Joan & Irwin Jacobs Innovation Lab

Challenge

Health systems often face steep barriers to adopting innovation. Fragmented infrastructure, competing priorities and misaligned incentives often make it difficult for hospitals to test, evaluate and scale promising new solutions. Even when technologies show potential, implementation can be slow and risky, leaving patients and clinicians waiting for meaningful change. The result is a system where good ideas stall before they can make a real-world impact.

Solution

Our Joan and Irwin Jacobs Innovation Lab transforms those bottlenecks into breakthroughs. Designed as a dynamic testbed, the Lab provides simulation environments, clinical sandboxes and collaborative spaces where patients, clinicians, researchers and industry partners can co-create solutions together. This real-world, hands-on approach makes it possible to stress-test ideas under safe conditions, rapidly refine them, and accelerate the path from concept to clinical adoption. By scaling what works, and discarding what doesn’t, our Lab ensures innovations reach the bedside faster, improving care, reducing risk and delivering better outcomes for both patients and health systems.

How it Works

The Innovation Lab brings together tools and environments designed to spark bold ideas and turn them into scalable solutions. From Lego, whiteboards and maker spaces that inspire creativity, to 3D printers that turn concepts into prototypes, to immersive simulation labs and technology testbeds that mirror real clinical environments, the Lab is where imagination meets implementation.

Unique themed ​“neighborhoods” create dedicated zones for different stages of innovation, whether it’s early design, clinical workflow testing or patient-centered co-creation. Here, clinicians, patients, researchers and industry partners come together to co-develop, co-validate and test solutions in conditions that feel authentic and practical.

More than just a space, the Innovation Lab is a launchpad. It enables rapid iteration, reduces the risks of adoption and accelerates the safe scaling of what works. By building bridges between disciplines and across the innovation ecosystem, the Lab transforms promising ideas into solutions that improve care, strengthen health systems and ultimately reach patients faster.

Key Features

• Discovery to Design: Turn early insights into tangible concepts with co-creation, design thinking and rapid ideation.

• Prototype to Practice: Transform sketches into functional prototypes tested with clinicians and patients.

• Simulation to Validation: Stress-test technologies, workflows and care models in cutting-edge labs.

• Collaboration to Scale: Unite researchers, industry and providers to co-develop and scale solutions.

• Play to Innovation: Spark creativity through maker spaces and 3D printing to tackle complex healthcare challenges.

• Concept to Impact: Turn bold ideas into measurable improvements in care delivery and patient outcomes.

Every step happens here, inside a space purpose-built for collaboration and experimentation.

Launch

Launched in August 2025, the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Innovation Lab currently includes the co-development of agentic AI workflows with partners from Notable and AWS; testing and refining an Artisight virtual care delivery and monitoring system for use at the bedside with clinicians, nurses and technologists; and a prototype space where teams are creating and testing remote patient monitoring physical device delivery and technical support kiosks.

Sponsors

The Innovation Lab was made possible by a generous gift from Irwin & the late Joan Jacobs. 

The Jacobs Innovation Lab is an epicenter of a growing ecosystem that unites healthcare, academia and industry to reimagine what’s possible. Together, we’re building the safest, most efficient and most patient-centered health system in the world. Want to collaborate and innovate with us? Please contact Keisuke Nakagawa, Director of Strategic Partnerships, kenakagawa@​health.​ucsd.​edu.