Stories & Spotlights
Read about interesting projects coming out of Stanford Biodesign and the remarkable people who make them happen.
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twoplus: Helping Couples Tackle Infertility Issues
Two Singapore-Stanford Biodesign alumni are changing the infertility space by providing an at-home alternative to intrauterine insemination and in-vitro fertilization.
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Q&A with Innovation Fellowship Director Dan Azagury
Dan Azagury first came to Stanford as a Biodesign Innovation Fellow in 2011, and now, he’s directing the fellowship program. He talks about his journey from fellow to director, while also co-founding and selling a medtech company and serving as section chief of minimally invasive and bariatric surgery at Stanford University.
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Stanford Researchers Study the Timelines from FDA Authorization to Medicare Approval
Findings published in JAMA Health Forum show the median time to at least nominal coverage was 5.7 years.
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Making Digital Health Development More Accessible Through an Unlikely Collaboration
When CardinalKit was developed at Stanford Biodesign, its goal was to provide university faculty with tools they could leverage to minimize the time, cost, and effort of developing digital technologies to support their health research. Now, thanks to an unexpected collaboration, students at Walt Whitman High School in New York are realizing the same benefits on their health research projects.
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Beaming Health: When Passion and Need Align
When Marissa Pittard and Chris Olmanson were assigned to the same class project team in the Biodesign for Digital Health course, they initially had no idea that their shared commitment to helping families and children with special needs would lead them to launch a company in the space. But just a few years later, Beaming Health is helping tens of thousands of families access the services and support they need to help their children thrive.
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From Need to Reimbursed Technology: Lessons from an 11-Year Journey
After completing the Biodesign Innovation course, Miles Rosen and Steve Herbowy set out to address the unmet need of fecal incontinence. Little did they know, it would take 11 years to develop their technology and pave the way for its widespread adoption. Reimbursement proved to be a particularly challenging hurdle on the path to market. In this story, Rosen shares lessons learned on the journey to securing reimbursement coverage.
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Osmind: Building a Platform for Breakthrough Mental Health
With Osmind, Stanford Biodesign student Lucia Huang and her co-founder Jimmy Qian used need-driven innovation principles to create an electronic health records system that allows psychiatrists to provide better treatment to individual patients while also collecting real-world data to advance the state of care more broadly.
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Managing Diabetes in Pregnancy with a Digital App
Monitoring blood sugar levels and sharing the data with care providers can be overwhelming. Malama makes it easier.
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From the Innovator's Workbench with Anne Wojcicki
As a featured speaker in the Stanford Biodesign From the Innovator’s Workbench series, Wojcicki told the story of her groundbreaking company, 23andMe —from its origin through her decision to take the company public with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that raised nearly $600 million. Read the story here.
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Stanford Biodesign Policy Survey Finds Multi-Year Delays in Access to Breakthrough Medical Devices
New research from the Health Technology Innovation Policy Program at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign quantifies the delays in Medicare coverage of breakthrough technologies and the benefits of an accelerated pathway in encouraging invention and investment in areas of critically important unmet clinical needs.
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Singapore Biodesign: Eleven Years of Growth Culminates in Prestigious Affiliate Status
Over 11 years, Singapore Biodesign has grown from a single class of fellows to a robust capability initiative that has met the rigorous criteria needed to be awarded affiliate status.
More About Our Impact
Learn more about the Stanford Biodesigners, their exciting careers, and the impact they’re having in the healthcare field.