Mayo Clinic and scientific research company Leidos are teaming up on a new effort surrounding patient-focused innovation.
Together, the two organizations will create an accelerator on Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville, Florida campus. More specifically, it will be within Mayo’s Life Sciences Incubator campus, which is a Jacksonville medtech hub that advances products from the research lab and into the clinic.
The new accelerator will also leverage Leidos’ systems integration solutions and public health applications.
Ultimately, the goal is to identify, develop and commercialize products, solutions and services that will help patients and providers.
“The shared values and deep passion for transforming healthcare make this collaboration a powerful force for the advancement of innovative methods and quick translation of these solutions across the healthcare ecosystem,” said Leidos Health group president Jon Scholl, according to a news release. “The clinical knowledge of the Mayo Clinic combined with our technical expertise has the potential to truly transform the quality of healthcare in the future.”
In a statement, Kent Thielen, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida, added: “We look forward to combining the power of our two organizations that will help us advance new solutions to solve the most complex healthcare challenges. Working together will allow us to spark a vibrant ecosystem to bring innovation to the direct benefit of patients more quickly.”
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo also launched a collaboration with MyMeds, a startup out of Minneapolis, in December. The partnership — which, more specifically, is between MyMeds and Mayo Clinic Global Business Solutions — seeks to improve medication adherence rates and help patients have better healthcare outcomes.
Through the alliance, MyMeds’ proprietary ACE (Adherence, Communication, Education) Medication Experience will now include Mayo Clinic educational information about medications. In other words, patients enrolled in MyMeds’ platforms will be able to access medication-related educational content from Mayo Clinic.
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