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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Elevating Innovation as a Core Mission at The University of Texas Medical Branch with Dr. Vineet Gupta
00:20:05
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- [00:02]
A
This is where healthcare leadership comes together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago, April 13th through the 16th. This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former President George W. Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit Beckershospitalreview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you in Chicago.
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B
This is Laura Dearda with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Vineet Gupta, Vice President in the Office of Innovation and Commercialization and Chief Executive Officer of the Medical Branch Innovations, part of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Dr. Gupta, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
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C
Laura, thank you. Thank you for hosting me. I'm super excited to be here.
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B
Absolutely. And you know, we're excited to have you as well. I think there's so many innovative things happening at University of Texas Medical Branch, and certainly it'll be fun to spotlight a few of those things as well as get your perspective on the future. But before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and Medical Branch innovations?
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C
Perfect. Great. Again, Laura, thank you for having me here. Just a little bit about utmb. First, as most people may or may not know, we are one of the largest and the oldest medical systems in Texas, over 130 years old. We have four main campuses, over 100 clinics across Texas, and we have a very large economic impact in our region. At least over three and a half billion doll. We have 16,000 employees. I give you that background to just showcase how large of an enterprise we have with that. It's such a privilege for me in the last two and a half years to be leading the innovation enterprise. My Background is a PhD in chemistry. I run a drug discovery lab. We work on kidney disease, we work on cancer area. I have done startups in my life in the past. I have formed partnerships with Pharma Fundraise and done a little bit of innovation workflow. And because of that, Dr. Raisa, when he joined UTMB about three years ago, he asked me to come in and start lead this innovation enterprise.
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B
Well, that's amazing to hear. Truly incredible to think of the impact that University of Texas Medical Branch has on the state and then thinking through the work that you've done in your background in innovation in medicine and then bringing that into your current role. So, you know, could you tell me a little bit about Some of the most important initiatives that you've led in the last year or two. What did you do and what were the results?
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C
Great question. I'm going to step back a little bit. And when Dr. Reiser started as president at UTMB, he really elevated innovation as our fourth pillar. One of the first universities where innovation was brought up as a very key mission area, equal in importance as clinical care, research and education. That happens across many other health systems. And that really brought to everybody's attention on our campus the importance of always keeping innovation in mind in their day to day lives, day to day activities. And that really helps drive mostly translation of whatever they are doing into clinical practice or clinical outcomes. So with that we set up over the last, I would say year and a half, three key initiatives. Number one, really driving a culture change on campus so that people now really start thinking about innovation again in their day to day lives. We have started holding open houses monthly, we have started going to departments to talk to people directly. And more importantly, we've also started increasing public private partnerships which are so important to drive change. So that's first, so driving a culture change. Second initiative that we started incorporating is identifying new opportunities for growth for our institution. So we identified four sort of, you know, themes, flagship strengths, so to speak. The first one is brain health and we are starting to build on that. Second is healthy aging. Third is kidney health. And the fourth, which you probably won't be surprised to hear about, is really incorporating adopting scaling health system AI solutions to really increase and improve patient care across our health system while responsibly driving down the cost. So that's number three. And then the last piece, sorry, that was number two. And then the last initiative we have, we started a lot of entrepreneurship programming on campus, especially directed at students. So I'm going to pause there for a second and let you ask.
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B
Yeah, I think that's fantastic and thank you for outlining those three pillars for us because you know, in looking at innovation, it can mean a good many things and isn't always something concrete or built into the strategy. So it's fascinating to hear that that's really been elevated for the organization and something that you're trying to build into the exact culture to make sure that everyone within the enterprise is thinking about it in continuing to live out that journey. Now I'm curious when you talk about identifying new opportunities for growth and thinking through that kind of balance between being innovative as well as being mindful of the financial component of it, and making sure you're focusing on the right things, the right types of issues that you're solutioning for. How do you keep everybody in the same kind of wheelhouse there and make sure you've got something open enough where people can be creative and innovative but not lose control to the point where you're having lots of random projects that aren't really going back to that mission or is not financially viable for the organization?
