Curtis Lowery | UAMS Translational Research Institute

A first-of-its-kind entrepreneurship training program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) will teach its most promising young innovators how to move their health-science technologies into the marketplace.

The UAMS Translational Research Institute kicked off the program with the announcement of its first four postdoctoral trainees in the Health Science Innovation & Entrepreneurship (HSIE) Postdoctoral Scholars Program.

Entrepreneurship scholars: Melody Penning, Ph.D., Aaron Storey, Ph.D., Samir Jenkins, Ph.D., and Astha Malhotra, Ph.D.

The 15-credit graduate entrepreneurship training includes a significant new partnership with the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

The college will provide distance education courses to the UAMS scholars, who also will work with MBA student teams at the UA to develop commercialization plans for health-science technologies conceived at UAMS. The four selected in the competitive application process and their research interest areas are:

Samir Jenkins, Ph.D., nanomaterials and stem cell differentiation.
Astha Malhotra, Ph.D., 3-D printing and tissue regeneration.
Melody Penning, Ph.D., algorithms to predict adverse events in health care.
Aaron Storey, Ph.D., identification of bacteria in synovial fluid.

“The concept of translational research challenges us to more quickly move biomedical innovations and new technologies into everyday practice, and knowledge of the commercialization process is a critical factor to meet that challenge,” said Nancy Rusch, Ph.D., the program’s co-director, and professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the UAMS College of Medicine.

“I am thrilled to see this program take off and to have such an esteemed partner as Dr. Carol Reeves at the Walton College of Business, who is known nationally for developing entrepreneurs,” she said.

Carol Reeves, Ph.D., UA associate vice chancellor for entrepreneurship and innovation, said the program establishes an important new link for collaboration between the UA and UAMS.

“What the Translational Research Institute is doing with this program is a great complement to our MBA program and our graduate certificate in entrepreneurship. The UAMS scholars, biomedical discoveries and innovations are an exciting addition that strengthens both institutions.”

The collaborative relationship with Reeves’ program has its roots in the 2016 Entrepreneurship Boot Camp for UAMS graduate students. Reeves led instruction along with Rusch and Nancy Gray, Ph.D., president of BioVentures, and there have been many other collaborations since then.

The boot camp inspired Amanda Stolarz, Ph.D., a then UAMS graduate student, to join one of Reeves’ MBA teams that went on to win the 2017 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup competition along with the $25,000 top prize.

“Dr. Stolarz set a high bar for future UAMS entrepreneurs,” said Gray, who is part of the program’s leadership team. “We have a program in place now to provide the mentorship and coaching that will help aspiring UAMS entrepreneurs translate biomedical discoveries into new products, diagostics and medications to improve health outcomes. In parallel, and in partnership with the Arkansas’ business community, we plan to contribute to the growth of biotechnology-based jobs in the state.”

In addition to Rusch and Gray, the program’s leadership team includes other UAMS faculty with entrepreneurial backgrounds: Curtis Lowery, M.D., the program’s co-director and director of the new UAMS Institute for Digital Health & Innovation; Kevin Sexton, M.D., a surgeon and assistant professor in the College of Medicine, and Jay Gandy, Ph.D., chair of the program’s Internal Advisory Committee. Gandy also is professor and chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health in the UAMS College of Public Health and incoming associate provost at the UAMS Northwest Regional Campus.

The project is supported by the Translational Research Institute, grant TL1 TR003109 funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; hospital; a main campus in Little Rock; a Northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville; a statewide network of regional campuses; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute and Institute for Digital Health & Innovation. It is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 2,727 students, 870 medical residents and five dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or www.uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

Nearly everyone in the audience raised their hand when Curtis Lowery, M.D., asked if they used their smartphones for banking or making purchases. In welcoming UAMS’ first Digital Health

Conference on Nov. 30, he told the 80-plus attendees the health care industry has been frustratingly slower to follow the banking industry’s embrace of digital technology.

“It is unacceptable for me in women’s health to have maternal deaths that are preventable,” said Lowery, a nationally recognized pioneer and innovator in the use of telemedicine who chairs the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the UAMS College of Medicine. “We can do something about it.”

The conference gave researchers and health care providers an overview of the fast evolving digital health technologies and a chance to learn more specifically about the current lag in policies and regulations, and the endless opportunities this technology brings to providers and patients.

Digital health includes interactive video (telemedicine, telehealth), wearable devices, implantable devices, smartphone applications, robotics, augmented intelligence and machine learning.

UAMS digital health researcher Carolyn Greene, Ph.D., associate professor in the College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, said the

day-long conference was a valuable use of her time.

“I loved that there was an opportunity to think about research and the promise of digital health in the future, but also we got a chance to hear about all the incredible digital health work that’s happening right now across the UAMS campuses and across the state,” she said. “As a clinician, you want to know about the shiny objects – you know, the exciting stuff – but sometimes your ability to really use it depends on being able to get reimbursed for it. I thought the conference did a good job of discussing some of those practical aspects also.”

The conference’s keynote speakers were Penny Mohr from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), where she is senior advisor for Emerging Technology and Delivery System Innovation Research Initiatives; and Mei Wa Kwong, J.D., executive director of the Center for Connected Health Policy, the federally designated National Telehealth Policy Resource Center.

“I really enjoyed hearing Mei Wa Kwong talk,” said Sarah Rhoads, Ph.D., D.N.P., a former UAMS faculty researcher and now a professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis. “She did a great job simplifying and explaining the payment for mobile health and telehealth and telemedicine and the issues surrounding remote patient monitoring. It’s very important to know what the payers are willing to pay for when it comes to implementing technology.”

Rhoads also said she enjoyed Mohr’s perspective on what PCORI can and cannot fund. “It just provided a lot of clarity for me,” she said.

Health systems are behind other industries in adopting digital technologies in part because government policies haven’t kept pace with the advances, said Anita Walden, M.S., a conference organizer and instructor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the UAMS College of Medicine.

“Patients are looking forward to using digital technologies, and the industry companies and the payers are moving forward with trying to implement it,” Walden said. “They need the providers to catch up.”

Despite the challenges, Lowery said that UAMS, with the strong support of Chancellor Cam Patterson, M.D., MBA, will lead the state in adoption of digital health technologies.

“I think over the next few years we’re going to build the most modern, connected health care delivery system in the nation because we’re the only teaching hospital in the state and we have a lot of really rural and poor hospital systems everywhere,” he said. “I think all of us are committed to changing that.”

In the next five years, he predicted, the same percentage who are banking on their phones today will be receiving health care through their mobile devices.

John Paul Nolan, a research participant and Community Advisory Board member for a UAMS research study, urged Lowery and other UAMS leaders to take the lead in digital health care. Holmes, a veteran, said an expansion of telemedicine is desperately needed in rural communities. In small towns, residents notice whose vehicle is parked at a mental health clinic. Because of the stigma, people who need help often don’t get it. If mental health services could be provided via interactive video to a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, that scenario could be avoided.

“UAMS is poised to provide care,” Nolan said. With smartphones and other mobile devices, “In that moment of crisis, they don’t have to get out of the house. Those are the things we need to be looking at. UAMS brings a very powerful chip to the table because of its infrastructure, its national and international partners and the way that it is set up to study and to disseminate the information to make the public more aware of what’s going on.”

The Digital Health Conference was sponsored by the UAMS Office of Interprofessional Education, with support from the UAMS Center for Distance Health, the Department of Biomedical Informatics, South Central Telehealth Resource Center, and the UAMS Translational Research Institute.

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