Physicians can learn how to use new cardiovascular medical technologies at Beaumont Health System’s new BioSkills Lab training center in Royal Oak.
The 950-square-foot lab includes 16 stations where medical professionals can practice simulated procedures, including angioplasty and stenting as well as intraluminal recanalization to open an artery blockage.
“Once technologies gain Food and Drug Administration and Medicare approval, there’s an important need to train physicians to use them,” says Dr. Robert D. Safian, director of Beaumont’s Center for Innovation and Research in Cardiovascular Diseases. “Through the BioSkills Lab, we are collaborating with medical device companies to train physicians in practice how to use these new technologies for their patients, to transfer technology to the community.”
The BioSkills lab is one component of CIRC, a commercialization program at Beaumont that helps develop innovative cardiovascular technologies and therapies and bring them to the marketplace. The program also includes a pre-commercialization center for developing new concepts and ideas for preclinical testing and an operating room where physicians can observe live procedures in an adjoining observation room and receive instruction in an adjoining classroom.
The opportunity to learn from clinicians involved in the research and testing of newly approved medical devices, in a high-tech, hospital-based setting, is a first that is especially important as devices become more sophisticated, Safian says. He adds that several companies — including Boston Scientific, Abbott, and St. Jude Medical — have already used the CIRC facilities, and many others are expected to do so in the near future.
By training physicians from around the world in the use of new technologies, including activities in the BioSkills Lab, CIRC will help transfer new technologies to other communities, so that benefit is extended to patients regionally, nationally, and around the world, Safian says.
