Innovation Programme 2020/21 — Introducing students to Medical Device Development
“The Innovation Programme was an invaluable experience to see interdisciplinary work for innovation.”
MPhil student in Bioscience Enterprise
In a year when innovation in medicine is required more than ever, the third round of the Innovation Programme was delivered in a virtual format. 36 students and doctors from the University of Cambridge and Cambridge/East of England hospitals, of which 28 were postgraduate students, participated.
Over the course of twelve weeks, six teams developed concepts for medical technology to solve clinical problems. The three problems this year were about burst abdomen, hip fracture rehabilitation, and large bore vascular access.
This year’s cohort was very interdisciplinary, with most students studying sciences, medicine and more engineering and business students than in previous years. Each team was put together in a way that different backgrounds and career stages would work together.
Virtual workshops were delivered by our partners and covered a variety of topics related to medical device development. Dr Angela Lam (North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust), Dr Stefan Mitrasinovic (North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust), and Dr Stephen Hoole (Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust) presented the clinical problems in the first workshop and mentored the teams during the programme.
Abigail Bush (Clinical Engineering Innovation, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) provided an overview of concept generation, the innovation pathway and important regulatory aspects of medical devices. The team from Clinical Engineering Innovation also provided mentoring sessions in which teams discussed technical aspects of their ideas and received valuable feedback.
“Clinical Engineering Innovation’s in-depth knowledge helped us to refine our design and consider how the different features would connect to produce an effective device.”
Andrew Hatcher from the Entrepreneurship Centre at the Cambridge Judge Business School gave two workshops about Opportunity Evaluation & Effective Teamwork and the Business Model Canvas. He taught the teams how to create a business model, how to evaluate the market and gave examples of what an entrepreneurial journey in MedTech would involve.
Teams received business mentoring from startcodon, a Cambridge-based healthcare accelerator to develop their business plan further.
“The mentoring session with startcodon provided us with insights into how our product could be marketed and their expertise helped us to integrate the business model with our product early in the design phase.”
In a practical workshop, Charlie Dean, Matt Chandler and Iain Ansell from Team Consulting covered the steps that are required after concept generation, to develop a final product. As a medical consultancy in Cambridge, they gave real-life examples from their work to outline the process of developing a medical device.
“The case studies that Team Consulting presented and hearing their industry expertise helped us to get a better idea of the route from concept to product.”
Finally, Simon Hall from the Creative Warehouse delivered a workshop on how to give a successful pitch to prepare the teams for their own pitches.
All teams presented their final MedTech concepts at the Final Pitch Event in January to all participants of the programme and a panel of judges, consisting of Prof Andrew McCaskie (Head of Department of Surgery, University of Cambridge), Sakura Holloway (Head of Due Diligence, startcodon), and Iain Ansell (Head of Surgical, Team Consulting). The judges were particularly impressed with the high quality of pitches and with the innovative ideas that teams came up with within such a short time.
The panel selected AClosure (Arka Banerjee, Shiv Kapila, Kasey Lau, Emma Sun, Nicholas Wan, Sarah Wenyon) as the overall winner, and Soul (Lucy Chmelova, Harry Freeman, Elika Karvandi, Panagiotis Makris, Chandan Sanghera, Michael Yeung) as the runner-up of the programme. Both teams were invited to pitch their work at the Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT) Annual Virtual Conference in March.
“The Innovation Programme was a fantastic experience and boosted my interest in having a career in MedTech.”
3rd year medical student
The Innovation Programme 2020/21 was proudly supported by Team Consulting and startcodon.
The programme was organised by the Cambridge MedTech Foundation, Daniel Kottmann (2nd year PhD student in Medicine), Will Foster (4th year MD/PhD student) and Manuela Zimmermann (3rd year PhD student in Biophysics). It was supported by our academic partners the NIHR Surgical MIC, Clinical Engineering Innovation at Cambridge University Hospitals, and the Entrepreneurship Centre at the Judge Business School.
Interested in applying to the programme or getting involved? Visit our website to find out more.
About the Innovation Programme
The Innovation Programme is a 12-week educational programme providing both an introduction to the landscape of medical device development and experience of interdisciplinary teamwork. Find out more.
About the Cambridge MedTech Foundation
We are a student-run society at the University of Cambridge with the aim to educate, inspire and connect the next generation of healthcare innovators. Visit our website.
