Welcome to the first episode of AUTM on the Air. This episode is brought to you by Wellspring, a leading provider of Innovation Ops software. I’m excited to be talking to Bethany Loftin, an Interagency Policy & iEdison Specialist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

We’ll be talking about the recent redesign of iEdison, the online platform used to report taxpayer-funded innovations. Organizations use iEdison to request extensions and waivers, report progress, and notify the federal government of its limited use rights to patents on taxpayer-funded ideas, in addition to reporting their inventions.

In This Episode:

[02:59] The new version of iEdison launched on August 9th of 2022. A lot of time was put into this launch including several years of feedback and testing.

[04:13] It just made sense to transfer iEdison from NIH to NIST.

[05:43] Bethany breaks down many of the changes to iEdison including the login procedure and the user interface. 

[07:35] Security measures are extremely important. That's one of the reasons they shifted to login.gov. They also have strict user role enforcement, security requirements, and all attachments are virus scanned.

[09:02] Probably the number one mistake that users make is not being aware of the Bayh-Dole requirements. Linking patents and reports can be another issue. 

[10:47] When users need help they can reach out to the help desk from the iEdison home page.

[12:27] The agencies just want to ensure that they are getting accurate timely information about what's happening with federal research funding. 

[15:01] The iEdison home page has many resources from tutorials to user guides. They even have a video tutorial section and will be having training sessions throughout the year. 

[16:45] The new iEdison is still a work in progress, even though it has had a lot of improvements. The system will be continually upgraded and improved. 

[17:36] People should really read the regulations and know what their obligations are. The reporting is a lot easier when you know what you're supposed to be doing. Get the entire team involved.

Resources:

Wellspring

iEdison

NIST

Bethany Loftin LinkedIn

Bethany Loftin

Bayh-Dole Act