Fusion › Disciplines › Science › 2013–14
2013–14 Scientific Focus
Neuro Device Platform Technology Innovation
A return to neural technology at the platform level, where the commercialization questions differ from those of a single product.
The region's depth in neuromodulation runs through its academic research institutions and medical centers, among them the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland FES Center, and the Advanced Platform Technology Center, and through privately held enterprises including NDI Medical, Intelect Medical, Neuros Medical, and Synapse Biomedical.
Through the year, National Academy of Sciences member and Functional Electrical Stimulation Director P. Hunter Peckham, one of the developers of the Networked Neuroprosthesis, provided students with the fundamentals of contemporary and emerging approaches to nerve stimulation systems. His lectures also traced the evolution of the NNP platform itself, then the focus of a multi-million dollar commercialization program funded by the Ohio Third Frontier Commission with a broad array of commercial and research partners.
Student teams worked in parallel to understand and cultivate product designs around the CWRU platform, each building an investment case for an emerging product concept. Every concept was then evaluated for potential integration into the overall commercial analysis of the NNP, a platform capable of serving many distinct medical indications.
Because the NNP could serve a very broad array of applications, teams had to develop needs analyses, acceptance criteria, and device requirements for a specific product. Value propositions were considered from the perspectives of patients, payers, and medical practitioners, and that work drove everything downstream: the case for IP protection, the business case, and the pre-clinical development plan.