What does it take for a healthcare innovation to move beyond a promising prototype into the real world?
For seven Duke-NUS Health Innovator Programme (D-HIP) alumni representing all four D-HIP cohorts, that question took centre stage during a fireside chat with John Collings, President of Stryker Asia Pacific (APAC), and his leadership team at Stryker’s Singapore office. Moderated by Run 4 alum Jovan Hsu from NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, the conversation explored the realities of medtech innovation—from systems thinking to clinical validation and commercialisation, and from problem solving across disciplines to customer adoption.
More broadly, the session reflected Duke-NUS’ growing emphasis on preparing future clinicians not only to practise medicine, but also to shape the future of healthcare through innovation, technology, and translational thinking.
This engagement marked Stryker’s expanding role as an industry advisor for D-HIP, helping fellows bridge what is commonly referred to in innovation circles as the “valley of death”—the difficult transition between early proof-of-concept and real-world adoption. Many promising technologies fail at this stage due to lack of funding, operational complexity, regulatory hurdles, or a disconnect with market realities.
The collaboration also reflects how industry leaders are increasingly engaging with innovation ecosystems embedded within academic medicine. At Duke-NUS, programmes such as D-HIP are designed to expose students to real-world healthcare challenges while connecting them with clinicians, engineers, business leaders, and industry partners like Stryker, who bring capabilities that can help develop ideas beyond the prototype stage.
Moving ideas from innovation programmes rooted in academia to customer adoption at scale requires a closeness with customers that builds an intimate understanding of their needs. This approach echoes Stryker’s own innovation philosophy, and was something that the D-HIP alumni present found especially vital in their own projects.
James Qu, a business fellow from Run 4, shared how his team was tasked with creating a solution to eliminate injuries caused by extravasation—the accidental leakage of IV fluids from blood vessels or tubes into the surrounding tissue—during intravenous (IV) infusion therapy. The initial response during their clinical immersion was muted, much to their disappointment. However, when they presented their proposed product, VeinGuard, at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, the reception was unexpectedly enthusiastic. Multiple focus groups revealed that VeinGuard was better suited for niche use cases involving non-verbal patients, such as in paediatric care.
“The takeaway is we should specifically look and ask more questions before we make a conclusion,” Qu said, noting that the conference insights were exactly what the team needed to push the project forward.
However, bottlenecks are rarely solved through technological innovation alone.
“Sometimes, [our] innovation might address one problem, but the bottleneck might be somewhere else,” said Nicole Hoong, a business fellow from Run 3. “Even though you solve your bottleneck, it may not solve the whole problem.”
Assistant Professor Rena Dharmawan (Class of 2011), Assistant Dean, Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke-NUS said:
“Innovation must be both purposeful and practical. D-HIP empowers fellows to think creatively about unmet healthcare needs, while industry partnerships provide the market understanding, strategic perspective and translational pathways needed to bring promising solutions beyond the prototype stage and into the hands of those who need them most.”
For many fellows, D-HIP was their first glimpse into the medtech ecosystem: a highly intricate web of stakeholders, each with their own goals, incentives, and priorities. The programme helps them to navigate this complexity, as they weigh trade-offs and learn to speak the language of the stakeholders to establish trust. Adapting technology is not just built on innovation, but also on the belief that it will bring about lasting benefits to customers at scale.
And who better to trust than those closest to the customers: the clinicians performing colonoscopies; the nurses administering IV drips for paediatric patients; or counsellors comforting patients anxious about their first colorectal cancer screening. D-HIP fellows are best positioned to span the trust gap between medtech innovators and those who will benefit most from it.
Ultimately, medtech innovation’s true potential lies in its ability to move healthcare from a one-to-one model of care, to a one-to-many relationship. Duke-NUS’ industry partnership with Stryker will help guide D-HIP fellows and their projects through the complexities of commercialisation and show that though the valley of death is a formidable obstacle in medtech innovation, it is not an insurmountable one.