P. Loftus1, C. Elder1, T. D’Ambrosio2, J. T. Langell1,2 1University Of Utah,School of Medicine, Department Of Surgery,Salt Lake City, UT, USA 2University Of Utah,School Of Business,Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Introduction: Our Bench-to-Bedside (B2B) Medical Technology Innovation Competition was created to teach medical innovation and entrepreneurship principles to medical students and residents through the exploration of new technology solutions for clinical problems. Teams of medical students and residents are paired with graduate-level engineering and business students and given the task of identifying an unmet clinical need. Teams are given access to over 100 university physician mentors and a $500 development fund to evaluate the intellectual property (IP) landscape, prototype their solution, and construct a viable business plan. Each year top teams are awarded over $70K in milestone funding to support further project development. In the first three years of the competition, formal mentorships with academic physicians were provided. An informal survey of teams noted a weakness in their understanding of product-market-fit and regulatory-based product development.
Methods: During the 4th year of the competition we created an industrial advisory board composed of corporate-level executives from national and regional biotechnology companies to address the resource deficiency noted by prior teams. A board member was assigned as a business mentor to each B2B team based on his or her experience and expertise with the clinical problem and technology solution pursued. Each team was also provided periodic access to other board members for short-term consultation on an as needed basis. No other changes were made to the program. We then evaluated the impact of business mentors on participant recruitment, attrition rates, and new venture formation.
Results: Implementation of a business mentorship program resulted in >40 unique industry professionals participating as business mentors to B2B teams. Business mentorship expertise included leadership, product development, marketing, IP and new venture law, regulatory compliance and venture capital acquisition. Compared to the previous competition years, student participation increased >2.5 fold to 189, the number of teams participating to 42 and devices developed also more than doubled to 43, and the number of limited liability companies increased 1.7 fold to 12. Furthermore, the attrition rates dropped 22% from 60% in year three to 38% in year four.
Conclusion: The creation of an industrial advisory board composed of corporate-level executives from national and regional biotechnology companies provided a source of invaluable mentorship to medical student and resident innovation teams. In addition to providing a unique real world business perspective to teams, many board members also provided funding to supported device development, awards and scholarships. Furthermore, the industrial board established an invaluable network of university-industry connections and increased the likelihood of medical solutions succeeding, as evidenced by the increase in student participation, devices developed, and companies formations.