Surgeons are natural inventors, coming up with new ideas on a near-daily basis to help them perform better, more safely and more efficiently based on their patients’ unique characteristics and needs. But what does it take to move an idea from concept to bedside?
At a session on innovation in surgery at the 2021 virtual American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress, experts discussed how to generate ideas, protect them and ultimately attract industry interest.
Brainstorming: Source of Ideas
The blinding flash of inspiration is a rare thing. Most ideas are generated through the process of brainstorming, once you’ve identified a clinical need: the problem, the population affected by it and the outcome you wish to achieve.
One way to think about this is in the form of “a way to” statement, said Elisabeth Wynne, MD, a pediatric surgeon at Dayton Children’s Hospital, in Ohio, using the example of arteriovenous fistulas and grafts, which are prone to failure.
“’A way to’ reliably hemodialyze end-stage renal patients that reduces access-related complications,” she said.
With the needs statement established, identify participants—yourself, colleagues, experts outside your specialty and even outside your industry—who may be able to confer a unique perspective, and a facilitator capable of bringing out the best in each participant.
Pick a time of day when your participants will feel most creative; a comfortable room with props that invite fiddling, fidgeting and rapid prototyping (sticky notes, pipe cleaners, Legos); and a spontaneous frame of mind.
“As surgeons, we’re used to the analytical mindset. But the generative mindset uses knowledge for inspiration, focusing on multidisciplinary perspectives and waiting to validate ideas,” Dr. Wynne said.
Honor the brainstorming rules of deferring judgment, encouraging wild ideas, listening, generating quantity, building on the ideas of others and capturing ideas visually.
Once you’ve generated ideas, find a way to organize them. “One of the best ways to do this is mind mapping,” Dr. Wynne said, grouping ideas into the different ways they meet the clinical need.
Then build prototypes: representations that “look like,” “act like” or “function/interact like.”
“The benefit of prototyping is that it allows you to rapidly cycle through ideas using a rough estimation and moving to the right idea,” Dr. Wynne said. “And then you iterate. You brainstorm and prototype, prototype and brainstorm.”
Patent Protection and Intellectual Property
At its essence, a patent prevents competitors from using your idea for their own profit. To get one, you need to show that you have a novel idea—at least one feature that has never been described before—and that you have freedom to operate, meaning that you’re not infringing on another patent without permission.
“A lot of what goes into filing a patent is searching older patents to make sure you don’t infringe,” said Dan E. Azagury, MD, the chief of bariatric and minimally invasive surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, in California, and the director of education at the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign.
There are two types of patents: a provisional patent, which is an easy-to-file, inexpensive process that protects your idea for 12 months while you file the nonprovisional patent, a more complicated entity that involves lawyers, their fees, dozens of pages of documentation, and review by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
If you intend to file a patent, bear in mind timing and public disclosure. “If you’re planning to present your new tool or concept at, for example, the ACS meeting, you have to file a provisional patent before your presentation. Once you present it publicly, it is considered public knowledge and is no longer patentable,” Dr. Azagury said.
Also, be aware that if you’re employed by an academic institution, signed an intellectual property document and made more than incidental use of your university’s resources to develop your idea, they own it.
“But that is not automatically a bad thing; if you have to defend your patent, having a university back that patent is an immense deterrent to anyone who would like to infringe,” Dr. Azagury said.
Engaging Industry Investment
Large medical manufacturers have good reasons to invest in inventors’ ideas: They may be able to accelerate development much more rapidly, building on an inventor’s idea and prototype than generating something organically within their own corporation. Collaboration also helps them mitigate risk if a smaller organization is willing to share the burden of a development process that might not end in a commercially viable product.
“If you as a startup person are willing to take on this journey, that’s important to industry,” said Brian J. Dunkin MD, FACS, the chief medical officer for Boston Scientific, Endoscopy.
Before presenting your idea to a large organization, think about why you picked that company. “Because they’ll be asking the same thing. How is your device going to be better in the world because this company can deliver it?” Dr. Dunkin said.
You’ll want to think about how your device or idea fits in with their sales process, how manufacturable it will be, how collaboration with a large corporation might bring down the cost of production and the device’s potential geographic reach.
It’s also helpful if you can present an idea that has already reached some level of development. “Large industries will pay a premium for your idea to be taken all the way to a commercial product and brought to market; while ideas are interesting to talk about, they’ll pay much more for something that’s not back-of-napkin,” Dr. Dunkin said.
“Industry and surgeons need each other to collaborate and bring good ideas to life; we need that in order to offer better patient care.”
This article is from the March 2022 print issue.
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