Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital: A National Leader in Clinical-Driven Medical Innovation and Technology Transfer

Two years ago, China's first innovation ranking of Grade 3A hospitals——The “China Hospital Innovation and Transformation Ranking” was unveiled in Hainan, with Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (hereinafter referred to as Shanghai Ninth Hospital) topping the list.

This marks the first time in China that a ranking of tertiary Grade A hospitals nationwide has been conducted with innovation commercialization as the primary metric, evaluating performance across six dimensions: patent application volume, granted patent volume, invention patent application volume, granted invention patent volume, PCT application volume, and patent commercialization volume.

Academician Ge Junbo, the initiator, stated,Patents must be translated into services that enhance human well-being; those that are not commercialized or applied are referred to as “zombie patents.”。

From 2020 to 2022, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital signed a total of 80 technology transfer projects, with agreement amounts reaching RMB 470 million. When it was the turn of Wu Hao, President of Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, to share his insights, he stated that hospitals should not only vigorously promote the development of platforms for innovation and commercialization but also place greater emphasis on the protection of patented technologies and cultivate the ability to mine and leverage existing patents.

Research OfficeResponsible for the hospital-wide management of scientific research.

The rationale for establishing this office is straightforward: the hospital has witnessed a series of innovative breakthroughs. In the 1980s, Dai Kerong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the leading figure in the Department of Orthopedics at the Ninth People’s Hospital, along with his team, achieved significant innovations in gait analysis and balance function assessment in the Chinese population, domestically produced bone cement, porous-surface artificial joints, the stress-shielding effect of internal fixation, and experimental studies on inorganic bone particle bone cement.

This marked the beginning of Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital’s “No. 01” initiative. Since then, the hospital’s annual “Academic Ranking” has documented its academic achievements each year. Over the past three decades, the publication has grown increasingly substantial. The 2019 edition was particularly noteworthy: for the first time, the number of National Natural Science Foundation grants awarded to Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital exceeded 100, and its volume of SCI-indexed publications ranked among the top ten medical institutions nationwide.

Behind a series of innovative achievements,Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has been building a comprehensive clinical research system, enabling the integration of clinical resources, research equipment, talent, and funding into the hospital.。

Founded in 1920, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has developed into a top-tier comprehensive hospital in China. In terms of disciplinary rankings, its departments of plastic surgery, stomatology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, and orthopedics are all among the best in the country. In terms of patient volume, the hospital recorded over 4.47 million outpatient and emergency visits, more than 150,000 hospital admissions, over 130,000 inpatient surgeries, and more than 170,000 outpatient surgical procedures in 2023. These abundant clinical resources provide a robust case foundation for scientific innovation, enabling physicians to identify key disciplinary questions through extensive clinical practice.

Laboratories are the sanctuaries for exploring the future. To facilitate scientific research and address clinical challenges, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has established numerous research platforms, including 2 Clinical Medical Research Centers, 1 Shanghai Class IV Peak Discipline, 5 research institutes, 5 Shanghai Key Laboratories, 3 Engineering Research Centers, 4 Shanghai Professional Technical Service Platforms, and 2 Shanghai Engineering Technology Research Centers.

These research platforms also align with the leading specialties of Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital. Taking the National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases as an example, the center comprises departments such as the General Office, Department of Clinical Research, Department of Basic Research, Biobank, Department of Data Information and Quality Control, and Department of Biostatistics. Focusing on six tertiary disciplines—including Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Prosthodontics, and Endodontics—physicians at Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital have produced a substantial body of scientific achievements.

In building its research talent pool, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has long established the celebrated “One Hospital, Five Academicians” legacy. Chinese Academy of Engineering academicians Zhang Disheng, Qiu Weiliu, Dai Kerong, Zhang Zhiyuan, and Fan Xianqun, among other experts, provide academic support in research fields such as plastic surgery, stomatology, ophthalmology, and orthopedics. Moreover, the hospital places particular emphasis on cultivating the next generation of scientific researchers.

Within the talent development framework for scientific research at Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, the highest priority is placed on cultivating young professionals.

To attract outstanding young research talents to join the front lines of clinical practice and scientific research, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has continuously intensified its efforts in recruiting and training postdoctoral fellows. During their tenure, the hospital provides a one-time research startup fund of RMB 100,000 per person.

In addition to one-time startup research funding, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has established a “Seed Fund” to support and encourage researchers in building preliminary research foundations and expanding the talent pool; launched the “Clinical+” Initiative to address clinical practice issues and enhance the quality of clinical research; and created an “Interdisciplinary Fund” to foster original achievements with core competitiveness and cultivate interdisciplinary talents. As of January 2023, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital had built a postdoctoral team of approximately 150 members.

