Paul Yock, M.D.

The National Academy of Engineering and Ohio University announced today that the 2019 Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ Prize will be given to Julio Palmaz, Leonard Pinchuk, Richard Schatz, John Simpson, and Paul Yock for innovations leading to the widespread adoption of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), previously known as angioplasty with stent or coronary angioplasty. The $500,000 biennial prize, which recognizes a bioengineering achievement that significantly improves the human condition, cites PCI for “seminal contributions to coronary angioplasty, enabling minimally invasive treatment of advanced coronary artery disease.”

“The Russ Prize recipients personify engineering creations that advance health and healthcare every day,” said NAE President C. D. Mote, Jr. “The PCI makes a remarkable contribution to patient well-being, helping millions afflicted with advanced coronary artery disease and significant angina… Continue reading.

The “move fast and break things” approach that works in tech doesn’t translate well to healthcare. Instead, digital health startups should try need-driven innovation.

A decade ago, a wave of companies promised to transform people’s health by allowing them to track data about their eating, sleep, exercise, and other habits. One hot startup of that moment, Zeo, raised more than $30 million from investors to develop a headband that tracked users’ sleep patterns and an accompanying app to serve as their personal “sleep coach.” Despite devoted users and buzz about its product in publications like Wired and Popular Science, Zeo quietly went out of business a few years later.

Zeo is just one of many digital health startups whose early promise failed to materialize into lasting impact. Money continues to pour into the space–to the tune of nearly $12 billion in investment in 2017–but few companies have cracked the code for delivering technologies that truly transform healthcare. Why?

Many digital health companies fall short because they apply a strategy to healthcare that was developed and refined in the tech sector, an entirely different industry with its own set of rules… Continue reading.

Paul Yock, MD, professor of medicine and of bioengineering at Stanford University and the founder and director of the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign, will receive the National Academy of Engineering’s 2018 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education.

The academy said Yock was chosen for “the development and global dissemination of Biodesign, a biomedical technology training program that creates leaders and innovations that benefit patients.” The prize is the academy’s top honor for teaching and carries a $500,000 award.

Yock, who holds the Martha Meier Weiland Professorship and was the founding co-chair of Stanford’s Department of Bioengineering, is known internationally for his work inventing and testing new medical devices in the field of interventional cardiology. Motivated to help other aspiring innovators succeed in developing devices to improve health care, he founded Stanford Biodesign in 2001. Reflecting its roots in both engineering and medicine, Biodesign is part of Bio-X, Stanford’s interdisciplinary biosciences institute… Continue reading.