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Dr. Favardin, a strong proponent of entrepreneurship and an advocate for technology commercialization, talked about the various programs the university currently offers that help drive economic growth in the state of Maryland.  The Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) supports the state’s technology economy by educating the next generation of technology entrepreneurs, creating successful technology ventures, and connecting Maryland businesses with university resources.  Mtech has had a $22.5 billion economic impact within the state since 1983.  Specifically, some high profile products such as MedImmune’s Synagis and Hughes Communications’ HughesNet, and billion dollar companies such as Martek Biosciences, and Digene Corporation all found its start from the university programs.  Recently, the entrepreneurship programs offered by the university were ranked 11^th nationwide by the U.S. News and World Report.

Key Tech already has strong ties with the academic powerhouse.  Two out of the four founders graduated from Maryland, and Key Tech currently employs seven Maryland alumni from the Clark School of Engineering, which accounts for roughly 30% of the staff.  In addition, Key Tech CEO Jenny Regan currently serves as the chair for the Women in Engineering (WIE) Advisor board at the university.

Besides the existing relationship, Key Tech looks forward to an array of future collaboration opportunities with the school, and welcomes any suggestions on how to facilitate tech commercialization between the university and small businesses like Key Tech.

A special thank you to the event planners on the UMD side: Asante, Ted & Jess!

Our staff of cross-disciplinary engineers, an industrial designer, admin support, and interns all work together to create remarkable solutions every day. We usually have 5-10 projects going on simultaneously, so it’s tough to stay current on everything that’s going on outside of my own projects. Just recently, I was getting the 10-second tour of a prototype when I started asking about a robotic end-effector densely packed with numerous individual pneumatic actuators and complex linkages.

“Oh, that? Yeah, we had to make almost all of those parts ourselves – just the pneumatic cylinders and screws are stock. Assembled, the density of the tips is probably twice anything we could find off the shelf.”

Seth Godin writes about having one or two Linchpins that can make a company. These are the indispensible go-to people that are creative, willing to be unconventional, and passionate about their work. They make their work personal and are not satisfied until it’s done right. I don’t know anyone at Key Tech that doesn’t act this way.
Most of our work is highly confidential, so remarkable work rarely gets remarked upon outside of these walls. But, internally, annual reviews often include feedback from peers and project managers that looks like this:

“I’ve worked with him on the ************* project and it has been awesome. He has been handling the many headaches of designing, re-designing, and re-re-designing the critical [custom hardware] for the various systems. Additionally, it has been a pleasure working with him the whole way. He is always in good spirits, does his work in a very timely fashion, and still finds time to host things like ASME meetings. Very impressive. No criticisms what-so-ever.”

So, thanks. You rock! It’s pretty cool to work with all of you.

The concept of “personalized medicine” is based on the targeting of specific factors that make one individual more receptive to a therapy than another. Pharmaceuticals can alleviate symptoms and cure disease. However, many drugs  only help fewer than half of the people who take them, and many come with the small chance of side-effects – everything from diarrhea or drowsiness  to death. The idea of personalized medicine is that patient populations can be tested to verify before prescription that a drug will be effective for them and that side effects will be minimal.  Tests may be based on a genomic marker or a biological cell structure.

Key Tech has been designing and developing diagnostic devices, both point-of-care and high throughput, for over 10 years now.  In recent years, we’ve been conceiving and developing new drug delivery devices as well and we are witnessing the growing market for patient-friendly medicine delivery and the companion diagnostics that qualify a patient population for targeted drugs.  We’re looking forward to watching this approach to medicine develop and mature.

Key Tech outsources for prototype components and then assembles, details, and tests in-house. Prototyping capabilities are full service, including SLA, SLS, thermoforming, urethane, epoxy and silicone casting, polyjet, CNC machined parts, full electrical prototyping including microprocessor selection (in-house), board design (in-house), population and testing, user interface screen mock-ups with display software, and more.

Over the past year or two, Key Tech has taken advantage of improvements in the usability and functionality of online tools like blogs, webinars, and social networking opportunities to share information quickly and easily. Over the same period, we’ve observed dwindling attendance at industry conferences. So, where is everyone? Are others spending more time online and less time traveling to conferences? This seems to be the trend among your responses.

It’s no surprise that the primary source for identifying new technologies and business partners is still referrals from trusted relationships. However, after referrals, online search engines have eclipsed conferences as the favorite second source. While conferences seem to be a close second to search engines when people are asked about all of their sources, it’s not even close when considering BEST sources.

