News

Medical Devicelink 07/18/05

Competition Showcases Student Product Innovation

Medtech companies on the hunt for new product ideas and engineering talent would do well to pay attention to the winners of the Biomedical Engineering Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Awards (BMEidea), a new showcase competition for students involved in developing medical products.

Winners of the inaugural BMEidea competition were announced in June, during the Medical Design Excellence Awards (MDEA) ceremony at the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) East exposition in New York City.

The BMEidea competition recognizes excellence in student biomedical innovation. Winning teams at this year’s competition were selected from a pool of entries submitted by some of the nation’s top biomedical engineering departments, and were judged by a panel of experts in medicine, engineering, patent law, and business.

“One of the goals of the BMEidea competition is to increase awareness of academic biomedical engineering design programs and activities within the medical device industry. Presentation of the awards for the student competition during the MDEA awards ceremony helped accomplish this goal by providing industry exposure for the competition and the winning student teams,” said Jay R. Goldberg, PhD, director of the healthcare technologies management program at Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI), and cocreator of the BMEidea competition.

The first-place team, from Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA), received a $10,000 cash prize in recognition of its work. The team has developed the Embolune, a novel treatment for cerebral aneurysms. The microporous balloon device helps reduce the risk of aneurysm treatment. The team also developed a method to create a permanent clot that prevents further aneurysm growth. At the awards ceremony, team member Amy Lee said that the competition offered “a nice culmination of a year of working on the project and trying to find ways to promote it and to raise funding. The students involved in this project do it all on their own time. It’s nice to be recognized for all our work.”

The second-place winner was the entry for a bioimpedance probe to detect preterm labor from a team at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore). The team’s device measures subtle changes in cervical hydration, enabling accurate prediction of preterm labor. “This competition was an example of the many wonderful opportunities that have come to our team,” said team member Ashkon Shaahinfar. “One opportunity seems to lead to the next. It was humbling to be recognized among so many members of the industry—our whole team is excited. We hope that with all we’ve been given we can bring this product to market.”

The third-place award was presented for the Halo-Pack, a low-profile cervical spine orthosis, submitted by a team from Washington University (St. Louis). The team developed a novel halo to replace the traditional head immobilization device used in the treatment of cervical spine injury or after surgery. The new design reduces the device’s profile, allows patients to wear normal clothing, and enables safer access to the chest and airways. “The opportunity to practice writing a business proposal and sharing ideas with others was pretty incredible,” said team member Elizabeth Tran. “It was great to be at the MD&M show and make connections with vendors, and also to witness the MDEA ceremony to see what others are doing.”

Judges for the BMEidea competition included Elliot Lazar, MD, of ElCon Medical (Buffalo, NY); Tor Alden of HS Design Inc. (Gladstone, NJ); Ken Solomon of Thompson Coburn LLP (St. Louis, MO); Dan Broderick of Mason Wells Venture Funds (Milwaukee, WI); and Tim Matheson of Baird Venture Partners (Madison, WI). Lazar and Alden are also members of the 2005 MDEA jury panel, and helped bring an industry perspective to the judging process.

The judges evaluated the teams on a variety of criteria. The winning entries were required to solve a relevant clinical problem; meet technical, economic, legal, and regulatory requirements; feature a novel and practical design; and show potential for commercialization. Teams were encouraged to incorporate members from diverse fields such as business, law, medicine, dentistry, nursing, physical therapy, life sciences, physical sciences, or other related disciplines, and were required to include at least one engineering student.

“In support of recent trends in translational research and academic technology transfer, one of the goals of the competition was to promote entrepreneurship within engineering schools and student design teams,” said Goldberg. “Teams were required to develop and submit a business plan to convince judges and potential funding sources of the potential for commercialization of their products. This experience helped students learn more about business and the technical, legal, regulatory, and economic constraints of medical device design.”

The BMEidea competition was established by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA; Hadley, MA), an alliance of nearly 200 colleges and universities across the United States whose mission is to support and encourage invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship in higher education, fostering the technological innovators and business leaders of the future.

“We are pleased to honor these outstanding student biomedical innovators,” said Phil Weilerstein, NCIIA executive director, and cocreator of the BMEidea competition. “Each year the NCIIA funds a strong group of biomedical projects through our Advanced E-Team grants program; these winners represent some of the finest among the teams we have funded. We are gratified to give them the opportunity to unveil their winning designs in the company of some of the industry’s leading innovators.”

The competition is organized and sponsored by NCIIA in partnership with the National Science Foundation, Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry magazine, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the Industrial Designers Society of America. The competition is endorsed by the Council of Chairs of Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering Programs. For additional information about the BMEidea competition, visit the NCIIA Web site at www.nciia.org.

Link: http://devicelink.com/mx/issuesupdate/05/06/NCIIA.html