A bank for problems worth solving

So many healthcare innovations begin in a classroom. The question we keep returning to isn’t whether students can build — it’s whether anyone told them what was actually worth building.

Products, services, processes, devices — a remarkable share of healthcare innovation originates in academic spaces, at every stage of a student’s education. These ideas surface as capstone projects, theses, and passion-driven explorations, sparked by creativity or plain intellectual curiosity. They’re frequently impressive. And they frequently go nowhere.

The reason is rarely the technology. It’s that many of these innovations were never grounded in a clearly articulated healthcare need. Solutions developed without deep alignment and feedback from patients, clinicians, and health systems struggle to prove relevance, feasibility, or value — and they stall, despite real technical merit.

The valley of death

There’s a well-documented gap in healthcare innovation, sometimes called the “valley of death”: the chasm between a promising idea or early prototype and successful adoption in the clinic. It’s where good engineering meets the messy reality of care, and where most student projects quietly end — in a folder, a poster session, a defended thesis that nobody builds on.

This isn’t a new insight. Both IDEO and Stanford Biodesign have argued for years that human-centered, patient-centered design is what bridges the gap. Rather than assuming a problem or starting from a solution, effective innovation has to be rooted in clinical realities and lived experience. Biodesign even sequences it as a discipline — identify the need first, invent second, implement last — because the order is the whole point.

A globally sourced problem bank

So here’s what we’re building: a problem bank that collects problem statements directly from clinical environments around the world. Each entry pairs a clearly defined problem with its clinical source and a direct line to someone who needs it solved. Think of it as the needs layer that should sit underneath every student innovation program — the part that’s almost always missing.

It also quietly removes a barrier most people don’t talk about: access. Not every brilliant would-be innovator has an expansive clinical network to draw lived experience from. A shared, open problem bank means they don’t need one. Anyone can walk up, ask “How can I help?”, and immediately know what problem to work on — and who’s waiting for an answer.

We’re in the thick of building this out, and we’re genuinely excited to welcome anyone who wants to contribute. If you’ve witnessed a problem in a clinical setting — anywhere, at any scale — send it to us. The initial intake is just a quick email describing the problem, and we’ll guide you through the next steps.