BICOEE Brain Imaging Center of Economic Excellence

Economic Impact of BICOEE

There will be three classes of economic impact of the COE award. First, there is a direct impact on the economy from the award itself, and from the extramural grants that will be generated as a consequence of that award. Second, there is an indirect impact on the economy from the spin-off companies that will be created as a consequence of the award (new jobs and new income from sales will be created). Statistics on salaries are taken from publications by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Statistics on sales to payroll ratios are taken from publications by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Finally, there is an induced impact from each of these. The induced impact results because a portion of every new dollar created (from the direct or indirect effects) will be spent in the local economy, and a portion of that will be re-spent, and so on. Such induced effects are calculated using a multiplier. (For this study, the multiplier attached to the direct effects will be a university-based multiplier of 2.17, and the multiplier attached to the indirect effects will be a national average private sector multiplier of 1.4.) The economic impact will be calculated for the first five years of the initiative (2003-2007, inclusive), and will be expressed in present value terms (discounting future years at a 3% per year rate). Lower and upper bounds on the benefits will be in millions of dollars ($M).

The direct effects from the COE and extramural grants are estimated to be between $8.4M and $24.5M for 2003-2007, inclusive. In addition, funds will be used to train three individuals per year as bioengineers at the graduate level, with a present value of between $142,000 and $181,000 for the five years. These direct effects lead to an additional induced effect of between $11.9M to $53.6M.

1. Software For example MRIcro, website www.MRIco.com, a freeware product that could spawn support jobs.
2. Detection Deception - "Next Generation Polygraph" BICOEE can become the national leader in deception detection technology.

Minimally Invasive Brain Stimulation Technologies. There may be as many as three startup companies to take the MUSC Brain Stimulation Laboratory (BSL) stimulation ideas with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) and deep brain stimulation (DBS), and carry them to market.