MedStar Health and MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2)
About MedStar Health
MedStar Health is a $4.6 billion not-for-profit health system with a network of ten hospitals and 20 other health-related businesses across Maryland and the Washington, DC region. As the area's largest health system, it is one of the region's largest employers with 31,000 associates, 8,000 nurses, and more than 6,000 affiliated physicians. MedStar also trains over 1,100 medical residents annually and has a major academic affiliation with Georgetown University.


About MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2)
The mission of the MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2) is to catalyze innovation that advances health. Our mantra is "Think Differently.” Chartered by MedStar Health’s President and CEO Ken Samet in 2009, MI2 provides a broad innovation infrastructure to help MedStar’s 31,000 associates and 6,000 affiliated physicians invent the future. MI2 deploys a three-axis strategy to accomplish our mission:
1. Catalyze - MI2 catalyzes innovation energy at MedStar by inspiring and equipping associates to unlock their potential to create and improve.
2. Innovate - MI2 develops deep technical capabilities—often in the “white space” where others have not gone before —to solve problems and transform health care across MedStar and beyond.
3. Connect - MI2 looks for better practices inside and outside health care, opens MedStar’s door to outside companies, startup entrepreneurs, and other entities in the innovation space and forges strategic collaborations with them.
MI2 includes centers for digital health and data science (consumer, mobile and telehealth, and predictive analytics), for human factors in healthcare, and for influence, engagement, and rapport in health; a technology commercialization capability (MedStar Inventor Services); a platform for training in creativity, design, and influence; and a collaboration with startups in the healthcare space.
In January 2016, MedStar Health expanded its commitments to innovation and education by integrating the Health for America fellowship program into the MedStar Institute for Innovation. “Health For America has created an incredibly innovative approach to discovering what’s over the next mountain in the treatment and management of chronic disease,” says Mark Smith MD, MedStar’s chief innovation officer and director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2). “As soon as we became fully engaged with the program, we knew that it belonged at MedStar Health full-time, aligned with the mission of MI2 to catalyze innovation that advances health. This also highlights our foundational principle that for health care to be transformed, we must also look outside our own walls—and those of our traditional collaborators.” Read more here.
