What is iQ Healthtech Labs?
Innovation doesn’t happen in silos. By being intentional about building and growing collaborations and partnerships within the Innovation Quarter and drawing in traditional and non-traditional partners into the Innovation Quarter, we can maximize the potential for novel solutions moving faster through the development pipeline.
iQ Healthtech Labs represents that effort here in Winston-Salem, bringing together the expertise of our anchor academic institutions like Wake Forest School of Medicine, combining with commercial and consumer-minded partners and leveraging the power of our health system partners to test, refine, scale and rapidly deploy healthtech solutions.
As a physical and virtual strategic partnership hub that leverages the unique, worldclass intellectual anchors that exist within the Innovation Quarter, iQ Healthtech Labs seeks to pair them with industry and commercial partners that have ideas they’re looking to advance into the marketplace.
What are the focus areas of iQ Healthtech Labs?
iQ Healthtech Labs are organized based on the growing sectors of focus that have begun to emerge and will continue to be intentionally cultivated within the Innovation Quarter:
Value & Health Transformation Sector – Using population health
tools, research and approaches to produce insights and models that enable
health systems and communities to move to value-based models of care.
o Healthy Aging Sector – Integrating technologies, exceptional aging &
Alzheimer’s research, and innovative approaches to help people live longer
and healthier.
Virtual Health Sector – Using technology, behavioral economics, and
process improvement to make access to high quality healthcare easier,
including telehealth, virtual health and retail health delivery.
Personalized Care & Precision Medicine Sector – Developing and
refining novel approaches (such as genomics and humanoids) that take into account a patient’s genetic makeup to improve health, rather than a onesize-fits-all approach to medicine.
Learning Systems Sector – Exploring and refining new opportunities,
technologies and approaches for experiential learning and teaching through novel methods such as virtual learning.
Each sector will feature its own “lab,” in terms of collaborative organizations, virtual connectivity infrastructure, and eventually physical space. Each lab will be anchored by existing research and innovation “engines” within the Innovation Quarter, such as the Center for Healthcare Innovation and the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Where is iQ Healthtech Labs located?
In its early stages and while intense social distancing continues, iQ Healthtech Labs will frequently gather partners and collaborate virtually, while growing its physical presence within Bailey Power Plant. There, partner companies will share collaborative space with Innovation Quarter anchor tenants in an environment of ideating, creating, making and
developing.
In the future, our vision is to develop a stand-alone building within the north district of the Innovation Quarter to house iQ Healthtech Labs.
What is “healthtech”?
Similar to the term “fintech,” healthtech is a coined term that encompasses any project, idea, product or solution that exists within the broad intersection between health and technology. It could encompass actual products or technologies, or it could encompass solutions or approaches to health care delivery that are aided by technology or innovation.
