Academia, industry and military are convening in San Antonio Monday and Tuesday for a conference aimed at solving some of military medicine’s most pressing challenges while highlighting San Antonio’s growing importance in that effort.
Hundreds are attending the two-day event, which is a mashup of what were previously two conferences to facilitate connections for companies that want to do business with the military, identify emerging trends and technologies in military medicine and showcase cutting-edge research, much of which is being done locally.
San Antonio has long been a hub of military medicine, and its reach is growing. The region is home to military medical research within three branches — the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, Naval Medical Research Unit – San Antonio and the 59th Medical Wing of the Air Force, all part of the largest joint base in the nation, Joint Base San Antonio.
Just last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that JBSA contributes $55 billion to the Texas economy, fully one-third of the economic impact of the state’s 14 military installations.
Christened the AIM Health R&D Summit, the conference at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center is hosted by VelocityTX, which recently celebrated the full buildout of its near Eastside innovation campus with the addition of 5,000 square feet of rentable lab space.
The bioscience-focused economic development organization expected the conference would draw roughly 400 attendees, but it has already attracted more than twice that number, said VelocityTX CEO Rene Dominguez.
Due to the strong demand, additional tickets were released late Monday morning.
“Our strategy and model is to leverage the strong academic and private industry assets we have in San Antonio [with] the military,” Dominguez said. “This conference brings those three elements — the proverbial triple helix — together and really maximizes what we have in San Antonio to promote economic development and and research.”
Over the next several years, VelocityTX plans to develop the G.J. Sutton property, located just a block south of its Merchants Ice campus, into a second, larger innovation campus, anchored by a military medical research tenant — perhaps the Defense Health Agency (DHA), which supports all three branches’ medical services, and is significantly expanding its already large presence in San Antonio.
On Tuesday, conference attendees will hear from DHA officials about the agency’s “vision for the future of military health care, military medical R&D and military medical needs.”
The conference combines two previous separate efforts, Military Medical Industry Day and the San Antonio Military Health and Universities Research Forum (SURF). The first is part of the City of San Antonio’s effort to accelerate the commercialization of products and services needed to advance military medicine in San Antonio.
The research forum, launched a decade ago by UTSA and UT Health San Antonio, advances collaborative research among academic, military and private industry. Students and researchers at both institutions are sharing their current research projects at the conference.
A pitch competition for bioscience startups will also be held Monday afternoon, featuring four finalist companies competing for $100,000 in prize money, sponsored by Bexar County.
“It wasn’t intentional, because we did a national search and got 52 applicants, but the fact that the four finalists are all from this region is, I think, a good indication that innovation is thriving in San Antonio,” Dominguez said.
A big part of the conference is demystifying the process for doing business with the Department of Defense, with panels on funding sources, patent protections and research partnerships.
Companies also have the chance to meet one on one with representatives from the three military medical groups, a perk that has proved very popular, said Brian Peters, communications director for VelocityTX.
David Spencer, president and CEO of Boerne-based hemorrhage-control medical device company Prytime Medical, said that without events like this week’s conference, it is difficult for companies to connect with the military to even understand their needs.
That’s in part, he said, because military culture doesn’t lend itself to asking for help. It’s also as basic the difficulty of civilians getting onto military bases.
“What I love about VelocityTX is that they’re working to get the military folk off the base” to connect with companies developing the next generation of military medical technologies — “because 85% of meaningful communication happens informally,” he said.
During a panel about emerging challenges in military medicine in Ukraine, Spencer described his company’s flagship product, a balloon catheter that can be deployed quickly enough to save lives on the battlefield. It is now being used in the U.S. to save civilian lives, he added, including by obstetricians to manage life-threatening bleeding during high-risk deliveries and those gravely injured in vehicle accidents.
He ended by encouraging attendees to take advantage of the opportunities to connect directly with the military during the conference: “Find something the military needs and work on it until it’s solved.”
