders Circle donors Apex Landmark, Texas 4000 and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR), the Texas Health Catalyst team knows that it takes more than great research to get a promising new idea out of the university and into the health care marketplace. It takes capital and timely guidance from the right people.

“Working with growth enterprises, we understand the necessity of strong support and strategic advice for the company from the outset, which is exactly what the Texas Health Catalyst provides to its companies,” says Sabrina Poulos, an expert in intellectual property law and partner at WSGR, a firm providing legal services to technology, life sciences and growth enterprises worldwide. “At WSGR, we have long focused on helping growth enterprises formulate their IP and exit strategies and are happy to use our experience to provide similar guidance to the Texas Health Catalyst groups.”

Why It’s Different

With expertise in commercializing technology developed at universities and research institutions for both American and Chinese markets, Apex Landmark CEO and managing partner J.P. Li recognizes the potential for Texas Health Catalyst to make a major impact.

“We are attracted to [Texas Health Catalyst] mainly because of the people, the vision and the program’s unique way of growing these new ideas,” Li says. The design of the program, which brings together a diverse community of experts, ensures that new projects have the academic and industrial consulting they need to get to the next major milestone.

The program begins each cycle with a request for proposals in areas where Dell Med clinicians have identified needs. Those three areas correspond to UT Health Austin’s first set of clinical institutes: the Women’s Health Institute, the Musculoskeletal Institute and the Mulva Clinic for the Neurosciences. In collaboration with clinicians as well as industry and community health experts, the Texas Health Catalyst team compiles a list of problem statements in these areas, each statement a challenge to university and community researchers.

Nishi Viswanathan, director of Texas Health Catalyst, says such an approach is unique among health innovation incubators and will be key to its success.

“We’re bringing together teams of innovators — local industry experts, engineers, scientists and clinicians — to address critical health care challenges. And we provide them with the tools they need to succeed,” Viswanathan says. “The breadth and depth of knowledge of Texas Health Catalyst advisory panel members uniquely positions innovators to develop solutions that can make a real impact.”

Impact in Austin Already

Karl Koenig, MD, MS, medical director of the Musculoskeletal Institute, recognized an immediate clinical need: a means to facilitate complex clinical scheduling. As part of Dell Med’s initiative to revolutionize health care, its clinics take a patient-centered approach: Each patient has a dedicated, multidisciplinary team of specialists who collaboratively manage the patient’s care from the same location. As it turns out, this revolutionary approach to medicine requires a revolutionary scheduling tool, one that did not exist until Koenig’s team won the Texas Health Catalyst award and received funds to develop it.

Koenig says winning financial support was critical to bringing his team’s innovation from “inception to prototype.” Now, this prototype is being put to use at the Musculoskeletal Institute, which opened October 17. Koenig says he looks forward to testing the prototype more robustly, refining the algorithms as the clinic gets busier.

“Without the Texas Health Catalyst support to build a working prototype of the workflow optimization tool and schedules, I wouldn’t have had any idea how to set up a schedule for an integrated, multidisciplinary team clinic,” Koenig says. “This was crucial to opening the Musculoskeletal Institute at UT Health Austin.”

The opportunity to perform clinical trials of this new technology so shortly after initial development speaks to another strength of the Texas Health Catalyst program: its proximity to Dell Medical School and UT Health Austin’s clinics. This proximity further streamlines the development and commercialization of the most promising ideas.

Adela Ben-Yakar, PhD, a professor in UT’s Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Departments, is another program success story. Ben-Yakar’s team won a Texas Health Catalyst award for developing a new laser surgery probe for precise bone-cutting. “We kind of knew how our research could be used, but having access to doctors at Dell Medical helped us identify a very specific application,” she says. “For us, that was really important.”

Other features of the program — the seed funding and business consulting — were also critical to bringing Ben-Yakar’s research to the next phase. The funds enabled Ben-Yakar’s student to spend time collecting data on the new laser probe. With these initial results, she has now applied for a larger National Institutes of Health grant to support further development of the technology. On the consulting side, Ben-Yakar notes: “[Texas Health Catalyst] gave us a forum to think about the business aspects of our research. For example, we received help creating and polishing a pitch deck that can be sent to potential investors.”

Local Support

Chris Condit, a UT alumnus and founder of Texas 4000, knows firsthand how critical it is for promising researchers to get both seed funding and industry advice: “As a biomedical engineer who has worked at start-ups spun out of the industry, as well as industry giants like Abbott, where I am now, I know that there can be brilliant ideas and tech on campus that can’t make the impact they should because they don’t have the guidance. Texas Health Catalyst is bridging that gap.”

Texas 4000 is a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating the next generation of student leaders and engaging communities in the fight against cancer. It gets its name from an annual charity bike ride — more than 4,000 miles — from Austin to Anchorage, the organization’s cornerstone event. Student riders raise funds, educate communities along the route, and form a grant committee at the end of the ride that helps determine where funds go.

“Our student riders work hard to raise funds, so we look to give where we can have the biggest impact,” Condit says. “Texas Health Catalyst is identifying exciting therapeutic and diagnostic tools with real market viability. To have the brains of their organization analyzing these problems and drawing out the most promising funding opportunities is a huge benefit for us. They do the work, then we get to fund exciting, promising research that can impact cancer right here on the UT campus.”

Scott Crews, executive director of Texas 4000, says Dell Med’s community-centered mission is particularly compelling to the group.

“It is rare that a med school starts up in your community, so we’re super excited for our riders,” Crews says. “Many aspire to careers in medicine, either as doctors, or as accountants who work specifically in hospitals, or the like. Our student riders will volunteer at Dell Medical, and they will have the opportunity to help bring a community together around cancer research and treatment. We look forward to working together so we both succeed.”

The Founders Circle is reserved for donors who give $50,000 or more to Dell Med in its early stages of development. In addition to other perks, donors to Texas Health Catalyst get early access to leading-edge innovation in Austin’s thriving new health district. “We have a front-row seat now,” Condit says, “and that is awesome.”

More information about the program is available on the Texas Health Catalyst website or by email.

Published May 2018