Kevin Joslin is an undergraduate BioEngineering student and a Research Assistant with medical devices at the University of California San Diego. Kevin was selected for the 2019-2020 cohort of the Gordon Scholar engineering leadership program.
(with Thomas Carey, WINCan’s co-Principal Catalyst and Academic Partner Lead)
When I think of innovation, I always think of the product as new technologies and ideas, instead of the process of innovation itself. From my brief dive into a seeming Renaissance of new innovation and product development methods, I have seen the importance of further developing the way we approach inventiveness and technological progress.
I believe that the cross-disciplinary entrepreneurial engineer is the next evolution of the modern engineering student; a student that can master all the aspects of the design and product development process while innovating to meet the greatest needs of users and stakeholders everywhere. In this post, I will look at a few examples of how some companies and universities are approaching innovation in medical technology. I’ll also comment on my exposure to and experience with various forms of innovation as a student in BioEngineering.
“Science and Technology Driven innovation refers to the way firms use and further develop a body of science-like understanding in the context of innovative activities…
Design-Led and Employee-Driven innovation refers to learning on the job as employees face on-going changes that confront them with new problems and learning in an interaction with external customers.
It is the firm that combines a strong version of the Science and Technology Driven mode with a strong version of the Design-Led and Employee Driven modes that excels in product innovation.
Benkt-Åke Lundvall
The Learning Economy and
the Economics of Hope (2016)
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Technology-Driven versus Employee-Driven Innovation
It appears evident that the traditional dichotomy of Science and Technology Driven innovation versus Design-Led and Employer-Driven innovation and Doing, Using, and Interacting (DUI) methods of inventiveness is a false one. In my eyes, this dichotomy represents the traditional disconnect between the engineer/scientist and the businessman/stakeholder. Modern innovation beckons for a blend between the scientist and the businessman, and a method of constant communication with stakeholders.
As I looked at case studies from Manufacturing, Public Policy and Healthcare, it became clear to me that “it is not possible to separate the R&D-based knowledge from the learning-by-doing processes… each builds upon the other’s findings and insights.”
For my particular interest in BioEngineering, the Healthcare examples were the most compelling. The findings from these case studies emphasize a need for a deeper connection with users and stakeholders in the health care industry. Specifically, a design-led approach lets companies “get closer to its market and its customers to make them more aware of their daily experiences, which in turn will reveal new opportunities for products and services.” The organization of this approach was found to be greatly enhanced by visual mediums such as video vignettes and graphical representations, which allow “the ability to communicate new insights is fundamental to the approach”.
Educating BioEngineers for Design-Led Innovation
““We usually think about innovation in the life sciences as being discovery driven. Across university research laboratories and throughout the biotech and pharma industries, scientific breakthroughs have been the launching point for major product developments in the familiar bench-to-bedside trajectory.
Over the past decade, however, a focus on needs-based innovation has emerged as an alternate strategy for medical product development, particularly in the domain of biomedical technology (medical devices and diagnostics).
Influenced by the spread of Design Thinking across campuses and corporations alike, innovators are beginning to focus on developing a deep understanding of clinical needs as the starting point of the invention process. The mantra for these biodesign process is that “a well-characterised need is the DNA of great invention.”
Paul York, Needs-based innovation: the biodesign process
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As an undergraduate in bioengineering at the University of California San Diego, I am keen to explore how our traditional focus on Science and Technology Innovation can be combined with Design-Led and Employee-Driven Innovation. The quote in the sidebar explains the pioneering approach to biomedical technology innovation training in Stanford University’s Biodesign graduate program.
This program is based on a BioDesign process model shown below, which integrates Science and Technology Driven innovation with Design-Led and Employee-Driven innovation. These authors outline how many biomedical engineering programs have failed by lumping together “biopharmaceutical discovery” and “medical device innovation.” They emphasize the identification of needs which are filtered by “current understanding of the pathophysiology of a disease, the existing and emerging treatment options, the potential market for a new technology, and the various stakeholder interests”.
Alt text: Bio-design info-graphic: “The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies.
Possible solutions and inventions are assessed for “intellectual property viability, engineering feasibility, preclinical and clinical testing de- sign, understanding of likely regulatory and reimbursement pathways, planning for sales and distribution, development of financial models and funding strategies, and consideration of alternative commercialization plans”.
Of most importance from my perspective, they argue that this sort of med tech innovation should be taught first at the undergraduate level to engineering, medicine, and business students. This is because the university is one of the few places that interdisciplinary access is very easy as most universities have their own medical complex, business school, and proximity to industry. Training in innovation can also benefit students interested in being university faculty as not many in academia have entrepreneurship backgrounds.