03 Mar 10 Prototype Processes (from February meeting)

The February INpact presentation on “Prototype Processes” featured several INpact members and their prototyping capabilities: Catalyst PDG, Indesign, Gale Force Software, Online Resources, and Priio. INpact sponsor Avnet also contributed to the presentation.

Special thanks to Ryan Wolfinbarger from Catalyst PDG for all his hard work on the prototyping sessions. Here is a picture of Ryan next to a table of several examples of prototypes:

Click here to view the slides from INpact prototype processes.

Tags: Indiana, Indianapolis, INpact, medical device, product development, prototype, Prototyping, Rapid Prototyping, start-up

03 Mar 10 Intellectual Property, Patents, & Trademarks – March 19, 2010

What: INpact Monthly Meeting
When: March 19, 2009 from 11:00 – 1:00
Where: Bingham-McHale (2700 Market Tower, 10 W. Market Street, Indy)
Register by March 17, 2010

During March’s meeting, our topic will be intellectual property, patents, & trademarks.

We will also do a little speed networking. Bring your business cards and a short list of questions and contacts you’d like to meet.

Continue sharing INpact with others in the medical device community. If you know of entrepreneurs and early-stage medical device companies, invite them to attend.

If you are not a member but are interested, please submit an inquiry for the advisory board to review.

Not interested in being a member? You can still attend for the cost of $20.

Make checks out to INpact, Inc.

Mark you calendars for INpact events in 2010. Here are confirmed dates through June:

• April 16
• May 21
• June 18

Tags: entrepreneur, Indiana, Indianapolis, INpact, Medical and Life Sciences, medical device

10 Feb 10 Medical Device Prototypes (Part 2) – February 19, 2010

What: INpact Monthly Meeting
When: January 15, 2009 from 11:00 – 1:00
Where: Bingham-McHale (2700 Market Tower, 10 W. Market Street, Indy)
Register by February 17, 2009

During February’s meeting, our topic will continue the discussion on medical device prototypes. We expect to have several types of examples to review.

Continue sharing INpact with others in the medical device community. If you know of entrepreneurs and early-stage medical device companies, invite them to attend.

If you are not a member but are interested, please submit an inquiry for the advisory board to review.

Not interested in being a member? You can still attend for the cost of $20.

Make checks out to INpact, Inc.

Mark you calendars for INpact events in 2010. Here are confirmed dates through June:

• March 19
• April 16
• May 21
• June 18

Tags: entrepreneur, medical device, start-up, venture capital

20 Jan 10 I Want A Prototype!

Thanks to Ryan Wolfinbarger of Catalyst PDG and Larry O’Cull of Priio for the chocolate chip cookies and for presenting “I Want A Prototype!” during the January INpact meeting. Here is some of the information they presented:

“PROTO Types”

PROOF OF CONCEPT

• Creates a mock-up from already existing components
• Provides technical feasibility
• Provide a forecast for how much time and money is needed to completely design

FORM MODEL

• This is a form study of the physical shape
• Fashioned physically out of foam, clay, resin, etc.
• Used in presentation to gather funding
• Because form is very subjective it can often require a large number of tweaks to get it right

FUNCTIONAL MODEL

• This is a physical item that actually works as intended
• Often aesthetics may be set aside to get to functionality sooner
• Provides usage data

INTERACTIVE FUNCTIONAL MODEL

• A whole new level of prototyping (college, as opposed to elementary school)
• Additional IP involved (e.g. electronics and software) creates a longer lead time and higher cost to develop
• A potential stage of client discomfort because other proto-types are not as work intensive
• For many non-FDA devices, this is the final stage before production

CLINICAL USE MODEL

• This is the highest level of prototyping, requiring much time and detailed documentation
• With properly submitted paperwork, the FDA says, “you can now touch an animal (maybe a human) with it, for collecting use and performance data”
• This is an actual first level of production in a limited number

Here are a couple videos:

The slides from their presentation are attached. INpact prototype presentation

Tags: Electronics, entrepreneur, Food and Drug Administration, medical device, product development, prototype, Technology

22 Dec 09 So You Have A Product Idea?

Here is a recap from the December 18, 2009 INpact meeting. The topic presented was “So you have a product idea?”

What are some of the early tasks you should consider? Jerry McColgin of Insight2, Jill Harding of Boundless Design, and Pam Weaver of Keywerx shared some thoughts and their experience on front-end innovation, brand positioning, and market research. Here are a couple videos:

Jerry’s slides on Front-End Innovation and Jill’s on Branding are included.

