The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) chosen AI-GUIDE, a medical gadget developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Massachusetts Basic Hospital (MGH), for its 2026 Excellence in Expertise Switch Award. This award acknowledges federal laboratories and collaborators who’ve achieved excellent work within the strategy of transferring know-how. With funding from the U.S. Military’s Fight Casualty Care Analysis Program (CCC), Lincoln Laboratory and MGH developed AI-GUIDE and are within the strategy of transferring the prototype to the startup firm AutonomUS Medical Applied sciences, Inc.
“This recognition displays what efficient know-how switch seems to be like — aligning the Military’s operational want with Mass Basic’s medical experience and Lincoln Laboratory’s engineering capabilities to ship an answer with a transparent path to influence. The transition to AutonomUS underscores how robust partnerships can carry a know-how from improvement into real-world adoption,” says Asha Rajagopal, Lincoln Laboratory’s chief know-how switch officer.
AI-GUIDE’s transition to trade guarantees improved well being outcomes for injured service members and civilians. Not like ultrasound units sometimes present in hospitals, AI-GUIDE is small and transportable, making it best to be used in pre-hospital settings. Pairing custom-developed AI software program with industrial handheld ultrasound know-how, AI-GUIDE helps the consumer insert a guidewire and catheter right into a affected person’s blood vessel. This functionality is particularly essential for U.S. navy medics, who should maintain injured troopers alive within the subject — generally for days — earlier than they are often evacuated to a hospital. AI-GUIDE permits medics with minimal specialised coaching to manage medical interventions that may in any other case be unattainable outdoors of the hospital, drastically bettering sufferers’ probabilities of survival.
The AI-GUIDE mission has served as a framework for efficient know-how improvement and switch. Inside simply three years, AI-GUIDE went from an concept proposed by CCC to a completely working proof-of-concept know-how with its personal startup firm. As soon as the prototype was developed, medical testing at MGH proved its viability, and Lincoln Laboratory and MGH workers then based AutonomUS Medical Applied sciences to facilitate the commercialization course of. With assist from the MIT Expertise Licensing Workplace, Lincoln Laboratory Expertise Switch Workplace, and CCC, the corporate secured U.S. Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) Breakthrough Gadget Designation, a regulatory fast-track pathway that’s solely granted to extremely modern applied sciences with lifesaving potential, in addition to a Small Enterprise Innovation Analysis grant from the U.S. Division of the Air Power and funding from non-public traders, the Division of Struggle, and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being.
These robust know-how switch collaborations are designed to streamline the switch course of, making certain that lifesaving capabilities will be made accessible to navy personnel and civilians as rapidly as doable. Whereas a lot of the preliminary work on vascular entry has already been transferred, the AI-GUIDE workforce continues to develop and transition further capabilities, together with peripheral nerve block know-how for trauma care and ache administration. AI-GUIDE has beforehand been acknowledged with a Lincoln Laboratory Finest Invention Award and an R&D 100 Award.
“Lincoln Laboratory has an extended report of transferring know-how to trade. We’re honored and proud to be acknowledged for the switch of AI‑GUIDE and stay up for seeing the know-how commercialized and saving lives within the subject. This achievement displays the energy of the partnership among the many Protection Well being Company, Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Basic Hospital, and AutonomUS Medical Applied sciences,” says Samuel Kesner, a technical workers member within the Techniques Engineering Group, who presently oversees the AI-GUIDE program at Lincoln Laboratory.
Successful workforce members from the laboratory embrace Brian Telfer, Samuel Kesner, Lars Gjesteby, Joshua Werblin, Benjamin Roop, Alec Carruthers, Nancy DeLosa, and former Lincoln Laboratory workers members Matt Johnson (now the vice chairman of engineering at AutonomUS) and Laura Brattain (now an affiliate professor on the College of Central Florida). Asha Rajagopal, Jordan Mizerak, Melly Coronado, and Jonathan Dan supported know-how switch efforts.
