houston’s home for medical entrepreneurs.
Clearly this is a topic to get excited about. This morning, twenty of you showed up at 8am to talk about your vision for a coworking prototyping lab space. We had a couple of guests interested in the topic, including Billy Cohn, a serial entrepreneur and cardiovascular surgeon who gave a talk at TEDMED this year and was featured on the cover of Popular Science a couple of months ago for his continuous flow total artificial heart, and Fred Trotter, a pioneer of open source electronic medical record systems who is deeply involved in the quantified self and health 2.0 communities who we met at a Houston Technology Center event this week.
The term coworking may not be instantly familiar to everyone. Coworking involves the sharing of spaces and resources between multiple businesses and individuals. This not only minimizes the cost to each business and minimizes the waste of unused space and equipment, but it also builds a collaborative work environment. When multiple people with similar interests work together in the same space, a casual conversation can turn into an exchange of ideas or even a future collaboration. When surrounded by a supportive environment like a coworking space, inventors and creatives can see their ideas come alive.
the state of houston coworking.
Houston has already developed a love for coworking environments. The two most successful setups we have currently are Caroline Collective and TX/RX labs. Both are built on a membership model where patrons join through subscriptions to use the space and resources.Caroline Collective (CC), opened in 2008, is located in a quaint house turned office space with a mixture of private offices, open desk space, and conference rooms. From their website “imagine having a water cooler conversation with different people each day”. This is what coworking is all about. Additionally, they host art shows, fundraisers, and Houston scene events in the evenings.
TX/RX Labs, also known as our ‘hackerspace’, is more of a get-your-hands-dirty lab environment, with machining tools, electronics resources, a 3D printer, and a new laser cutter. If you’re not an engineer with experience, chances are you don’t know how to use all that equipment. Not a problem. TX/RX specializes in education. They hold tons of workshops and classes to teach you everything from programming and electronics soldering to large metal shop welding. They have been very successful in the last couple of years and plan to move into a new, larger space in the next few months.
So the main question this morning was ‘what do we need in our collaborative workspace’? As each person discussed their needs with the group, we came up with quite a list. It became clear that our group of medically-focused scientists, doctors, engineers, self quantifiers, and business people had some unique needs not currently available in Houston, but necessary if we want to build a home for all types of medical entrepreneurs under one roof.
The main thing we decided we would like to see is a space where we can get our hands dirty, building prototypes, designing electronics, writing software, or even doing simple wet lab work, but also a place where we could bring potential investors or medical founders and impress them with clean office spaces, brainstorming areas, conference rooms, and a professional work environment. While this is cost prohibitive for many coworking spaces, many venture capital and business development firms across Houston have committed to bringing business and talent to Houston. Setting up a home for these types of people is the only way to plug up the ‘brain bleed’ (another Fred Trotterism) of Houston’s top talent migrating to the East and West coast scenes.
Another type of resource I had not previously considered is acquiring wet lab equipment such as pipettes, centrifuges, and incubators. While I’m primarily interested in medical devices and software, a good portion of our group is from BCM’s Translational Biology and Molecular Medicine program, focusing on bringing biotechnology and therapeutics from the bench to the bedside. Additionally, Rice’s Bioengineering program has been heavily focused on tissue engineering. We could definitely benefit from some basic wet lab equipment and could see an explosion of entrepreneurial efforts in this area.
location, location, location.
We all agreed that somewhere along the current or new rail line would be best for the Texas Medical Center, downtown, and surrounding universities. With our focus on medical technology, the medical center is a natural fit, however without a strategic partner in the area, it would be cost prohibitive to develop a facility. Our top choice would be Rice’s new Bioscience Research Collaborative building, home to BioHouston, Sante Ventures, and many bioengineering labs. We would love to have discussions with Rice Alliance to talk about some sort of collaboration.
Houston has a great coworking community already in place. Some of them are looking to expand in the near future and I feel like collaboration is a no-brainer. I look forward to meeting with the founders of these spaces in the near future to see how our missions overlap and if there would be room to combine our efforts and build up Houston’s entrepreneurial community even further. We would love to hear additional suggestions in the comments below.
ifttt- if that then this: program your online life
open source medical devices- no need for FDA approval, just provide instructions to build them yourself, but can you sell the instructions?
med school quantified self- looking for volunteers to track their study habits. email fred.trotter at gmail dot com
