Our mission at the Institute is to create multidisciplinary teams of scientists who can work together to identify the molecular signatures of certain diseases and then develop diagnostic tests, new sensitive molecular screening tests, and therapies that target each disease subgroup. In most cases today, human disease is named, diagnosed and treated based on archaic standards such as the location of a tumor in the body. By redefining disease based on a molecular framework, we can create subgroups of patients with the same molecular makeup and then provide those individuals with treatment that addresses their particular disease. While other clinics and research facilities show a similar interest in developing tests and therapies for certain diseases, our broader business model makes our approach distinctive. Our strategy will work.
The Ignite Operating Model
The Institute takes a disease-centered approach to transforming health care. Some clinics concentrate their research on a single disease. The Institute, on the other hand, aligns its research agenda with the needs of the market, focusing on specific diseases that place the heaviest, most costly burden on public health: cancers, metabolic diseases (diabetes), neurological disorders (Alzheimer’s), cardiovascular disease, and pediatric afflictions (autism). This approach encourages the private sector to fund medical solutions that have promise in the commercial market.
A collaborative culture within a hybrid business model drives discovery and innovation. The Institute will function as a hybrid organization. As a nonprofit, we have an academic component that will conduct research through affiliations with universities and clinical centers of excellence. At the same time, we can take advantage of profit forces by co-developing products with industry partners and bringing them to market with all the capability of a biotechnology or pharmaceutical company. Driving all this discovery and productivity will be a collaborative culture that extends the reach of our scientific teams beyond the laboratory and into the health care market. There, they can commercialize discoveries that offer the greatest promise of disease prevention and management.
Partnering with U.S.-based health systems and a multitude of public and private partners around the globe, the Institute will bring together the leading experts in science, research and clinical care to discover, expand on and then apply the latest medical knowledge in ways that prevent and/or more effectively manage disease.
The pace at which scientific discoveries are put to use in the clinic will be accelerated. Implementing breakthrough medical discoveries into the clinical setting in a shortened timeframe is key to improving the cost and efficacy of health care. Too often, it takes decades and vast sums of money to bring the latest, most promising research findings to a patient’s bedside. The Institute will transform health care by abbreviating the process of bringing new diagnostics, drugs and devices to the patient. We accomplish this by bringing together the expert teams of scientists who make discoveries with those who know how to develop and build the value of intellectual property and then commercialize and gain physician and payor adoption.
The Institute will serve as an internationally recognized engine of medical discovery, a place where promising cures and treatments are developed, tested and applied to benefit individuals and society – and where innovators, providers, payors and patients prosper together.