Rotating on the Startup Ward

Medical students and residents rotate on different specialty services during their education and training. They might spend 6 weeks in general internal medicine, 12 weeks on surgery and surgical specialties or a month on the psychiatric service. These rotations are the core of medical education under the oversight of attending physicians who are supposed to provide graduated levels of responsibility, supervision and accountability. In times past, before the present era of private beds only, there used to be wards where similarly diagnosed patients would be located during their hospital stay...a cancer ward, a TB ward or a gyn ward.

If you’re among?the applicants who matched?to a residency program this year, you’ve likely enjoyed some celebratory relief after going through the rigors of the residency-application process.?

As a medical student transitioning to residency, your life is going to change significantly in the coming months. What are the best steps to prepare for those changes in both a clinical and personal capacity?

How about using the time between after you have matched and the start of your residency doing a rotation on the startup service?

Northeastern University is one of the hottest schools in America. With applications soaring, the Boston school’s acceptance rate now rivals some Ivy League institutions.

The draw: letting students alternate academics and up to 18 months of full-time paid work experience, boosting their chances of landing a job afterward. It's time we rethink premedical education since some medical students have never had a real job. How about working for a medical startup?

Given the innovation and entrepreneurship imperative in healthcare, some are now creating the startup ward. The Texas Medical Center , for example, has partnered with Village Capital to create a campus based accelerator space designed to create and launch new TMC based ventures. Likewise, New York-based Mount Sinai Health System is expanding its internal innovation and collaboration group by partnering with Edison Nation Medical, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based “healthcare innovation marketplace”. Other hospital systems are joining hands with local accelerators and incubators as well.

Here are 40 hospitals with care innovation centers. But, do they really add value? Becker's reported on 24 hospitals and health systems that opened or announced plans to establish new centers focused on healthcare innovation in 2021.?

Eventually, interested medical students and residents and, whowouddathunkit, faculty, will be assigned rotations on these startup wards. Like their clinical experiences, they will be offered the education, resources, networks, mentors, and experiential learning they get during their 6 week rotation on neurosurgery. In addition, under the oversight of physician entrepreneurs-in-residence, business development experts and investors, they will be able to get "clinical experience" and be able fail in a safe place without inflicting too much morbidity on the patient.

It will take a while to adjust to this new reality and overcome the short sighted, myopic vested interests who don't want it to happen. But it will happen. Who knows? Maybe the "innovation attendings" might even get promotion and tenure credit for doing it.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack and Editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship