Health tech incubator to open clinical simulation and medical device labs

RENDERING © HDR MATTER followed the announcement of the planned AMA Interaction Studio with another announcement that it will open two additional spaces this summer.

Health care technology incubator MATTER announced it will add two new studios to its Chicago facility this summer: the Shop and the Stage.

For the Stage, MATTER and two of its founding partners — OSF HealthCare and the Jump Trading Simulation & Education Center — are working together to build a flexible simulation facility that allows physicians and entrepreneurs to test out their products in a real-world environment. Melissa Lederer, MATTER’s director of marketing, says the space can be modified to accommodate different health care spaces, such as an operating room, doctor’s office or exam room.

Lederer says the Shop will feature 3-D prototyping capabilities and other tools that medical device startups can use for simpler engineering tasks. "It may be a scenario where they have an existing prototype and need to bring it in for a meeting or a presentation," Lederer explains. "Perhaps they need to take it apart and take a look or something or modify it to some degree."

The announcement of these two new spaces came as MATTER celebrated its first 100 days of being in operation last week. In February, it announced a partnership between the American Medical Association and design firm HDR to open the AMA Interaction Studio, with the goal of developing the "physician office of the future."

All three spaces are being built out and MATTER anticipates that they will open later this summer. It is working with its partners and the entrepreneurs and tech startups that use its facility to define the details of each space. Lederer says she hopes it will continue to spur greater innovation and integration between health care providers and the technology community.

"I heard a story once that a company created a medical device that had sound attached to it, but when they got into the operating room, the room was too noisy for the product to be heard," Lederer recalls. "If they had had an opportunity to create and use that product in a real-world experience, they could have iterated and fixed the problem much earlier. That’s really what these rooms are about."