First Year at a Glance

By Dilek Akgün | July 22, 2020

In 2019, the University of South Carolina Innovation Think Tank Lab was established with a purpose to create a unique place where multidisciplinary teams come and work together, conduct research and development; and stimulate impactful innovations. The UofSC ITT Lab is the first Innovation Think Tank Lab affiliated with a U.S. university, as part of Siemens Healthineers’ global network of ITT Labs. Getting involved in this great network provided us some opportunities; e.g. implementing the Innovation Think Tank approach at the UofSC ITT Lab’s activities and programs.

Today’s global health challenges require multidisciplinary knowledge, international research collaboration, and intercultural communication competencies. ITT Labs are useful and instrumental places where they provide multi-disciplinary teams of staff, students, researchers with the opportunities for being able to work on real-life problems and create innovative solutions with new and emerging technologies in the healthcare sector.

Starting with its establishment in March 2019 to date, the UofSC ITT Lab organized a couple of events and brought multidisciplinary teams together. In order to a scale up its activities, reach out more people and maintain the sustainability, ITT Lab involved in in a couple of NSF and NIH grant applications. The UofSC ITT Lab has also started to implement the Innovation Think Tank approach at its programs and to hold online seminars with Sultan Haider on “Innovation Think Tank Approach on Idea Implementation Life Cycle”. These online lectures with Sultan Haider keep the UofSC ITT Lab informed and tuned on the new developments and innovation projects at Siemens Healthineers ITT.

It was a successful first year. Some good results were achieved. In July 2019, the UofSC Student Team attended Siemens Healthineers’ Annual External Innovation Think Tank Exhibition (eITT) 2019 and won the first Prize “Most Innovative Project Award” at eITT 2019. Furthermore, UofSC Innovation Think Tank Lab Team was among the partners who contributed to the organization of the UofSC National Big Data Health Science Conference and Case Competition. More than 200 people attended the UofSC National Big Data Health Science Conference at its inaugural year. 19 teams consisting of 57 students from 8 major universities in the U.S. and world, including University of South Carolina, Allen University, Baylor University, Duke University, Nanjing Medical University (China), Oklahoma State University, Purdue University, and University of Alabama attended the Big Data Health Science Case Competition.

The UofSC ITT Lab continues to reach out more people with its seminars, trainings and lectures and to take part in new projects and new grant applications. It is also eager to keep ongoing collaboration with Sultan Haider and Siemens ITT in Germany and looks forward to establishing new collaborations with other ITT locations worldwide.