NewHavenBIZ

n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m | S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n B I Z 37 EDS & MEDS going to keep every single job here," McCooe says. "People are going to go where they want to go. As long as Connecticut continues to foster an environment where people can be successful, we'll continue to grow. "Every bit of lab space in the city is being utilized, so private-sector developers need to start putting up more buildings and filling existing buildings so these companies have a place to go," he adds. "And that is happening. We're in a growth stage." A n example is Health Haven Hub, an incubator for health care-related startups that opened on Church Street a year ago. Sri Muthu, one of its founders, knows that in any city with big universities where there is specialization of knowledge, there is a demand for launching new businesses. "We need to build up an eco- system and have the patience and foresight to stay in New Haven," Muthu says. Health Haven Hub provides a space where innovators can conduct bootcamps, work- shops, training and ultimately pitch new enterprises to investors. It also reaches out to young students, college students and professionals, hospitals and clinics to create and nurture channels to connect ideas. "Eds & meds is in its infancy stage in New Haven, but we're making progress," Muthu says. "We have an amazing set of talent here; they just need to talk to each other. ere is this ecosystem building up, but my worry is that if we don't support these early-stage compa- nies, they leave." "New Haven needs to be strategic and long-term," Muthu adds. "We have the fundamentals: great colleges, a great set of young community members, amazing hospitals, and an ecosystem where everything to create a successful health-care hub exists, we're just not connecting it all together [yet] or making it a priority." He cautions that fundamental industry transformations such as New Haven's take time to gain traction. "People think that becoming a health-care hub is an overnight thing. People need to take the time, invest and build up the communi- ty," Muthu says. "ere is so much potential for startups in Connecti- cut, but it takes time." Yale School of Management Professor Douglas Rae cautions that New Haven will never have the kind of science-star drawing power or research-commercialization muscle of, say, Cambridge, Mass., but that's okay. "We're not going to come close," says Rae, who in 2003 authored Ur- banism & Its End, a contemporary history of New Haven. "ey're in a different league and we're not going to get to be in that league even if we bend everything in the direction of technology." Another factor is that both the size and the diversification of the New Haven labor market has not expanded in tandem with the growth of eds & meds. And that's a recruiting challenge for the university and the health system to vie for top faculty and research professionals. "Cornell [Weill Cornell Medical College] is putting about 10 or 12 percent of its jobs in Roosevelt Is- land, Manhattan and that would be an interesting play for us," Rae ex- plains. "If you were thinking about a long-term strategic plan for Yale and Yale New Haven you would carefully consider putting some strategic parts of both operations somewhere in the five boroughs of New York City." Overall, "I am pretty upbeat about New Haven and I think that there are a lot of things that make sense that can be done," says Rae. However, "First, we need to put aside delusional ideas" T he University of New Haven has a different strategy for is making sure its students are putting down roots in the local area in hopes that the relationships between the university and area hospitals will keep the region's talent pipeline flowing. As part of the capstone program at the University of New Haven, 75 health sciences students work at Yale-New Haven, St. Vincent's Hospital in Bridgeport and Griffin Hospital in Derby. Summer McGee, dean of UNH's School of Health Sciences, says the relationship is vital to the future of the health- care industry in south-central Connecticut. "Our local health-care orga- nizations really are the learning laboratories for our students in a wide range of programs. Not only in the health-care field, but also across a wide range of industries from information technology, to human resources, to engineering," McGee explains. "Our local hospital partners work very closely with us to ensure that our students get real-world opportunities to practice their skills and to get experience even before they graduate." UNH was seeking means to cre- ate culminating experiences for its master's in health care administra- tion curriculum, as well as its health sciences program, to give students real-world projects to work on as part of their capstones. "We want them to be able to solve some of the challenges that those organizations were facing," McGee says. To facilitate that, students are go- ing into hospital settings where they find opportunities to use real data sets, work with and talk to patients, employees, as well as community members. ey gather information and use that information to write reports and to work on different kinds of initiatives in the hospital. Continued on page 34 Eds & meds is in its infancy in New Haven,' says Muthu, of Health Haven Hub. 'But we're making progress.'

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