This post is part of the Biodesign's Jugaad series following a group of Stanford Biodesign fellows from India. (Jugaad is a Hindi word that means an inexpensive, innovative solution.) The fellows will spend months immersed in the interdisciplinary environment of Stanford Bio-X, learning the Biodesign process of researching clinical needs and prototyping a medical device. The Biodesign program is now in its 14th year, and past fellows have successfully launched 36 companies focused on developing devices for unmet medical needs.
After several weeks spent following doctors through cardiovascular disease clinics, Debayan Saha, Shashi Ranjan, PhD, and Harsh Sheth, MD, together identified 315 apparent medical needs ranging from better ways of monitoring patients to improvements of existing devices. During the course of their six-month fellowship, they’ll develop a prototype device to solve just one.
The first step toward picking that one is to better define the 315.
This is more complicated than it seems. For example, one of the needs they'd originally written down involved real-time monitoring of certain molecules in the patient's blood. They revised that phrasing because it defined the solution – real time – rather than the problem, which is the need for doctors to have more accurate information about the patient's blood so they can make better treatment decisions. “One solution to the problem might be real-time, but there might be another way,” Sheth said.
Similarly, another need they identified had to do with a device that was inconvenient for doctors to use during a medical procedure. Did they need to improve the device to make a procedure more efficient, or was the need specifically for a smaller device? With another device, they debated whether the real need was to reduce the patient’s pain or to reduce the blood loss.
Some of these decisions might sound like splitting hairs – whether the problem is pain or blood loss, there is a clear need for a better device. But the distinction makes a difference down the road. If they chose to focus on the pain rather than the blood loss, that would effect what insurance will pay for its use and intellectual property – factors that make a difference in whether or not a device can get funding and eventually reach patients.
“We need a very specific sentence to make very clear the need we are trying to solve,” Saha said.
Eventually the team will sort through this list of needs to identify the single focus of the remainder of their time.
One thing I found interesting: In fourteen years of the program, each year with several teams working on the same medical field, no two teams have ever developed devices to satisfy the same need.
Previously: Good medical technology starts with patients’ needs and Biodesign program welcomes last class from India
Photo of Shashi Ranjan and Harsh Sheth on a clinical visit by Kurt Hickman
