“A valuable educational experience for anyone interested in medical innovation.”
– 3rd year Medical student
After the success of the first Innovation Programme in 2018/19, we started another round of the Programme in Michaelmas 2019. Six student teams with different backgrounds worked on three clinical problems over the course of 12-weeks and pitched their innovative medtech concepts to a panel of judges.
From 70 applications, we selected 35 students for this year’s programme, of which half were postgraduates and most students coming from a medical background. Other disciplines included sciences, engineering and business.
Six interdisciplinary teams worked on three different clinical problems:
- Improving Transcather Aortic Valve Replacement
- Re-imagining the stoma
- Creating deformable instruments for neurosurgery
“The innovation programme introduced me to what it takes to be an entrepreneur in the MedTech sector.”
– 2nd year PhD student in Biophysical Chemistry
Over the course of the programme, our partners from Clinical Engineering Innovation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital lectured about how to generate a concept for medical devices. The Entrepreneurship Center at the Judge Business School taught our students about opportunity evaluation, the business model canvas and effective teamwork. Moreover, students learned how to pitch themselves and their ideas, as well as how to communicate their work to students from other disciplines. Teams were mentored by clinicians involved in their project area, experts in clinical engineering and mentors from the Cambridge Accelerate programme.
At the end of the programme, all teams presented their work to all students and a panel of judges, consisting of Dr Peter Jarrit (Deputy Director at the NIHR Brain Injury MIC), Dr Mark Slack (co-founder and CMO of CMR Surgical) and Dr Ravi Solanki (founder of Primera Impact). The judges were impressed with the ideas of the students. Some teams decided to continue with their projects, one team working on improving Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement by creating a new surgical device was invited to present their work at an international conference.
The students thoroughly enjoyed the programme, most students say they developed essential skills to develop innovative solutions in the MedTech field and that they now think more innovative. Over 95% would recommend the programme to their friends.
The 2019/20 programme was organised by the Cambridge MedTech Foundation, Max Stewart (6th year Medical student) and Daniel Kottmann (1st year PhD student in Medicine). It was supported by our academic partners the NIHR Brain Injury MIC, Clinical Engineering Innovation and the Entrepreneurship Centre at the Judge Business School, and proudly supported by Eakin Healthcare.
Interested in applying to the programme?
“The Innovation Programme provided me with a unique insight into the entrepreneurial side of medicine and gave me the rare opportunity to collaborate with students from vastly different disciplines, while also giving me the skills and confidence to innovate in my future career.”
– 3rd year Medicine and Neuroscience student