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C
You know, that's a very good question. And that's something, you know, I think almost every institution struggles with. And I think, you know, one way to think about it is, you know, for us, UTMB has been known for a long time for providing excellent clinical care in one run and in the research and education enterprise, being a leader in making new types of vaccines and studying all kinds of infectious diseases that emerge over time. So when we started looking at opportunities for growth for us, we said, okay, those are great sort of strengths to have to build on. What other programs do we already have so that it doesn't add a new cost burden like you mentioned, yet elevate something that is already ongoing. And in that realm, the clinical care piece, that's where we looked at health AI solutions and looked at so many of these solutions that are coming out every day. Somebody comes out with a new AI based program, app or solution that says hey, it can really be impactful in people's lives. But the biggest challenge is one has not really taken that in terms of implementation across health system to see if it holds true. So just as an example of how one could balance cost benefit of these types of things, we started programming and partnering with some of the companies very early where we identified a core need we had. Let's give an example. Rep cycle management, for example, core need we have as a system and what solutions are out there and which one of them potentially could make an impact for us. So we partner with some of these companies early, help their AI sort of scale much faster internally with us, where we would co develop with them and then the solution that comes out not only drives, helps drive our efficiency forward, but could also be a role model for other places, if that makes sense.
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B
Absolutely, that makes a lot of sense. And I appreciate you going into that a little bit more deeply because having that kind of mindset and then being able to really see how those decisions you're making in the little things as well as the larger innovations are impacting patients lives, you know, whether it's on the clinical side or on the more operational side, revenue cycle finance, you know, it all makes a big difference and so I think that's really cool. And to have that ability to co develop as well, I can imagine is pretty unique and exciting for many folks.
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C
Yeah, super exciting. Then that also, then helps get people also revved up, right? I mean, because they're seeing cool new tools, cool new opportunities and ability to get involved and drive that forward. And so that's in the AI realm. I'll give you another example. We've started a program on brain health. We were fortunate to get a large philanthropic donation last year that led to establishment of, of a Moody Brain Health Institute from the Moody Foundation. And that helped catalyze a lot of folks who were doing research in that realm to coming together with a unified mission. And that unified mission is to really make an impact across various areas of brain health. So we have a lot of research going on in Alzheimer's, for example, some labs developing new antibodies to treat Alzheimer's, some labs developing new diagnostic tests to identify patients faster or identify people who would potentially be resistant to the disease and thereby really establishing a new way to stratify and personalize treatments in the brain health realm. So I give you that example also as an area we identified that people were already on campus and coalesce that idea around a new initiative, a new institute so that we can really be more impactful.
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B
I love that. I think that's such a strong example of the way that you can really bring folks together and then tackle a big problem that's also so, so important for the community in a great resource as well. Now, looking ahead for 2026, what are some of the big priorities and headwinds that you're focused on?
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C
Yeah, great question. There is so much, so much cool stuff happening on campus and for us, I think one area, really one way to think about it is just to continue building on these new areas of strength that we have established. So again for us for this year, we are going to continue focus on building Brain Health Institute and programming around it. We're going to continue building on kidney health and healthy aging as well as really, really scale more these implementation of new healthcare AI solutions again with the goal being impacting patients lives positively while driving healthcare costs down.
- [11:39]
B
That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I think when you look at the brain health, the kidney health and healthy aging, no secret, everybody in healthcare is talking about the fact that in most communities they're seeing that aging population boom in trying to figure out how they're going to provide the right type of services and the right level of services while at the Same time, you know, struggling with whether it's staffing shortages or resource narrowing. And so, you know, when you look at the kind of those demographic shifts in what the aging population needs, how are you seeing that type of care in the model, you know, of what you're doing at University of Texas Medical Branch? Change as well in, you know, how do you do that as an organizational level?
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C
Also a very good question. I think it all starts with bringing people with diverse viewpoints together. And I, you know, another example from our end, you know, in doing something like this is we announced yesterday partnership with Blue Zones to be able to create a community based healthy living model that could be utilized at other places where, you know, public private partnerships with community engagement and a health system sort of, you know, partnership there where the physicians are also involved in designing new healthy programs, could be a way to change how we all live and age, age in a more, in a positive way. So Blue Zones is one example. And again, we are trying to incorporate as many players as possible while designing these solutions.
