Umano Labs is a digital health-focused research laboratory. We provide online tools and a gamification system for involving clinicians in the design process.
Software engineers and product designers can form research teams under the Principal Investigator (PI) to interview clinicians, design new health IT products and pilot them in partner healthcare institutions.
We have an accelerator model for crowdsourcing and rank-ordering clinician requests. The most promising ideas may be spun out into future technology vendors to develop these idea-stage concepts further and license them to other healthcare organizations.
This allows as many patients to benefit as possible and provides an incentive for continued R&D and software maintenance.
Umano Labs is an independent organization. We are not tied to the governance of any healthcare organization - this gives us flexibility in partnering with new institutions, hiring staff and taking the proper time to enhance our software projects before they are piloted.
Formally, Umano Labs is unincorporated - but plans exist for incorporating a company. This would allow us to process incoming funds, hire staff in the future and other legal powers.
Umano Labs is managed by a Principal Investigator, Benyam Alemu. He works with a team of independent researchers such as Harsh Sikka and others to decide what projects to commit to. Our PI manages the governance of Umano Labs and will guide the organization’s mission and strategy as our research continues.
Our research focuses on applied topics in digital health. We design software that must have a tangible clinical use case and can be piloted.
This may take the form of a web application, mobile application, EHR add-on, machine learning model or any other computational service.
For now, we are focusing on projects that can be completed in 6-9 months. Extraordinarily long product timelines and theoretical research with minimal potential patient impact are discouraged.
We generate ideas directly from clinician requests. We followup with in-depth user interviews to probe the problem from a clinical, operational and financial perspective as much as possible. These interviews are essential to building software and clinical workflows that are useful, intuitive and relieves unnecessary clinician effort to administer.
We engage in a deep cycle of iterative design, customer development and business development as we validate each idea and shape each pilot. Our focus is on developing solutions through mockups, low-fidelity prototypes and props before architecting complex software.
After a beta of project is completed, we work with a PI at each partner academic medical center to launch an IRB submission to initiate a formal clinical trial. The intent is to launch a feasibility study with the highest level of rigor, to publish clinical outcomes in peer-reviewed journals.
Our patients deserve the highest level of evidence and care throughout the technology process and we intend to make sure every project undergoes significant vetting before it grows into a larger deployment.
Nothing!
We don’t charge a penny for any software engineer, clinician or healthcare organization to join our program.
Product designers and software engineers keep the intellectual property (IP) they design and develop. They invest hundreds of hours into products they have built and may decide what future direction to take their projects. This also provides an essential and fair incentive system to compensate volunteers for their time, effort and talents.
This decision will be formed by their project team leadership and must have the approval of the Umano Labs PI before technology transfer begins.
If a future startup is incorporated, a clinician can join the project as a Scientific Advisory Board member (volunteer) or as a full-time co-founder.
Software engineering process is extraordinarily complex, time-consuming and expensive.
Software has to be designed, engineered, launched, piloted, maintained - this process may take years and millions of dollars.
In order to be fair, volunteers can own the product development vision for their products and may decide what direction to take their projects. This may be creating a startup, selling their IP to another institution or stop development of their project after the pilot.
Umano Labs will manage the technology transfer process and the PI will govern any personnel or IP ownership conflicts. He will also provide guidance on the legal and administrative dimensions of any decision they want to consider.
Umano Labs is guiding each of its project teams through the design process, finding product-market fit, first customers and clinical validation. In return, Umano Labs will own a 10% stake of preferred stock in each future spinoff startup. Umano Labs will continue to provide comprehensive support to guide each product through its commercialization process and meeting any regulatory concerns.
These resources will be reinvested to hire staff engineers and interns to compensate their time for working on similar clinical projects. Funds will also be used for managing the overhead of Umano Labs and funding projects that address healthcare disparities issues, that may or may not have a straightforward go-to-market strategy.
See the above 2 sections.
Our PI will govern any personnel or IP ownership conflicts. His decision will be the official Umano Labs stance on technology transfer.
Seek his approval before proposing a new project or deciding or proposing a change to our governance structure.