Fusion — Disciplines — Science — 2013–14
2013–14 Scientific Focus
Neuro Device Platform Technology Innovation
A return to neural technology, but at a different level of the stack: not a device, a platform — and platforms raise commercialization questions that single products do not.
The region's depth in neuromodulation runs through its academic research institutions and medical centers — the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland FES Center, and the Advanced Platform Technology Center — alongside 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 driving solutions across a host of distinct medical indications.
Because the NNP could serve a very broad array of applications, teams had no choice but to develop needs analyses, acceptance criteria, and device requirements for a specific product. Value propositions were considered through several lenses at once — patient needs, payers, and medical practitioners — and that work drove everything downstream: the case for IP protection, the business case, and the pre-clinical development plan.