The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) began approximately five years ago to examine laproscopic surgery at MGH. Today, the organization has grown into a collaborative effort between BWH, MGH, MIT and the Draper labs that works as a catalyst to bring clinicians, engineers and funding together to facilitate the creation and development of medical inventions. And thanks to Donald S. Baim, MD, BWH participation in this groundbreaking collaboration has skyrocketed.
“When you look at the challenges faced by most medical inventions, it’s surprising that so many even come to fruition,” said Baim. “What’s unique about CIMIT is that the organization takes a process that ordinarily proceeds quite slowly and unreliably by random encounters, and creates an interdisciplinary environment that includes internal funding to lower many of those barriers and make the process move more quickly and reliably to its conclusion.”
Baim, an interventional cardiologist at BWH and professor of medicine at HMS, was brought on board to promote BWH participation in CIMIT. He also oversees the grants review activity of the CIMIT operations. “In the eight months that I’ve been working with CIMIT, existing BWH/CIMIT researchers have embarked upon half a dozen new projects,” said Baim. “In addition, a number of new BWH-based CIMIT investigators have joined the program—either because projects that were started somewhere else in CIMIT have found BWH collaborators, or because people at BWH who had not realized they could apply for CIMIT grants have now done so.”
CIMIT supports a variety of projects headed by BWH physicians, some of which include the newest concepts in magnetic resonance therapy, a trauma/critical care program in which multi-organ dysfunction occurs after a trauma patient’s blood pressure has been restored and the BWH application of the DaVinci Surgical System (robot-assisted surgery).
“Each of these projects has the potential to really transform health care,” said Baim. “Although the CIMIT operation in its full funding format is still very young, we anticipate that the number of patents issued and projects that reach the point of commercialization over the next several years will increase dramatically, thanks to CIMIT.”