Northwell Health Awards $1 Million to Innovative Employee Projects

New York-based Northwell Health has awarded $1 million toward the research and development of two employee-driven projects that drive the goal of transforming the future of healthcare with new ideas during the health system’s 2023 Innovation Challenge.

Winners of the competition included team leads hailing from the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, the home of research at 21-hospital Northwell Health. Each project will receive up to $500,000 in funding to advance their innovations in care delivery and science.

One of the winning teams includes Daniel King, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor at the Institute of Cancer Research at the Feinstein Institutes, and Sandeep Nadella, M.D., gastroenterologist at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, for their work on iNav: AI-Driven Identification and Navigation for Cancer Patients. The other team includes Chunyan Li, Ph.D., associate professor at the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institutes, and Timothy G. White, M.D., chief resident at the Department of Neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital, for StrokeFighter: Novel Bioelectronic Therapy for Acute Ischemic Stroke.

The announcement was made during the health system’s Made for Big Ideas Showcase.

“Innovation and creativity are the essence of good organizations, and at Northwell we take pride in fostering a culture that promotes our team members who strive to advance science and the delivery of care,” said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health president and CEO, in a statement. “All of these submissions represent the very best ideas and novel approaches Northwell, and its talent, are pursuing to tackle some of health care’s biggest issues.”

Since the program was launched six years ago, hundreds of Northwell employees have submitted ideas to the competition. To date, Northwell has awarded funding for 13 projects to advance their progress and develop their innovative ideas.

This year, there were 84 submissions, and after a rigorous screening process, six finalist teams were chosen to present their pitches in person to an esteemed panel of judges.

“Innovation is a team sport at Northwell. Our core strength comes from the curiosity and ingenuity of our 83,000 team members,” said Jason Naidich, M.D., senior vice president and chief innovation officer at Northwell Health, in a statement. “The finalists showcased here today exemplify the way in which interdisciplinary teams are especially capable of developing novel approaches and transformative solutions that will improve patient care.”

Navigating cancer care through AI

Drs. King and Nadella, along with Tiffany Zavadsky, C.R.N.P., created an AI-enabled solution to identify and navigate both pre-diagnosed and newly diagnosed cancer patients to cancer care, including access to novel clinical trials.

“This feels like a new beginning,” said King, in a statement. “We recognized that one of the key problems in oncology is that we’re not able to navigate patients to care properly and quickly. What we can do with iNav is use technology to identify patients much earlier than we did before and promptly send them to get the correct care they need.”

Treating stroke through bioelectronic medicine

StrokeFighter is a bioelectronic medicine therapy designed to alleviate the negative effects of acute ischemic stroke (lack of blood flow to the brain), while also preventing and treating stroke-induced vascular cognitive impairments through targeted electrical stimulation of the trigeminal nerve. The project team has dedicated the last five years to optimizing trigeminal nerve stimulation parameters by using a unique wrap-around technique that could assist in early stroke treatment.

“This work comes from a very small lab, and I really appreciate this opportunity,” said Li, in a statement. “Some people may know about our work or what bioelectronic medicine is, but our research may one day help a lot of patients.”

“Since 2017, the Innovation Challenge event has served as a wonderful forum to showcase the novel approaches towards improving care which are developed by our Northwell colleagues,” said Richard Mulry, president and CEO of Northwell Holdings, in a statement. “We are proud to partner with them to advance these solutions and extend their impact on the nature and delivery of care.”

Northwell Holdings, the for-profit venture investment arm of Northwell Health, works with doctors, scientists, staff, and entrepreneurs both in and out of the health system to advance the commercial potential for internal innovation and development of commercial joint ventures.

The last Innovation Challenge, held in 2021, awarded two projects: a 3D imaging device to identify tissue pressure injuries early and a non-invasive bioelectronic medicine spleen stimulator to treat excessive bleeding. Past projects funded have included research into the first non-invasive diagnostic test for endometriosis, a therapeutic drug candidate as a potential treatment for HPV infection, real-time actionable data related to ED utilization, and the allocation of clinical resources and infrared thermography for early detection of tissue pressure injury.