Within Stanford

Biodesign explicitly focuses on technology transfer, providing education, advocacy and mentoring to students and faculty who wish to bring their innovations forward through the university to be developed into commercialized healthcare products.

We also provide connections to the professional communities that specialize in biomedical technology, such as investors (angel, venture capital and institutional), med tech equipment manufacturers, and attorneys who specialize in intellectual property and new venture formation.

Objectives

Biodesign has fostered an alliance of Stanford faculty and students with engineers, scientists, business and financial leaders and other key contributors in the med tech industry.

The goals are:

• To encourage and facilitate invention, patenting and early-stage development of medical devices
  
• To develop Stanford as an effective regional resource for research and education in the area of biomedical technology design and development.
  

A key assumption is that there is a real potential for stimulating new device inventions within the University if conditions are right. These conditions include: (i) a focus on device development at the University as an important part of the academic mission; (ii) cross-pollination within Stanford departments and between the University and industry; (iii) attention to identifying potentially productive areas for invention; and (iv), availability of mentoring by experts with real-world experience in device development.

Stanford and the "Medical Device Valley"

In the past 20 years the San Francisco Bay area has emerged as the leading region for medical device development in the world. Within a 50-mile radius of Stanford, there are over 300 medical device companies -- 70 in the area of cardiovascular diseases alone. This activity accounts for approximately $15 billion of local economy and is growing at a significantly faster rate than the other high-tech industries of Silicon Valley.

Stanford faculty and students have had a major role in developing and sustaining the regional medical device industry. Many of the key innovators and founders have Stanford roots. Tom Fogarty pioneered a number of widely used surgical devices and has been a principal in a more than a dozen local start-ups. Bill New (past Professor of Anesthesia) founded Nellcor, introducing the first practical system for noninvasive monitoring of blood oxygenation. John Simpson (Consulting Professor of Medicine) is an internationally recognized pioneer in balloon angioplasty who founded Advanced Cardiovascular Systems (now part of Abbott) and five subsequent device companies. Simon Stertzer (Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine) had an integral role in the development of Advanced Vascular Engineering (AVE, now part of Abbott) and is involved in a number of innovative efforts at the interface of vascular biology and devices. Prominent German interventional cardiologist and innovator, Professor Eberhard Grube, is an active mentor in the Biodesign program. Paul Yock (Director, Biodesign) founded Cardiovascular Imaging Systems and directs a lab group at Stanford that develops and tests new catheter techniques for diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease.

Other Stanford-associated founders include Tom Hinohara (Perclose, Fox Hollow Technologies), John Adler (Accuray), Greg Kovacs (Cepheid), Matt Selmon (LuMend), Fred St. Goar (eValve), James Joye (Odyssey Technologies), Stephen Quake (Fluidigm) and Geoffrey Gurtner (Neodyne).

Stanford faculty have also made key technical contributions to existing companies on a number of fronts. As a group, Stanford Faculty in the Schools of Medicine and Engineering have authored over 250 medical device patents. Stanford faculty are on the scientific advisory boards or are key consultants to over 100 companies.