BIOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN MEDICINE AND ENGINEERING


Course Description
The first part of the course identifies clinical needs and potential technological solutions. Each student will first identify up to ten clinical needs in a particular medical domain (e.g. endocrinology, orthopedics, medical oncology, etc.). The students will then consider these needs from a standpoint of technical feasibility, clinical impact, intellectual property, marketability, clinical implementation, clinical trials, and regulatory barriers. Clinical needs will be identified from multiple sources including the open medical literature, clinician focus groups, clinical needs web sites, and other programs offered through the Biomedical Engineering Center for Translational Research for soliciting clinician inspired innovations.

Students will work in small groups to prioritize the most important clinical needs facing healthcare providers and patients while considering the technical feasibility of their innovations.The sorting and prioritizing process will involve input from faculty, clinicians, experienced biomedical industry representatives, successful inventors, and other professionals in the biomedical community. The students work together to perform literature and patent searches, assessing the clinical and technical feasibility of their innovations, conduct interviews with faculty and clinicians and forecast clinical and market impact for each clinical need discovered. The process involves filtering needs identified to select the most promising.

A complete design specification will be developed for the four of the most promising needs by each student group. Students will present their design specifications to an expert panel composed of representatives from the medical, engineering, pharmaceutical, entrepreneurial, and business communities. The project plans are also evaluated by the consulting engineering and physician faculty members.

Having characterized clinical needs and developed technological concepts to solve them, the students then identify the best path to take the top rated ideas forward. This may require new research, licensing, further incubation, or the creation of a new start-up company. Students work collaboratively in small teams to create a full business or development plan for each area identified.

Students will present their prototypes and a proposal for translational research needed to advance their innovations to an expert panel for evaluation. It is anticipated that some of these proposals will be supported by the BME department W. H. Coulter Translational Research Partnership program, or apply for other follow-on funding.

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