02 October 2008
Medical Technology Innovations Originate from University Program
But program’s main goal is to produce inventors
San Francisco — Cardiologist Uday Kumar was completing a fellowship in biomedical technology products design when he decided it was a good time in his life to start a company.
Kumar had an idea for a medical device. It was a raw concept, not even a prototype at that stage. But he started IRhythm Technologies to develop and market a cardiac-rhythm monitoring device.
IRhythm Technologies is one of several medical-devices firms started by graduates of the Stanford University Biodesign Innovation Program, which teaches how to invent, use and market new medical technologies. Innovative products hatched under the program include a visualization catheter used in coronary procedures, a minimally invasive device for extracting bone marrow and a special heart coating that prevents dilation during heart operations.
But the seven-year-old program aims at producing inventors — developing people like Kumar — rather than inventions, said Christine Kurihara, a manager for the program. The focus is on training students, fellows and faculty in a systematic approach to solving medical problems and developing technologies that apply the solutions in medical practice.
Kurihara told America.gov that the program looks for people who have demonstrated “an innovative streak” but do not have specific ideas for medical devices.
“We want them to have a clean slate,” she said, because the program’s main concept is to teach the entire process — from identifying the need for a new device to designing, patenting and marketing it — rather than how to bring preconceived ideas to fruition.
“When they [program graduates] move through their careers, they will be able to repeat this process over and over again,” Kurihara said.
Eight of roughly 90 applicants are selected each year for the rigorous 10-month program, and 60 graduate students for a monthlong program. The program seeks people from different backgrounds to set up multidisciplinary, four-member teams. Most have doctoral or master’s degrees from medical, engineering or business schools.
For Kumar, working with teammates from different backgrounds was eye-opening.
“I was able to take what I knew and build upon it in a different mode than what I might have used if I had been on my own,” he said.
Students in the program spend the first few months in clinics trying to identify medical needs and then winnow about 300 ideas down to a few. Students use ideas discarded by the more experienced fellows and push them through the development process.
Program participants are expected to try to patent the ideas they develop, according to Kurihara. But because they can graduate without a patent, in some years, three or four designs are patented, in others, only one or two.
Those who want to tap the commercial potential of their patents have access to the venture capital industry concentrated around the university in California’s Silicon Valley. They have numerous opportunities to meet with representatives of more than 30 such funds, all of which are associated with the program.
Kumar said the program taught him how to talk to venture capitalists and what expertise he would need to develop an idea into a business.
When his teammates decided to pursue different careers after graduating from the program, he said, he decided to take the risk. He started a company alone, but recruited a seasoned chief executive and soon thereafter got venture capital funding.
Launches of several companies by program graduates have drawn the attention of other U.S. universities. The University of Minnesota and Duke University in North Carolina established their own programs based on the Stanford model.
Stanford University does not want to stop at that. It is working to help other countries emulate its approach to teaching innovation. It has launched a small-scale program for students from a technical university in Monterrey, Mexico, and formed a partnership with India’s government to stimulate innovative and cost-effective technological solutions to that country’s medical problems.
More information about Stanford’s Biodesign Program is available on the university’s Web site.