After more than a century of development, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has unveiled an ambitious strategic plan. By mobilizing the full strength of the institution, it aims to conduct cutting-edge clinical research and translate the most practical scientific achievements into applications, thereby establishing itself as a research-oriented hospital and an innovation translation platform.

The most critical step in the transformation of scientific and technological achievements at Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital is the cultivation and mining of intellectual property rights.

Intellectual property is often perceived by many researchers as merely an optional criterion for professional title evaluation, which has led to a phenomenon where patents are filed for the sake of filing rather than to address clinical needs.

For technology transfer, when innovations need to cross into industrial domains, a solid patent foundation is essential. Therefore, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has consistently adhered to the policy of“Technology Innovation as the Guide, Clinical Needs as the Driver”。

First, in terms of policies and regulations, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has issued more than 20 policy documents and over 70 forms. Among these, institutional frameworks and their accompanying procedural documents—such as the Measures for the Administration of Intellectual Property Rights Related to Scientific and Technological Achievements at Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and the Measures for the Administration of the Transformation of Job-Related Scientific and Technological Achievements at Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine—promote a virtuous cycle of technological innovation within the hospital and enhance the vitality of intellectual property operations through incentive mechanisms covering patent applications, product research and development, and the distribution of proceeds from transformation activities.

In terms of concrete actions, in 2011, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital establishedOffice of Technology Transfer,As the dedicated department for intellectual property and achievement transformation management at the hospital, it is staffed with patent attorneys, technology brokers, lawyers, and economists. Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has entrusted the task of patent incubation to these professionals, whose shared responsibility is to help physicians identify and match with the most suitable partners in research and development, industry, and investment.

Meanwhile, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has established a dual training mechanism combining “internal cultivation and external training” to strengthen the standardized competency training of professional service personnel. Internal training is integrated throughout the entire intellectual property management process, covering areas such as promotional kick-off meetings, opinion solicitation sessions, document study workshops, and standard operation meetings. The goal of external training is to cultivate composite talents with both technical backgrounds and operational experience, by regularly organizing relevant staff to participate in targeted professional training programs.

In addition to providing one-on-one services through its intellectual property (IP) team, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital has adopted a comprehensive approach by training IP professionals across multiple disciplines to serve as part-time IP liaisons. This initiative aims to facilitate communication between clinical departments and the Office of Technology Transfer for real-time tracking of patent progress, while also standardizing IP management, as well as the utilization, disposition, and revenue distribution of research outcomes across all departments.

Amid the wave of high-quality development, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital also “Centered on high-value patents, extending forward to patent mining and layout, and backward to technology transfer and commercializationChemical“The establishment of an operational standards system was incorporated into the hospital’s 14th Five-Year Plan. From the initial conceptualization, the Technology Transfer Office team facilitated the entire process by coordinating a tripartite collaboration among engineers, inventors, and enterprises.”

From 2018 to October 2022, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital successfully commercialized 82 innovative projects, with a total contractual value of RMB 598.689 million. This included the transfer of 252 patents and 9 software copyrights. Among these commercialized innovative projects, 10 obtained product registration certificates approved by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA).

Whether research yields results and whether those results can be implemented tests not only a hospital’s scientific research capabilities but also its capacity for external openness. Scientific innovation and development follow inherent patterns, as does the process of translating research findings into practical applications.A mature technology transfer system must be characterized by close external collaboration.

Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital is not merely an institution dedicated to clinical excellence and scientific research; it also maintains an outward-looking perspective. In recent years, the hospital has continuously expanded its network of corporate partnerships.

In 2020, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital and Shanghai Zhangjiang Group signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement to jointly develop the hospital’s leading disciplines, including stomatology, plastic and reconstructive surgery, and ophthalmology. In 2021, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital and Yingwei Medical Technology signed a strategic cooperation agreement and held a plaque-awarding ceremony for the establishment of an Intelligent Orthopedics Planning Center. Also in 2021, Fujun Gene Biotechnology Co., Ltd. collaborated with Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital on scientific research into cutting-edge technologies in the field of assisted reproduction.

It is evident that collaborative R&D with enterprises yields outcomes that better align with commercial demands, thereby facilitating market entry.. For example, the “Honghu” joint surgery robot, co-developed by Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital and MicroPort MedBot, features 97% domestically produced components. It has become the only Chinese-made surgical robot to obtain regulatory approval in five countries/regions, including China, the United States, Europe, Brazil, and Australia, and has achieved sales in the U.S. market.

In June 2023, the “China Hospital Innovation and Transformation Ranking (2022)” was released in Qinghai. Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital once again topped the list with 178 patent transformations.

Looking back at the innovation and translation journey of Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, the logic is actually quite simple: the enrichment of clinical resources, the alignment of research platforms, the establishment of professional teams, and the openness to external collaboration. These small initiatives have accumulated over time, ultimately coalescing into significant achievements and standing out amidst the tide of the times.