Gastroenterology and biodesign: contributing to the future of our specialty.

f f B d t t H m t ( Innovations in biomedical technology have made a significant impact on the lives of patients, paved the way for new areas of research, and been a driver of economic prosperity. Advances in biotechnology and medical devices have been major forces in haping healthcare.1 In the 2 decades leading up to this century, innovations in medical technology have been estimated to contribute 3 additional years to the average ife expectancy in this country, with significant dereases in disability rates.2 What is often neglected in his success story is that this country has not only xcelled in being creative, but has also successfully rought innovations to the market place. In this reard, “medical entrepreneurship,” long considered a eripheral if not undesirable activity by academia, eeds to be embraced as a critical mission that enables rue translational research. Among the different medical specialties, gastroenterolgy lends itself very well to the application of technology. odern endoscopic techniques have rendered virtually very part of the gastrointestinal tract easily and quickly ccessible for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. owever, despite this favorable premise, innovation in astroenterology has not kept pace with other fields, such s cardiology and orthopedics, and the potential of utiizing technology for the management of gastrointestinal isorders has yet to be fully realized. As reviewed elsehere, there are many factors that have contributed to his state of affairs.3 In this commentary, we focus on hat is perhaps one of the most important of these, amely, the lack of a trained cadre of individuals who can ccelerate the pace of technology innovation, developent, and commercialization. We propose to address this ssue using a new model for training innovators based on