Fellow teams awarded NCIIA Grants
Fellows Venita Chandra and Rich Vecchiotti have received an Advanced E-Team grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) for a novel stress urinary incontinence device. The NCIIA grant provides teams with financial support to bring an innovative product or technology from idea to prototype, and eventually to market. Successful E-Team grant proposals demonstrate an idea’s technical feasibility, social value, and potential for commercialization. Advanced E-Team grants range in size from $1,000 to $20,000; They were awarded $16,500. 

The 2006-07 Biodesign Innovation Fellows Zachary Malchano, Steve Eichmann, James Wall, and Kenneth Wu [pictured below] were also awarded an Advanced E-Team grant for a project focused on the improved delivery of regional anesthesia.  The Advanced E-Team grant provides funding support to bring innovative ideas to prototypes and potentially to market.  The grant award of $18,500 will be used, in part, to develop advanced prototypes for bench-top and pre-clinical testing.   Milestones for the team include developing a complete business plan and financial model, bench-top and pre-clinical testing, FDA regulatory submission, and fundraising for project commercialization.

Biodesign Fellows Receive $100,000 Grant
InSite Medical Technologies (San Francisco, CA), an early stage medical device company focused on thesafe andaccurate delivery of epidural anesthesia, has received an SBIR Phase I Award from the National Science Foundation for $100,000 to support development of its proprietary epidural access technology. The need for innovation in the delivery of regional anesthesia was identified by a team of Fellows (Zachary Malchano, Stephen Eichmann, James Wall, and Kenneth Wu) in the Biodesign Program. The group conceived a solution and was awarded a grant in early 2007 from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) that allowed the team to develop initial prototypes and perform early proof-of-concept studies.  Wall and Wu are currently leading the effort to develop the Stanford technology for clinical use.        

New fellow teams approach mid-year
The ‘07-08 fellow teams are nearing the end of their clinical immersion experience in critical care and anesthesia (organized by Ron Pearl, MD, Chair of Anesthesia).   Each team has compiled a list of over 250 needs and is in the process of narrowing these large lists down into the top needs to take forward into brainstorming and invention.

Red Team – Anesthesia includes:
David Boudreault, MD, St. Louis University
Marie Johnson, PhD, University of Minnesota
Shivanand Lad, MD, Chicago Medical
Beverly Tang, PhD,  Stanford University

White Team – Critical Care includes:
Zachary Edmonds, MD, UCLA
Brian Fahey, PhD, Duke
Ronald Jou, MD, UCSF
Dorothea Koh, MS, Stanford University
Jamie van Hoften, MD (pending), UCSF

2006-07 Fellow Alum Update
Following graduation last June the 13 fellows have launched into different career pathways around the world.  Venita Chanda and James Wall are remaining as our 2nd year biodesign fellows.   
Other graduating fellows:

Stephen Eichmann, returned to Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., a company of Johnson & Johnson, Cincinnati, OH
Joel Goldsmith, Abbott Diabetes Care.
Basil Hantash, Instructor in Surgery - Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Stanford
Zach Malchano, Voyage Medical
David Meister, completing his medical school training at Stanford.
Carlos Mery, finishing his Surgical Fellowship at Brigham & Women’s Hospital
Oscar Miranda-Dominguez, returned to his faculty position in Mexico
Santiago Ocejo, returned to Mexico to complete his MD training
Tatum Tarin, completing his residency in Urology at Stanford
Richard Vecchiotti, working on a start-up company from his training in Biodesign
Ross Venook, Advanced Bionics Corporation, a division of Boston Scientific.
Kenneth Wu, Neodyne Biosciences and working on a start-up company (InSite Medical Technologies) from his training in Biodesign

Graduation brought many of our alumni fellows back to Stanford, pictured with the graduates above.

Stanford Entrepreneurs Win Women 2.0 Award
Women 2.0, a network for young women entrepreneurs, hosted their annual Pitch Night in April 2007.   One of two winning teams originated in last year’s Biodesign Innovation Class.   Laser-Seal is a new technology intended to provide faster, cleaner wound closures in the operating room with laser technology.  The Laser-Seal team included Dr. Milana Trounce - 1st year GSB student, and an ER physician, Avishai Shoham - 1st year GSB student focusing on entrepreneurship and medical devices, Kristen Gasior - 1st year GSB student, specializing in Finance.

2007 Lincoln Award
The 2006 Biodesign team in course ME382, directed by Prof. Tom Andriacchi,  consisting of Melanie Fox (Delp Lab), Chandra Mohan Jha (Kenny lab),  Grant Lee, JinHoon Park, and Gabriel Sanchez (Andriacchi lab)  received the James F. Lincoln Gold Award for their initial design of a new glaucoma preventing implant. The proposed device lowers ocular pressure by draining excess aqueous fluid from the anterior chamber. A microprocessor monitors the eye pressure and holds it at a pre-determined healthy level. In addition, the device could prevent hypotony, or dangerously low eye pressure, which is a side-effect of some currently available implants.

The Institute for Health Technology Studies awarded an In Health grant to Biodesign for a one-year, $288,457 study, to examine and describe in clear terms the various means that bring medical devices to market and their continued evolution in the post-market environment.