Most respondents still look to referrals, search engines, conferences, and print publications as sources for new business ventures. It’s what we know, and it’s also what we trust. But, gaining and giving trust is easier for some than others. And, because of the high popularity and relatively low cost of using Google, blogs, webinars, and social media, some former conference attendees have apparently opted for these newer venues, particularly in the current economic climate.

Do you agree with the respondents? Where do you go to identify new technologies you might like to use, acquire, or license? What are your best sources to identify new business partners, such as service providers, licensing partners, and other collaborators? Feel free to share your two cents in the comments area below.

What is your primary scouting responsibility?

Where do you look to find new technologies or new business partners ?

Where is your BEST SOURCE?

You can read the article in the Summer 2009 printed publication or catch it in the online version, Meeting the challenges of micropart design.

What is that “everything else”?

It includes marketing, legal, manufacturing, operations, quality assurance, sales, distribution, customer service, and more.  And if it’s a regulated medical device, then there are also regulatory and reimbursement issues that are critical to the ability to sell a product and that directly affect price points.  Most of these issues need to be addressed prior to or at the same time as the technology development.

At this point of a presentation, I know I’ve lost most of the technical inventors in the audience, because when you say words like “marketing”, “legal” and “regulatory” to technology types, they often hear “wah, wah, wah”.   So I won’t go on any longer.  Just know that if you are undertaking this kind of development, you need to manage far more than just developing technology, and your plan and your team should be ready to address all of these factors.

The traditional way to make a product cheaper has always been subtraction – in essence, minimizing the size and complexity of a device without sacrificing its performance.  Size and complexity reductions can drive down costs on materials, packaging, and shipping, while also favoring higher-throughput production and the use of disposable parts – an increasingly important consideration in biomedical applications.  With that said, the simpler and smaller approach is not without limitations, and these limitations are being tested now by “hugely small” applications.

In the case of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), microfluidic chips, nano-sensing technology, and numerous other scale-intensive fields, reduced size is actually a profound contributor to increased complexity.  And while these innovative fields show tremendous promise for the future, they currently pose costly manufacturing hurdles as a consequence.  The cost of prototyping and manufacturing micro-parts should be carefully weighed when considering whether or not to pursue an otherwise-avoidable micro-approach.  As of now, these costs can quickly consume the benefits of implementing questionable technology since this often requires several iterations of low-volume custom components.  Lab-on-a-chip devices are a good example prone to this paradoxical limbo.  Even a relatively straightforward microfluidic component can require robust interfaces and innovative prototyping and assembly processes to ensure proper functionality.  Before long, the microfluidic system isn’t so “micro” anymore – in size or cost.

So what can designers and our manufacturing comrades do to advance the cost effectiveness of these emerging technologies?  For starters, let’s abandon subtraction and opt for addition;  additional measures to define and achieve design tolerances, additional manufacturing techniques for creating repeatable micron and sub-micron parts, additional design features for ease of alignment during assembly, additional quality assurance measures to assess as-built dimensions, and – most importantly – additional communication between manufacturers and designers for continued success on the field of dreams we now find ourselves playing.

9. Regional products – More and more companies are being drawn to the large, nascent medical markets overseas, in China and India in particular. If you’re also feeling an attraction to these areas, remember that your current product may not suffice, even if it has been successful in the US and Europe. And we’re not talking about the expected things like software or labeling issues.

   Your product was most likely designed to meet specific stakeholder needs for the regions in which it was developed, including the user interface design, product cost and even the per-use cost. Chances are good that what worked in one region will not work in some of the big overseas markets noted above.

   The U.S., in particular, has distinctively different buyers and/or users of technology-based products than China or India or other developing countries. Don’t be surprised if you end up having to significantly re-design the product for some of these overseas markets to better fit the needs of the local region. Your cost model may have to change completely, and may not work at all. Plan for this…don’t get blindsided. You may even want to find a local product developer in each distinctly different region that can provide input for the design.

10. Reimbursement – Reimbursement is central to the business plan of a majority of medical products. We have been surprised to find that this topic is not better researched by some of our clients.

    We’ve seen more than once where the reimbursement research was delayed, purposefully or not, until some later point in the development program. We’ve seen cases where an expected or planned reimbursement model didn’t work or where existing reimbursement codes were wrong or didn’t apply. We’ve even seen cases where there were no applicable reimbursement codes.

    Reimbursement can have a big impact on per unit and disposable cost targets, as well as the upfront development NRE. Give this the attention it deserves. Proceeding without understanding the reimbursement model adds significant business risk.

I hope you found something of interest in the above… and even something that may help you one day with your future development projects. That’s it for this four-part series, but you may see more of these lessons in the future. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, just don’t repeat them.