exists now. West says he does not see solving the problem with a single advance or approach, but rather with a series of initiatives that will undoubtedly threaten vested healthcare interests, entrenched bureaucracies, and political factions.
“This is probably the most difficult thing to work out of anything you could pick out in the whole world today,” West says. “But the stakes are so big and things are going so bad that I just felt compelled to spend my time and my money to help this country, as well as the rest of the world, see some things they have not seen before.”
His plans for the institute include hiring 20 to 25 post-doctoral researchers, whose job will be to help bring innovative wireless health technologies to market. “Most of the people who are going to need help are going to be young entrepreneurs,” West says. He sees them conducting laboratory research and helping with clinical trials for client companies like Corventis.
West also has ambitious plans for generating substantial revenue streams to sustain the non-profit institute, and it will be interesting to see how these ideas play out.
One idea that West outlined for me calls for establishing an engineering skunk works to advance the institute’s own ideas for technology innovation, and to generate funding by commercializing the products created there.
Another idea is to provide business and technology innovation mentoring services to entrepreneurs—in exchange for some sort of royalty or an equity stake in the startup company developing the technology. West says the institute also will have access to startup capital, either from the institute itself or from venture capital firms, which West says already have shown strong interest in funding startups through the institute.
“We are going to go out and develop our own revenue streams,” West says.
By hiring industry and regulatory experts, West also expects the institute to generate a smaller revenue stream by providing specialized classes to fulfill
