Risks and Rewards of Pathology Innovation: The Academic Pathology Department as a Business Incubator

Abstract

Through spin-off businesses, the academic pathology department has a special role in creating the future for the field of pathology. This topic has not been discussed in any depth in the pathology literature.Universities can recruit and mentor faculty members and nonprofessional employees who have the potential to start spin-off companies and who, thus, can make a difference through invention, creation, and commercialization of their ideas.12 Strong leadership and a commitment to entrepreneurship are important in maintaining a departmental environment conducive to innovation. This article presents case studies of laboratory businesses emanating from The University of Arizona's Department of Pathology, which has had a strong track record in entrepreneurship for more than a quarter of a century.The “Tucson Pathology Cluster” describes a group of independent companies with roots in the Department of Pathology at the Arizona Health Sciences Center and its University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona. Academic principals in these companies were active contributors to an annual review series, Advances in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, which I edited with Dr Ramzi Contran and others for years. I served as department head of pathology for 17 years in Arizona (1990–2007). Before that, I was chair of the Department of Pathology at Rush Medical College in Chicago, Illinois, for 15 years (1975–1990). During the 32 years I served as an academic pathology chair, I was personally engaged with start-up companies in positions ranging from CEO to scientific director. I had a bird's-eye view, from the dual perspective of a university insider and an entrepreneur, of some of the activities related to pathology department spin-off companies.In this Futurescape presentation, I will describe 3 companies that were all spin-offs out of The University of Arizona's Pathology Department. Additional spin-offs of the Department of Pathology are not included for lack of space. For purposes of disclosure, I had no direct equity involvement in the first 2 companies, Sunquest Information Systems, Inc, and Ventana Medical Systems, Inc; I cofounded the third company, DMetrix, Inc, and do have equity in that company.Sunquest Information Systems, Inc, was actually one of the first spin-off companies of the new Arizona Health Science Center and its University Medical Center, in Tucson. The Arizona Health Sciences Center was created around 1966 to house Arizona's first and only College of Medicine. Sunquest Information Systems, Inc, was cofounded in 1979–1980 by James E. Peebles, BA, then director of Information Systems at The University of Arizona Health Sciences Center; Sidney Goldblatt, MD, a pathologist from Johnstown, Pennsylvania; and Robert Morrison, an engineer from Tucson, Arizona.Mr Peebles was educated as a mathematician and, after earning a BA degree in mathematics from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville), he started his career in computers at the prestigious Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. By the time he was in his mid-20s, Mr Peebles had developed a reputation as a wunderkind in computers. The University of Arizona College of Medicine was founded in 1966. Jack M. Layton, MD, the founding Department of Pathology chair, was recruited from The University of Iowa (Iowa City). He was a gifted educator as well as a talented recruiter of outstanding faculty members. Also, to his credit, Dr Layton would prove to be a supporter of departmental entrepreneurship as well. One of Dr Layton's primary goals for the laboratory at the new university hospital was to have an automated laboratory information system when the hospital opened.The founding dean of The University of Arizona College of Medicine, Merlin K. DuVal, MD, a surgeon recruited from the University of Oklahoma (Norman), wanted to create a university medical center that would eventually be entirely paperless. He envisioned a new hospital, our Univ