El Camino Health and Tom Fogarty, MD, share a history of visionary innovation in advancing patient care. In 1971, El Camino Health became the first hospital in the U.S. to adopt a modern electronic health record system, drawn by its potential to enhance efficiency and generate data-driven insights. Around the same time, Fogarty patented his balloon embolectomy catheter—a minimally invasive alternative to high-risk open procedures that revolutionized vascular surgery. Their paths converged in 2007 when El Camino Health Foundation head Jon Freidenberg and healthcare leader Ann Fyfe proposed creating a nonprofit medtech incubator on the hospital campus.
“Jon and Ann knew that bringing together a forward-thinking community hospital with one of the most prolific inventors and entrepreneurs in medicine would be a powerful way to advance medtech innovation,” said Fred St Goar, a physician innovator and founding board member of Fogarty Innovation.
The vision aligned perfectly with Fogarty’s passion for mentoring the next generation of medtech leaders. With Fyfe as the CEO and Fogarty serving as a mentor, board member and educator, the Fogarty Institute for Innovation (now Fogarty Innovation) launched with two companies he had been advising; Heartflow (non-invasive 3D coronary diagnostics) and Niveus Medical (muscle preservation for ICU patients).
Mentorship and access
During the next decade, Fogarty Innovation hosted a growing number of startups who came for mentorship, education, a collaborative environment, and the unique advantage of being embedded in a clinical setting.
“Being on the El Camino Health campus gives entrepreneurs an invaluable opportunity to get early input from clinicians, understand care pathways, and pressure test their value propositions – both clinically and from a health economics perspective, to inform the development of their technologies,” explained Zach Edmonds, MD, associate director of hospital medicine at PAMF and chief medical officer at Fogarty Innovation.
A physician innovator’s journey
Drawn to innovation early, Edmonds did his residency at Stanford, where he completed the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship and was part of the Niveus Medical founding team. After residency, he joined the El Camino Health clinical staff as a hospitalist. “Fred [St Goar] was a role model for me,” Edmonds said. “He came out of academia, joined El Camino Health, and built a high-caliber clinical practice while staying deeply engaged in innovation.”
At El Camino Health, Edmonds served as a clinical advisor for Niveus. “We did much of our early development at El Camino Health, engaging ICU doctors and physical therapists,” he recalled. “As a high quality, community hospital, El Camino Health is a perfect archetype for how most healthcare is delivered in this country.”
When accomplished startup leader Andrew Cleeland became the new CEO for Fogarty Innovation in 2017, Edmonds decided to lean in. Adding his expertise to Cleeland’s team of medtech veterans, he became a strategic advisor, expanding his role as a coach while building new relationships at El Camino Health and serving as a liaison between the two organizations.
Nursing leadership and innovation
One of his most important relationships is with Chief Nursing Officer Cheryl Reinking, who has spent nearly her entire 37-year career at El Camino Health and leads process improvement and new technology incorporation.
“In order for new technology to be adopted into acute care settings, you have to have nursing leadership on board,” Edmonds said. “All —or almost all—new technology is going to touch the nurses’ workflow at some point.”
Reinking finds it easy to manage nursing involvement in innovation because of the “pioneering spirit” in the health system’s DNA. “There’s always been a real interest—even a demand—to help shape technologies that improve care,” she said. El Camino Health is currently pursuing its fifth Magnet Hospital designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, which recognizes nursing excellence and innovation and is one of the most prestigious designations a hospital can receive in the U.S. and internationally.
Piloting a breakthrough: The FloPatch story
A standout example of collaboration between Fogarty and El Camino Health is FloPatch, a wireless, wearable Doppler ultrasound developed by Fogarty graduate Flosonics Medical. The device, which monitors blood flow in real time, helps clinicians more effectively manage intravenous (IV) fluid therapy early in critical illness.
The company joined Fogarty’s Company Accelerator Program (CAP) with the goal of preparing for commercialization. “The Flosonics team had several ideas about where to launch the device in a hospital, what information the device should present to the user, and how it should be implemented into workflow,” said Edmonds. “Their time at El Camino Health proved instrumental as they used extensive nurse and physician feedback to further refine the device, plan workflow integration and develop their go-to-market strategy.”
One of the first questions was where to deploy the device (which has value in multiple patient populations in different units) inside the hospital. “As a startup, you can’t initially launch a device in numerous areas of the hospital – you need to focus,” said Edmonds.
Reinking, who was drawn to the device’s potential to simplify the nurses’ workflows and save them time, worked with her nurse leaders to trial the device in high-acuity areas like the emergency department (ED), ICU, and with the rapid response team. “I always want my nurses to be able to spend more meaningful time in dialogue with patients,” she said. “And of course, having something that achieves the same or better outcomes is essential.”
Through a series of pilots, the team concluded that the ED was the best initial place to demonstrate both the clinical and economic value of the technology. “By monitoring the effectiveness of fluid resuscitation in sepsis patients, the FloPatch helped us avoid downstream complications of giving too much fluid,” said Edmonds. “And by changing management earlier for fluid nonresponsive patients, we could also potentially shorten the length of time they spent in the ED.”
Following the successful trial, El Camino Health became the first hospital in the U.S. to adopt the technology. Not only is it used today in multiple departments, but the nurses’ fondness for the product, and unwillingness to simply throw it away after use, even spurred the company to launch a FloPatch recycling program.
Observing stroke care
Another recent collaboration involved a Fogarty company-in-development working on a stroke intervention. “The team needed to deeply understand all elements of the ischemic stroke care pathway as it evolved in the ED,” recalled Edmonds. “We all had different ideas about what was happening when, and then I realized we didn’t need to theorize—we could just go downstairs and observe care unfold in real time.”
The health system’s willingness to allow in qualified observers from Fogarty, a vital step that helps aspiring innovators truly understand the patient experience and care delivery, is a hallmark of El Camino Health’s commitment to innovation. This practice is not permitted by most hospitals.
A two-way street
Currently, another Fogarty company is developing a device designed to improve pulmonary outcomes in hospitalized patients and has already received valuable feedback from Reinking’s team. And a longstanding partnership with El Camino Health clinical research has helped at least 10 Fogarty companies – including Alydia Health (now Organon), EchoPixel, Heartflow, Materna Medical, Melio, Ryme Medical, and UltraSight, carry out clinical research at the hospital. These experiences have proved instrumental in early validation of clinical value for the technologies in development.
Meanwhile, some physicians have chosen to practice at El Camino Health with the specific goal of pursuing their ideas without encumbrance and leveraging Fogarty Innovation resources and expertise in the process. El Camino Health physicians, nurses, and staff regularly attend Fogarty’s educational programs on medtech development. And the two organizations work together on community events, support each other’s fundraising efforts, and partner to give students a chance to observe clinical care firsthand.
Besides these established interactions, Fogarty Innovation and El Camino Health continue to explore new programs to improve patient care. “My father used to ask me regularly, ‘What did you do today to make the world a better place?’” said St Goar. “El Camino Health and Fogarty work together to answer that question every day—through patient care, mentorship, and the development of technologies that solve real problems.”