Our goal is to identify novel surgical innovations and technologies at the University of Michigan, and partner with those investigators to help accelerate their technologies so they can move forward and create impactful change for patients.
The Surgical Innovation Development Accelerator Course (SIDAC) is a six-month program for surgical faculty designed to teach the essentials of innovation and entrepreneurship while developing their ideas toward clinical impact. The course and competition starts with an innovation proposal and culminates in a symposium where the top surgical innovation teams compete for additional award funding and resources. From the initial round of submissions, the oversight committee selects the top proposals to move forward and participate in the Surgical Innovation Development Accelerator Course (SIDAC) to help de-risk and develop their ideas with the end goal to give a formal pitch in a “Shark Tank” format at the symposium to the oversight committee, judges and investors.
In alternate years when the larger Surgical Innovation Prize is not offered, and in order to better cultivate and develop earlier stage projects into winning team projects for the next SIDAC, we offer the Michigan Surgical Innovation Accelerator (MSIA) program. This is an opportunity for surgical innovation teams who are early in their technology development the chance to accelerate and de-risk their ideas through expert mentorship and customer discovery. MSIA is a $100,000 accelerator course intended to fund 4-5 promising surgical technologies to move through a custom commercialization program over 6 months to advance these technologies to a point where they will be highly competitive for follow-on funding. This could be through the next round of the $500,000 Michigan Surgical Innovation Prize or other commercialization funding opportunities within the university and beyond.