Investigators on this grant include: Principal Investigator, John H. Linehan, Ph.D., Consulting Professor of Bioengineering in Biodesign and the Department of Bioengineering; Co-Principal Investigator: Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, Ph.D. , Professor of Engineering and Professor and Chair of the Department of Management Science and Engineering; Co-Principal Investigator: Paul Yock, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering, and Founding Co-Chair of the Department of Bioengineering and Director of Biodesign; and Investigator: Jan Pietzsch, Ph.D., Consulting Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, and President and co-Founder of Wing Tech, Inc.  More information can be found on the InHealth website at:   http://www.inhealth.org/OPage.asp?PageID=OTH000080

Stanford India Biodesign
Balram Bhargava, MD, professor of cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, has been appointed Executive Director (India) for the Stanford-India Biodesign Program.  Dr. Bhargava is an internationally known interventional cardiologist who has helped pioneer several procedures and technologies.   Dr. Bhargva joins Raj Doshi, MD, who is Executive Director (Stanford) for the program;  and Christine Kurihara, Associate Director.   

The Indian government has allocated $4.8 million over the next five years to help fund the Stanford-India Biodesign (SIB) program. The mission of the program is to train the next generation of Indian medical technology innovators. 

The core of the SIB program will be a two-year, team-based fellowship which will begin in January, 2008.   Following the announcement of applications in the early summer, over 300 engineers and physicians applied for the program.   Screening interviews were conducted in New Delhi in August, and the top eight candidates flown to California for interviews in September.  Five candidates were selected for the initial team.

Pictured are the first round of candidates for the SIB Fellowship.

While Stanford's Biodesign Program has successfully trained medical innovators for several years, the new partnership will emphasize the cost-effectiveness of new technologies, with a particular emphasis on the medically underserved.  The new SIB Center in Delhi will become a nucleus for educational programs at the All India Medical Institute (AIIMS) and IIT-Delhi.  In two years a second SIB Center will be developed in a location still to be determined. 

New Biodesign Program in Monterrey, Mexico
Based on a successful fellowship experience this year by Santiago Torres-Ocejo and Oscar Dominquez-Miranda, the Instituto Technologio de Studios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) is initiating an educational program in Monterrey, Mexico in the Biodesign process.  Stanford Biodesign is serving as a model for developing a new Centro de Biodiseño (Biodesign) in the context of this university’s new Centro de Innovación y Transferencia en Salud (Center for Innovation and Translation for Health).

Deans from the Institute visit with Biodesign Faculty and Mexico Fellows left.

Mexico Fellows Participate in Changemakers Collaborative Competition
Mexico Fellow Santiago Ocejo, was part of class team that reached the finals in the Changemakers Collaborative Competition.   The class, Design for Extreme Affordability, was directed by Prof. Jim Patel from the Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute for Design (the “d.school”_  The team, which included Eric Green (SoM), Ocejo, John Hutchison (GSB), Irit Epelbaum (GSB) and Yungmoon Change (SoE), created a paper tube device to help deliver medicine to asthmatic children in rural Mexico. The team was selected to compete for a $5,000 prize from the non-profit group, Changemakers.

D.R. Mehta, Armand Neukermans visit Stanford Biodesign
D. R. Mehta, founder and patron of the Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samit (BMVSS), which provides free leg prosthetics to amputees (the Jaipur Foot), visited Stanford on August 10, 2007.  He was accompanied by Armand Neukermans, Founder of Xros/Nortel who has been a serial entrepreneur for over 35 years and is a patron of BMVSS.  The two were visiting to request assistance in the development of a new ‘Jaipur Foot’ that would include a knee joint.  Partnering with Thomas Andriacchi’s class, Medical Device Design & Evaluation, Biodesign will work with Mehta and Neukermans to provide the need to Andriacchi’s students.

Casey McGlynn Featured for 2007
On October 19 the Fogarty Lecture featured Casey McGlynn, Member, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati speaking on FOCUS ON INNOVATION: The Innovator's Journey -- Lessons for the Entrepreneur.

“Emerging Entrepreneurs in Biomedical Technology” hosted by Biodesign, was held at the Arrillaga Alumni Center on October 5 and 6.  This workshop, held every two years, is an intensive introduction to the real-world issues that arise early in a medical technology venture -- including assessing ideas, building a founding team, raising capital, executing milestones, and improving accountability and operations.

Over 200 attendees were selected from applicants around the country.  A faculty of over 100 experts in different aspects of medical device technology innovation was mobilized for the meeting.   Presentations were recorded to provide a web-based archive of the meeting, which was funded in part by the Kauffman Foundation.

Above, Hira Thapliyal receives the 2007 Ideals of Entrepreneurship Award at EE 2007.

BME-IDEA Meeting goes Hollywood for 2007
Stanford Biodesign faculty, led by Prof John Linehan, helped organize a national meeting for sharing best practices in the teaching of innovation, design and entrepreneurship in biomedical engineering. This year's meeting, held in Hollywood, CA in conjunction with the Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting, focused on ways for biomedical engineers to address clinical needs in underserved populations in US and developing countries. Funding for the meeting was provided by NSF, NCIIA and Boston Scientific.

Faculty members from several universities gave 'snapshots' of the teaching programs that they have developed. All content has been posted to the BME-IDEA website as well.

Biodesign Students Still Designing

Former Biodesign student, Theo Tam, created his own medical device while at Duke University.  He started ImaGyn, a company founded on an effective and affordable device called the cerviScope.  This device will assist clinicians in developing worlds in the early detection of cervical cancer.   Utilizing this device, the examination can be completed in minutes eliminating the need for laboratory evaluation which can take days to produce results.

Shown here with his team, Theo Tam accepts a $100,000 award from CUREs on behalf of the Imagyn project.

Leading the charge this year for the Stanford Student Biodesign Coalition is Sean Scanlan, Varun Rachakonda, and Ankur Gupta [pictured left to right].  Any questions can be directed to them at sscanlan@stanford.edu, varun@stanford.edu, ankurg@stanford.edu.  Recruiting for officers began in September during the first 2 weeks of school.