In June 2017 the TechMed Living Lab at the University of Twente (UT) started a series of six workshops for (future) entrepreneurs in the medical device industry. The goal: to help developers of new medical technology to get their innovations to patients as fast as possible.
The lab has been developed together with the partners of the TechMed Living Lab: Holland Innovative, Panton and Unitron. The workshops discuss the many barriers and pitfalls that innovators encounter along the road from having a good idea to a safe, reliable and useful medical device. The first three workshops were a success and the second half of the series starts in December. It is still possible to sign up for the workshops.
Sharing knowledge
The TechMed Living Lab uses the facilities at the Experimental Centre for Technical Medicine (ECTM). It is an open innovation landscape that aims to improve the medical impact and speed up the economic return of new healthcare concepts and products. Sebastiaan Waanders, head of ECTM: ‘The University of Twente is a breeding ground for new medical technology. With this project, we want to help researchers and startup companies in our ecosystem to think about how their final product suits the need of the market as early as possible, and create the right conditions to successfully enter the marketplace’. The Living Lab supports individual entrepreneurs by providing them with knowledge and a place to test new and experimental devices. ‘But we also want to promote knowledge sharing between researchers, entrepreneurs and medical practitioners. That is why we started this series of workshops, together with our partners’.
Making the right choices
The workshop series addresses the barriers and pitfalls that developers face in creating a market-ready medical device. Renske van Wijk, coordinator knowledge transfer at MIRA: ‘The development of new devices is often hampered by choices that were made early in the design process. For example, the device doesn’t quite fit the needs of medical practitioners, or early design choices make it nearly impossible to get the device certified for use. Our first three workshops focused on preventing these issues. Sharing knowledge with experts and the end users of medical devices, like we do during our workshops, results in a shorter time-to-market for products’. One of the participants explained that after the workshop ‘Involving end-users in the design process’, he realized he was developing his product for the wrong end-users. Instead of the patients, general practitioners were the upmost important stake-holder to involve in his design process. Another participant shared that the first workshop ‘Getting started with the CE stamp’ acted as a wake-up call. He actually thought he should not worry about getting CE approval yet, but was proven wrong during the exercises of the workshop.
Signing up
It is still possible to sign up for the next workshop, on 14 December. This workshop focuses on the business aspects and legal requirements that are imposed on the development of new medical devices. The final two workshops take place in February and April 2018. A new series of workshops starts later in 2018. It is not mandatory to attend the complete course, attending separate workshops is possible. Attending a workshop is free of charge. The full schedule can be found on the Techmed Living lab’s website.
