A Patent Lawyer with a Passion for innovation: Meet Jonathan Fritz
2.7.2018
Jonathan Fritz – Executive Director, CHIME Innovation
I expected to follow the footsteps of my dentist father and nurse mother and be a clinician. Then one day in genetics class a guest speaker – a patent attorney – encouraged us to consider a career in patent law. To protect innovative technologies, he said, the profession needed people with science and technology backgrounds. After that, it was law school and not dental school for me.
My career has taken many interesting turns, from working in-house at Unisys, a large computer corporation, to being a patent attorney and partner in several law firms, to co-founder of a startup, to the chief strategy officer and director of new ventures at Symphony Corporation. While practicing law, I received my master’s degree in bioinformatics from the Medical College of Wisconsin and was able to protect inventions from the world’s largest research universities and startups alike. Through Symphony’s affiliation as a CHIME Foundation firm, I had the opportunity to meet many CHIME members as well as the team at CHIME. And on the first of this year, I became part of that team as the executive director of CHIME Innovation.
CHIME Innovation is a global healthcare innovation initiative that includes innovation-specific education, innovation facilitation and physical centers and labs designed around collaboratively solving healthcare problems. Educational events will be available remotely as well as in our new facility, the Intermountain and CHIME Innovation Center powered by Sirius, in Murray, Utah.
Our first workshop, “Developing an Innovation Framework,” will be March 17-18 in Murray. More information about the workshop is available here.
Those attending HIMSS19 in Orlando, Fla., can learn more about CHIME Innovation by visiting the CHIME booth in West C Lobby at 2:30-3:30 p.m. Feb. 12 during HIMSS19. We will provide a CHIME Innovation summary and update. I also will be available Feb. 10-11 during the CHIME HIMSS CIO Forum in Orlando to talk about our goals and how members and Foundation firms can get involved.
We will share more details about CHIME Innovation soon. If you have any questions or thoughts about the initiative, please email me at [email protected].