INDIANAPOLIS—A Kelley School of Business Indianapolis professor is part of an Indiana University-led consortium that has been named one of 15 finalists in the National Science Foundation’s Regional Innovation Engines competition.
The Indiana Musculoskeletal Health Partnership for the Advancement of Care & Treatment (IMPACT) consortium builds on IU’s musculoskeletal health research leadership and Indiana’s $99 billion life sciences industry. If awarded, the grant will continue to position Indiana as a global hub for musculoskeletal health technologies that advance treatment for conditions such as arthritis, osteoporosis and chronic back pain.
Kelley Indianapolis professor Amrou Awaysheh serves as IMPACT’s Chief Technology and Innovation Officer.
To learn more about his role and the consortium’s work, we sat down with Amrou to discuss its work.
Q: Can you tell us about this grant and IMPACT’s goals?
A: I want us to think about an ecosystem: an innovation ecosystem and what that means. I’ll give you an example. A lot of people think if you are doing something in technology or a technology startup, you should go to Silicon Valley, right? Silicon Valley hasn’t been like this for decades. It developed after World War II when the U.S. government really invested, along with companies and universities, to set up what we now know as Silicon Valley. Today, the U.S. government, through the National Science Foundation (NSF), seeks to set up innovation ecosystems across various parts of the country—all in different areas of expertise as part of the Chips and Science Act. The goal is to leverage local competitive advantages to spur innovation, make centers of excellence, and bring all the world to that area as we did for Silicon Valley.
Our proposal is to build the Musculoskeletal Health Innovation Triangle. A lot of people don’t know, but Warsaw, Ind. is considered the orthopedic capital of the world. Companies there make a majority of the replacement hips and knees used all over the world. The goal is to bring together what they are doing there, in Fort Wayne at Parkview Health, in Indianapolis at the IU School of Medicine, in Bloomington where IU has many core competencies, and in West Lafayette with biomedical engineering. That geographically builds a triangle. We want to make it the destination for people who want to be involved in orthopedic research, from product design to product manufacturing to patient-use case scenarios with clinical trials.
Q: If awarded this grant, how will it help continue this work?
A: We’re trying to bring government (including the state of Indiana), industry, and academia together. We’re trying to leverage these resources for an additive multiplicative event, where one plus one equals three. The best way to think about it is: How can we bring together people who otherwise would not have come together, and how can they solve problems that we haven’t even considered?
Indiana is known for this. We’re very good at bringing to the same table diverse people with varied expertise to work toward a shared mission. That collaborative spirit allows us to excel at this.
We’ve gone through a number of different stages with the NSF grant process. This is the final stage. It involves the NSF coming to Indianapolis, and meeting our stakeholder. They’re going to see IU LAB, where IMPACT will be housed. They’ll be able to understand how IMPACT fits within the state and university life sciences ecosystem.
Q: What does this mean for Kelley, Indiana University, and the state?
For the Kelley School, this work represents one of our core competencies. Our leaders have set a strategy to translate and commercialize our work. We can take it out of the classroom, which we do very well as we train our graduate and undergraduate students, but how can we apply it to industry? And I’ve been doing this for about 15 years, and we are trying to share this with more people.
At Indiana University, we’re focused on innovation, building innovation ecosystems, and helping to spur translation. We call it translation as in taking the science we develop at the university and commercializing it. We’re trying to translate the research into something that industry can sell.
As for the state, we know Warsaw, Ind. is the orthopedic capital of the world. We want to bring more of that core expertise to central Indiana and better connect the state.
Q: Why is this work important?
A: One of the most important things about this mechanism is that it’s not just about doing the research. The research has to be commercialized. We have a term called technology readiness level, or TRL. How do we identify innovations or products in earlier stages of TRL, and how do we accelerate faster and bring the innovations to market? That’s what we’re trying to do.
One in two people are going to be affected by some kind of musculoskeletal disorder. More than 75% of people over the age of 75 are going to have some kind of musculoskeletal injury. That’s the real human cost and the real human impact of what we’re doing. And I think it’s important to consider that.
As far as economic impact, more than 5% of the U.S GDP comes from the musculoskeletal market. That’s more than $380 billion in healthcare spending in the U.S. alone. More than 40% of primary care visits are related to some kind of musculoskeletal injury. And in the U.S., there are more than 364 million workdays that are lost due to musculoskeletal injuries.
It’s so important to think about what we have here in the U.S., but also, we need to think about the global burden and the global impact. More than 1.7 billion people are affected by some kind of musculoskeletal injury.
Our goal, our vision, our hope, our dream is to make life just a little bit more comfortable, so impacted people can walk a little bit more, work a little bit more effectively, and have more fruitful lives.
To be a finalist is just phenomenal. There’s a huge team that’s involved in helping us do this. It’s a lot of work, but it’s very rewarding. That’s what keeps me excited about it.
Q: Can you tell us more about IMPACT?
A: IMPACT stands for Indiana Musculoskeletal Health Partnership for the Advancement of Care and Treatment. IMPACT bridges the gap between unmet medical needs and the technologies that can solve them.
Four individuals are helping to get this off the ground. Jim Lancaster, who has decades of industry experience, is the interim CEO. From the IU School of Medicine, there’s Melissa Kacena, who is the chief science officer, and Jill Fehrenbacher, who is the chief learning officer.
I am the chief technology and innovation officer. This is an area I research and teach in our graduate programs. It’s also reflected in my work with the IU Business Sustainability and Innovation Lab and previous startups that I’ve launched. It builds on this idea of commercialization and digitizing manufacturing that I have experience in.
Read more about the IU-led consortium here.
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