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B
Absolutely. It makes a lot of sense when you think about those partnerships like BlueZone and I'm sure other community partnerships that you have. How do you make the decisions on who is the right people to partner with? Looking at the value of each different interaction, I think now more than ever it seems like healthcare is a team sport. How do you look at those things and make sure that those relationships are actually working the way you need them to?
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C
Yeah, I think that's also something for success of these programs. That partnership and choosing the right partner is very important. Usually most of these things take a long sort of, you know, incubation period. What we have done at UTMB is we've taken that incubation period of identifying what we want to solve, investigating potential solutions, and then figuring out who among those is our partner. That timescale we have compressed by creating small teams of folks with various backgrounds who come to evaluate these opportunities. These leadership teams from across different backgrounds could be from operations, could be from finance, could be from research, could be from innovation, could be from purchasing. All those folks come together in one room and we evaluate things very, very efficiently that way, if that makes sense.
- [15:07]
B
Absolutely, that makes a ton of sense. And it seems like a really smart way to tackle everything that I'm sure is coming in all directions and opportunities that come your way. Now, what do you think the hardest thing you'll have to do in the coming year will be?
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C
Only one we have in technology commercialization. Technology translation, as you know, is not a Linear path for anything. So we are really excited about taking some of our new discoveries from the folks at UTMB and trying to find partners for them or converting them into startups. And in that setting, while a lot of these technologies are super exciting, for example, I mentioned this new antibody for Alzheimer's disease, we are also developing a new test for stratifying kidney patients better novel kidney diagnostic tests as an example. So these kinds of technologies, we are starting to engage with VCs, we are starting to engage with pharma partners, we're starting to engage with a lot of other types of associations. I anticipate that each one of them will bring its own challenges that will require us to think outside the box a little bit. So I foresee those commercialization challenges being perhaps the harder ones immediately.
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B
That makes a ton of sense. And you know, I can only imagine how much effort it takes in order to bring some of these, you know, palettes and ideas and, you know, things that you're doing into that commercialization process and translating it into something that then, you know, is usable and valuable across the board. When you look at that commercialization process, I mean, how has it evolved over the last couple of years? Where are you seeing some of new, you know, potential roadblocks or areas that, you know, have that are becoming easier or harder?
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C
Yeah, also a good question. I think times have certainly changed in the last few years for the better. For us especially up until a few years ago, if one wanted to commercialize a technology or convert it into a startup or even do partnerships with large companies, one had to go to the coast, either to the west coast or the east coast. That's where most of the funders are. That's where most of the people who do this stuff reside and that's where a lot of new technologies come out of. So they were really not as much paying attention to what's going on in Houston, Texas or Galveston, Texas. I think those times have changed because A, because people are looking more broadly and B, because I think we have some very unique solutions that we've created, especially at utmb, for example, in the solutions and brain health and kidney health that we are developing, those are state of the art new solutions. So now what we are seeing is we are able to attract a lot of these new funders directly to us versus having to really only go to the coast to be able to talk to them. And I think that's a big change, good change for us.
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B
That's amazing to hear and definitely something that is exciting to have that opportunity. In addition, new areas and especially in Texas. Now, before we wrap up, where do you see some of the best opportunities for organizational growth?
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C
I think we have many, many opportunities for our growth areas. Definitely we are going to see clinical growth, but clinical growth happening differently than it has happened in the past because of so many of these new AI tools coming into play. So that is one for sure. I think this interface of AI with research, with education and with clinic, all three, it's just so much cool stuff that's coming out that I mean, every day you see something new and I already see that it can be how it can be implemented on campus. So honestly, AI based sort of solutions, research solutions, healthcare solutions, that's where I think a lot of growth is happening.
- [19:38]
B
I love it. Dr. Gupta, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been such a fun conversation. I have learned so much and I look forward to seeing you as well in April at our annual meeting. I know you'll be speaking on a panel and it'll be great to catch up there and continue to dig deeper into some of the themes we talked about today. So I'm looking forward to seeing you.
- [19:56]
C
Thank you, Laura. Super exciting. I'm super excited about that too. And thank you again for inviting me today.