Notes From the Innovation Hub: 3-D Printers, UAMS Partnership
By Mark Carter
It's a Tuesday just after lunch, and downtown Little Rock is enjoying what many might call a chamber-of-commerce day.
(Fittingly, we sit catty corner at Markham and Scott from the Little Rock Chamber.)
Anyway, blue skies abound.
Symbolic, no doubt, of the entrepreneurial momentum building in the central Arkansas metro.
Conway hosted its first LaunchPad startup competition at Toad Suck over the weekend, and the Arkansas Venture Center is up and running strong.
Meanwhile, renovations continue across the river at the Arkansas Regional Innovation Hub, and its official Argenta grand opening isn't far off.
The Hub's Argenta Innovation Center at Poplar and Broadway in downtown NLR will include the Launch Pad (the area's first launch pad) maker space, the Silver Mine co-working space and the already open Art Connection creative space.
The first new component of the Hub to open will be the Launch Pad, led by Joel Gordon. Arkansas Manufacturing Solutions, a project of the awesome Arkansas Science & Technology Authority, helped his cause by donating three 3-D printers and two laser cutters to the Launch Pad.
Since February, Gordon has been leading the Hub-UB series, local TED-like talks. The next one is scheduled for May 14 at 6 p.m. from the Argenta Branch Library and will feature Doug Gusewelle of EAST Initiative.
Here's more from the Hub on a recent Hub-UB talk from Donald Simpson of the UAMS Office of Global Health:
Technology Improves Global Medicine
Some really cool things are happening in medical technology.
Dr. Donald Simpson of the UAMS Office of Global Health painted a picture for Hub-UB attendees of how emerging technology is benefiting the practice of medicine from Namibia to Haiti to Arkansas:
- Custom 3-D-printed hip replacements
- Student-produced technology for smartphone-based diagnoses
- Partnerships establishing a country's first biomedical degree program
No doubt, innovation and collaboration are making medical care both personalized and widely accessible, even in remote and underserved areas.
In fact, the Hub will partner with UAMS to build 3-D printed prosthetics for a program that provides prosthetic limbs for underserved parts of Africa.
Also, the Hub is preparing this summer to host the members of the CatchinUp team from NLR High who won the first-ever High School Startup Weekend last month. Part of the prize package was an internship with the Hub.
Good stuff. More to come. Like we said, blue skies and all....