Innovation Acceleration Program (IAP)

The Innovation Acceleration Program (IAP) is a three-month long program being run by the University of Melbourne with our hospital partners; Western Health and The Royal Melbourne Hospital

The teams, which comprise hospital and University staff, started out with an ‘unmet need’ identified within the hospital setting. They spent the last couple of months working on their early stage ‘ventures’ and have recently pitched for funding in November.

Participants have benefited from the entrepreneurial training in the form of masterclasses covering topics such as; customer interviewing, forming an IP strategy, considering the funding environment and building a business model. Participants have had a number of ‘lightbulb’ moments during the course with one of our RMH clinicians speaking highly of the customer interviewing masterclass, saying “This just shows that we have to properly engage the customer before designing the solution”.

This program contributes to the wider University innovation ecosystem by specifically creating opportunities for inter-institutional collaboration between clinicians and researchers - with the aim of delivering both clinical and societal impact.

This program was run by Callum Lawrence and supported by Professor John Prins, Ruth Park-Jones and the MDHS Business Development Team who have mentored teams throughout the program. Our Masterclass facilitators have created engaging and informative experiences for our participants and for that we are thankful to Lachlan Wilson, Andrew Ronchi, Jia-Yee Lee and Justin Spanaro

These programs are made possible by the support of our hospital partners, the programs have been supported by Professor Jo Douglass and Edwina Buckle at RMH and Bill Karanatsios and Paul Eleftheriou at Western Health.

IAP Website