Why I joined PureTech
Joichi Ito
President of the Chiba Institute of Technology. Co-Founder of Digital Garage and the Neurodiversity School in Tokyo.
When I became the director of the MIT Media Lab three years ago, my previous primary "occupation" was investing in and advising startup companies. I invested in mostly Internet-related software and service companies (e.g., Twitter, Flickr, Kickstarter). Joining the Media Lab and MIT was bit of a "pivot"–academia was a fundamentally different model for impacting the world, focused more on fundamental science and technology that wasn’t as easily commercialized.
In order to focus on the Media Lab after joining, I decided I would stop investing in startup companies. (I invested in Media Lab alumni companies, Littlebits and Form Labs, before I officially started at the Lab.) As I immersed myself in learning about the Lab and MIT, I continued to learn and think about how different types of science and technology made their way into the world. In particular, I was intrigued by how biomedical research, which has a major impact on human health, seemed to have an extremely different profile, requiring a great deal of upfront investment. I knew very little about biomedical research but was very interested.
Even before I arrived at MIT, I had heard about Bob Langer. He is famous for his impact on commercializing biomedical research, and for helping to substantially advance the field of bioengineering. He has 1,050 patents and a group of dozens of researchers. Bob is one of the 11 Institute Professors at MIT who are recognized by the Institute for their outstanding contributions and who report directly to the provost and not a dean.
Last June, David L. Lucchino, a former student of Bob’s who had run a startup coming out of Bob’s lab, invited me to my first Red Sox game together with Bob Langer and a few of his friends. I got to sit next to Bob and he offered to teach me about his field and show me how to do things at MIT. Since then, Bob has become a true mentor and now has an affiliation at the Media Lab, working with the Center for Extreme Bionics, an Institute-wide initiative based at the Media Lab to work on a wide variety of technologies focused on eliminating human disabilities.
Recently Bob told me about a related project that he has been working on as a co-founder and senior partner at a company called PureTech. PureTech focuses on taking science and engineering, primarily in the healthcare area, and developing innovative products and companies. It provides a base for researchers and funds the early development of both the technologies and the companies.
A team of senior partners, researchers, and entrepreneurs is currently working on 11 projects at various stages of development. The company is run by Daphne Zohar, its founder and CEO. On the surface, it looks like an incubator, but it really is a new model in many ways. There is actual translational research going on within PureTech, where the PureTech team is actively both acting as founders and also operating labs and running experiments.
Bob told me that more and more of the PureTech companies had software and Internet elements, and that they were looking for more expertise in that area on the board. This sounded like the perfect opportunity for me–participating in conversations about healthcare, bioengineering and biomedical technology with the best in the field while being allowed to contribute an area of business where I had some experience.
Healthcare is universal: we are all patient-consumers on some level and the patient will increasingly be at the center of healthcare decision making. We will also be immersed in technology that can measure our physiology in real-time as shown by the emergence of wearables. As technology and clinical practice converge, digital technologies will also increasingly enter the world of mainstream medicine, creating an entirely new area increasingly being referred to as “electronic medicine,” which has the potential for incredible growth. Vast amounts of data that Internet and tech companies use to make decisions can also be leveraged for healthcare, opening opportunities for real-time disease monitoring and new targeted patient engagement opportunities.
I recently joined the board and PureTech announced a new funding round today. I have been working on two companies in particular, Akili - a cognitive gaming company that aims to diagnose and treat cognitive problems, and another cross-disciplinary digital health project that is still in stealth mode.
I think that healthcare and bioengineering are exciting spaces that are growing quickly, and thanks to many amazing labs in this field in the Kendall Square/Cambridge area, we have a regional advantage. I hope that PureTech can help create an effective pathway to impact health in new and positive ways, and that I can help contribute to this while continuing to learn.
Photo: via Alkili
Great to hear that you have got back to the game. :) Hoping to see more good news on how your skills and connections in both world of education and business enhance each other. There is much potential for good in healthcare tech, but in the past it has been too much focused on the institutions, not the people themselves. One thing I would hope to see in the new generation of health tech companies is opening the collected (and analysed) data for the person itself. Without access to the data about themselves, people don’t have ability to take the data from different sources and create new insights by combining it together (with new tools and services that were not existing before). There are 3 stages of personal data access in the online world: — API ecosystem model (where each service has its own APIs, without central architecture) — Aggregator model (central aggregator collecting / transmitting data, combining various personal data APIs to be accessed under one API) — My Data model (where instead of having aggregator, person can take the data and combine it together to new apps and services himself) Of the last data access model, there has been good amount of research done in Finland recently. Increasingly, there are slowly starting to be more actual examples of what actual data portability would be and what it would mean in both business world and public sector services. Without access to their health data, people can not understand as much of their past and current health condition… or learn of what could be done to improve their future. Technology can have ability to make large improvements, but that only comes when both normal people, companies and traditional institutions start to understand that they have to collaborate to create better future for everyone. Locking up data in proprietary formats, and behind curtains of institutions slow down the ability to actually heal people of their various health problems. Question is, how will people work together in the future?
Partner/Co-Founder, Crowdsourcing Week
10 年Congrats. Time to catch up ...
Building Southeast Asia’s leading EV motorcycle company for Indonesia and SE Asia
10 年I'd be super interested in the union of brain and digital. The power of the unconscious mind is just waiting to be tapped into for better self awareness and improvement. There's obvious ethical concerns but as it is with any new tech, I'm pretty sure it can be managed.
Producer, SAG AFTRA OC & VO Talent, Writer
10 年Great Read