Monday, November 17, 2003

Biotech

Bioemd Rounds: Medicine and innovation come together in CIMIT

By Dyke Hendrickson

In an era in which health care leaders are pushing for greater efficiency in the implementation of medical technology, the name of CIMIT is gaining significant recognition.

CIMIT is an acronym for the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology.

The Cambridge-based organization is a nonprofit consortium of institutions including Partners HealthCare System, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Draper Laboratory and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Boston Children's Hospital added itself to the membership just last week.

There are numerous organizations that talk about improving health care systems, but CIMIT appears to be actually doing it.

It has funding that provides a full-time staff, and access to grant money to support projects it believes can improve medical care.

Its goal: Move technology from the bench to the bedside.

"I'd say we are a unique organization," said Kirby Vosburgh, associate director. "There's no place in the world that is doing exactly what we are.

"The Boston area provides the opportunity for us, with its research facilities, level of technology and the widespread interest."

The idea of CIMIT developed in 1994, when several area clinicians realized they lacked a vehicle with which to work with scientists in their given fields.

A nascent group headed by Dr. John Parrish formed in 1994. It formally organized in 1998, after receiving grants from the Department of Defense and Massachusetts General Hospital. Parrish today is CIMIT's director.

CIMIT receives about $10 million a year from the DoD, and for that reason CIMIT works closely with the U.S. Army. The organization employs about 12 full-time medical professionals and several dozen part-timers on an ad hoc basis.

Organization officials say it has provided financial support to close to 145 projects over the past five years.

CIMIT recently hosted its fifth annual "stakeholder briefing," which was open to doctors, technologists and health care professionals from throughout the region. This year the event drew about 270, up from last year's attendance of 150.

"We were pleased with the increased interest," said Janice Crosby, director of business development. "We want to facilitate collaboration, and we can do that more effectively with more participants."

At the event, CIMIT showcased several of the projects that it has helped fund or for which it has helped find partners. One project to which CIMIT provided financial support was research to advance ultrasound surgery.

GE Medical Systems had initially backed a local research team, but withdrew. CIMIT believed in the technology, and helped fund the research while it moved toward commercialization. After advances were made, GE reinvested. The research has manifested itself in a company called InSight Therapeutics in Cambridge.

In another example of CIMIT action, the organization supported a project to explore new methods for cooling the brain during neurosurgery. The work led to a patent filed by Massachusetts General Hospital. Later, local VC firm Spray Venture Partners licensed the technology from MGH. The result is a new company called SeaCoast Technologies Inc. of Portsmouth, N.H.

"We believed in the company and the work that had gone into the technology," said J. Daniel Cole, a senior partner at Spray Venture Partners. "We are confident in its future."

One of CIMIT's most robust programs is collaborative research in Russia. Scientists associated with CIMIT are attempting to learn more about the underpinnings of bioterrorism and are accessing the expertise of researchers in the former Soviet Union.

"With the CIMIT-Russia Program, we are anticipating the kinds of synergist success that will reverberate - for years to come," Parrish said in a statement.

Dyke Hendrickson reports on biotechnology and medical devices. He can be reached at dhendrickson@masshightech.com.