John Dayton, MD
The Innovation Advanced Mentorship comprises digital health projects; MBA coursework focused on healthcare, innovation, and entrepreneurship; and teaching shifts in Stanford’s Marc and Laura Andreessen Emergency Department. Dayton also completed the Biodesign course at the Stanford School of Design to learn to apply the principles of design thinking in healthcare settings.
Prior to starting at Stanford, Dayton led physician innovation groups, advised healthcare startup companies, was involved with angel investing, and founded a medical education company. “I did not have formal business training,” he says, “and I was looking for a program that would help me become both a better physician and business professional.
Program director Ryan Ribeira, MD, himself a Stanford Emergency Medicine Administration Advanced Mentorship alum, notes that the Innovation Advanced Mentorship is uniquely designed to adapt to the participants.
“For some, their primary goal is to be a medical innovator through industry, so we can serve as that portal and connection to Silicon Valley,” says Ribeira. “Some might want to become a medical director or a hospital operations officer, to be the person who helps bring industry innovations into the healthcare system. One of our participants might become Chief Medical Officer of a health tech company. Or they could lead a patient-focused innovation investment firm that is helping to power a lot of really valuable technologies for the healthcare system.”
As an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Dayton worked with venture capital firms and health tech startups to learn how the innovation ecosystem works with hospitals like Stanford to bring the next generation of medical technology to the market. He was also part of the Stanford Innovation Partnership Evaluation Committee that builds collaboration between the Department of Emergency Medicine and healthcare companies and explores innovative digital tools to improve healthcare, documenting those findings in scholarly publications.
According to Ribeira, emergency medicine physicians are particularly well-suited to innovation because of a general sense of flexibility. “To innovate, you have to be willing to pivot and think creatively. So, this didn't work as we expected but let's not throw it all away - what are the good parts? How can we reshape this through design thinking, iterations, and rapid tests of change?”
In addition, Emergency Department physicians interact with specialists throughout the hospital from outpatient and inpatient to surgery to neurology, and that bird’s eye understanding of how the healthcare system works is key to innovation, says Ribeira.
