Located in Worcester, MA, the UMass Medical School (UMMS) houses the Commonwealth’s first and only public academic health sciences center. The school’s mission is to advance the health and well-being of the people of the Commonwealth and the world through pioneering education, research, and health care delivery.
The UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science (UMCCTS) leverages the strong scientific environment of UMass with the clinical strengths of our health system partners to build an ecosystem that transcends traditional organizational boundaries and encourages collaborative problem-solving with communities and across historically siloed disciplines such as the biological, physical, computational, and engineering sciences. A network of UMass research cores are available to investigators: 50 at UMMS; 90 overall in the UMass system.
We have four primary validation environments for inventors and entrepreneurs:
1) The UMCCTS Data Science Core (with the UMMS Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences) provides assistance in data and analytic approaches to accelerate research, develop effective learning healthcare models, and enable cost-effective care. Extensive QA/QC procedures are implemented to ensure data consistency security and accuracy. As of 2018, we have data on 3 million patients over 78 million encounters.
Services include:
- Compliant Access to Data (data consultation & guidance, data integration, data & reports delivery, visualization & analytics)
- Data Innovation Research (phenotyping & prospective disease registries, computing and informatics methods for precision medicine, innovative systems for data collection, integration, and decision support)
- Data Collaborations
2) Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center (M2D2): Provides incubator space and a network of services that leverage the engineering, business and clinical strengths of UML and UMMS to accelerate the development and launch of new companies. M2D2 is also home to the Center for Advancing Point-of-Care Technologies for Heart, Lung, Blood, and Sleep Disorders (CAPCaT), which supports the development of promising “late-stage” point of care technologies that can be utilized for heart, lung, blood, or sleep disorders, with an additional interest in projects that incorporate complementary and integrative health approaches.
Services include:
- Business planning
- Engineering and prototype development support
- Clinical/regulatory path guidance
- Access to public and private funding
3) The interprofessional Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation (iCELS) at UMMS provides exemplary simulation development, programming, and research for innovators. It can simulate a wide range of scenarios, including clinic rooms, inpatient facilities, disaster sites, and other health care settings.
4) D3Health was established in 2017 to revolutionize health care through mobile health and digital technologies, and stimulate the economic growth, workforce training and public health in Central Massachusetts. The D3Health/3D printing facility utilizes 3D printing, laser cutting, and open source resources to develop products and tools for digital health innovators.
MA State Voucher Program:
Massachusetts companies working with the UMass Medical School’s Core Facilities may be eligible for the Massachusetts State Voucher Program. Eligible companies may apply for both the State Voucher Program and MeHI’s Sandbox Grant Program. The State Voucher Program offers up to 75% subsidy to use UMass Medical School Core Facilities. With these state incentives, companies headquartered in MA and having less than 50 FTEs can develop prototypes and test new devices at reduced rates. Similarly, established companies, especially manufacturers, can create prototypes to bid on contracts without having to initially make large investments, all while retaining their IP.
Eligibility:
- Start-ups and companies with 10 or fewer employees receive a 75% subsidy.
- Start-ups and companies with 11-50 employees receive a 50% subsidy.
- Maximum of 75K subsidy per start-up/company.
The voucher application process requires minimal paperwork, is reviewed rapidly and can be accessed at www.umassmed.edu/research/voucher-program/.