Our mission is to foster a dynamic educational environment that will promote the advancement of medical technology.

Our first responsibility is to the patients and their families whose health and well-being are affected by the technologies we create. We have a related obligation to the health and safety of the students, engineers, and medical personnel who will develop, test and implement these devices and methods.

We are responsible to the global health care community, including the governments, businesses and institutions involved in health care delivery and financing. We will strive to create cost-effective solutions that meet important clinical needs in this country and abroad. We will prioritize technologies and approaches that take the environment and the limited nature of our natural resources into account, including the humane and ethical treatment of animals.

We respect the three-fold mission of Stanford University and Medical Center to advance patient care, education and research. We will pursue approaches to medical technology development and transfer that serve these goals in a direct and effective manner while maintaining the standards of the university at the highest level.

As inventors and creators of new technology, we have unique and valuable insight into the solutions we create, as well as a vested interest in seeing that our concepts are applied. With this in mind, we must ensure that the primary focus of our activities is the needs of the patients and healthcare workers we serve. It is fair that we participate in the financial rewards resulting from an important new product or service, according to the rules of the University, as long as our efforts are ethical and our potential conflicts of interest are openly declared.

Our mandate is to invent and experiment with new ideas in health care technology. This is a difficult process and we will fail in some instances. We must be prepared to accept responsibility for those failures and to learn from them.

We are responsible for the people we work with, and will treat others with the respect that they deserve as individuals, regardless of their strengths, weaknesses or differences. We must be open to suggestions and complaints and we must provide equal opportunities for all participants in the program. We will protect the dignity and privacy of the patients we work with.

Our actions in all of these capacities must be truthful and fair at all times.