View the video below to learn more about this unique program.
Fellows develop skills in early-stage innovation value proposition, invention, and pre-clinical testing of new categories in device therapies and technologies serving critically unmet needs for people living with structural heart disease.
Candidates are cardiovascular physicians-in-training (cardiology fellows) or surgeons-in-training (residents or fellows) driven to think, communicate, and create entirely novel solutions that challenge the limitations of today’s standard-of-care offerings.
Selected fellows will work on multi-disciplinary teams to learn and apply a focused, needs-driven innovation process to identify, invent, and implement solutions alongside expert med tech innovators.
Building on Edwards’ legacy of innovation since 1958, the Innovation Fellowship was founded in 2020 to enable a “learn-by-doing” approach to support exploration of gaps and opportunities in structural heart disease care, and invention and testing of conceptual solutions in a pre-clinical environment.
Innovation Fellows also gain a deeper understanding of the stakeholders and key elements which determine clinical adoption and ultimately change clinical practice.
The Innovation Fellowship offers the opportunity to work on a multidisciplinary creative team alongside leaders in design and engineering, regulatory affairs, quality, strategy and market research, health economics and reimbursement, policy, intellectual property and clinical trials.
Innovation Fellows will become active contributors to the team as they characterize unmet clinical needs and develop novel solutions with the potential to move forward to first-in-human (FIH) use. As part of this pre-clinical research experience, Innovation Fellows will co-design computational and bench-top simulation models for novel physiologic targets, invent and prototype new technologies, and implant and evaluate proposed solutions in bench-top, live large animal, and human cadaveric systems. They will receive training through experience, advancing personal development as clinician-innovators and key opinion leaders.
Dr. Caroline Komlo now begins her second year at Edwards Lifesciences. She came to us from her cardiothoracic surgery program at Yale and will continue to challenge us to think differently and help patients in need.
She has extensive experience conducting outcomes-based research studies to describe early outcomes of new surgical techniques and in the publication of technical papers and videos to facilitate early adoption in the community.
Dr. Romy Hegeman joins us from the Netherlands, where she was a resident in the Cardiac Surgery Department of the Amsterdam University Medical Center.
Romy conducted research in cardiothoracic surgery and advanced imaging in structural heart interventions and supervised multiple PhD candidates and research students. She will apply her expertise to the next projects driving Edwards' technology growth.
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