Front-End Innovation12-17

INpact_BRANDtalk

Tags: Brand, innovation, Knowledge Management, Market research, medical device, Positioning, product development

20 Dec 09 January 15, 2010 – INpact Meeting

What: INpact Monthly Meeting
When: January 15, 2009 from 11:00 – 1:00
Where: Bingham-McHale (2700 Market Tower, 10 W. Market Street, Indy)
Register by January 13, 2009

During January’s meeting, our topic will focus on prototyping. Details are forthcoming.

Continue sharing INpact with others in the medical device community. If you know of entrepreneurs and early-stage medical device companies, invite them to attend.

If you are not a member but are interested, please submit an inquiry for the advisory board to review.

Not interested in being a member? You can still attend for the cost of $20.

Make checks out to INpact, Inc.

Mark you calendars for INpact events in 2010. Here are confirmed dates through June:

• January 15
• February 19
• March 19
• April 16
• May 21
• June 18

Tags: entrepreneur, Indiana, medical deivce, product development, proof of concept, prototype, Prototyping, Rapid Prototyping

12 Dec 09 December 18, 2009 – INpact Meeting

What: INpact Monthly Meeting
When: December 18, 2009 from 11:00 – 1:00
Where: Bingham-McHale (2700 Market Tower, 10 W. Market Street, Indy)
Click here to register by December 16, 2009

During December’s meeting, our topic is “So you have a product idea?” Jerry McColgin (Insight2), Jill Harding (Boundless Design), and Pam Weaver (Weavers Total Media) will be presenting.

Continue sharing INpact with others in the medical device community. Let’s try to get a few of our “customers” in attendance.

If you are not a member but are interested, please submit an inquiry for the advisory board to review.

Not interested in being a member? You can still attend for the cost of $20.

Make checks out to INpact, Inc.

Tags: Indiana, Indianapolis, INpact, life science, medical device, product development

01 Nov 09 November 20, 2009 – INpact Meeting

What: INpact Monthly Meeting
When: November 20, 2009 from 11:00 – 1:00
Where: Bingham-McHale (2700 Market Tower, 10 W. Market Street, Indy)
Click here to register by November 18, 2009

During November’s meeting, we will focus on networking and continue to learn how our businesses can help one another and medical device companies. As we get closer, an agenda will be finalized.

Continue sharing INpact with others in the medical device community. Let’s try to get a few of our “customers” in attendance.

If you are not a member but are interested, please submit an inquiry for the advisory board to review.

Not interested in being a member? You can still attend for the cost of $20.

Make checks out to INpact, Inc.

Tags: Indiana, INpact, medical device, product development

16 Oct 09 Why Should You Care About Social Media?

Erik Deckers of ProBlog Service addressed today’s INpact meeting on the topic of social media. You know–Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Smaller Indiana, etc. Consider these numbers:

• 7335 – # of members on Smaller Indiana
• >300 Million – # of active users on Facebook
• ~6 Million – # of twitter users (data is from March 2009 and has likely increased significantly)
• 50 Million – # of people on LinkedIn

From personal experience, I can assure you there are people and groups interested in anything you can imagine. Also from personal experience, if you are not careful, these “tools” can suck you in and time will absolutely fly by.

Erik offered a few tips. I’ll suggest a few as well:

• Start small. Pick only a few social media “tools”. I recommend Smaller Indiana, Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn. If that sounds like too many, go with Smaller Indiana and LinkedIn. The quality of connections on these two sites is pretty good and reputable.
• When “twittering”, limit your time to 30 minutes per day. Erik recommends spending 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon.
• Use tools such as TweetDeck, Twilert, and others to better navigate the twitter universe. TweetDeck allows you to create groups (such as “INpact People”). TweetDeck allows you to search for terms of interest. I have searches for “medical device”, “med device”, “pharma”, and others. Any time these terms are used anywhere on twitter, it shows up in my TweetDeck. Twilert allows you to do the same sort of thing but will email you tweets that included those terms. Why is this helpful? This information can be used for intelligence gathering, finding others to follow, and yes, even some business development.
• Try Google Alerts. Type in any keyword or phrase and receive an email (you determine frequency) with URL links any time the words are used. (Note: It takes some practice refining keywords and phrases to get the kind of results you are interested in. Use of quotes helps. For example, “medical device” will yield results where those words are used back to back, whereas medical device will yield results where “medical” and “device” are used in the same link.)
• Blog. No, we didn’t really talk much about this topic. But blogging should become part of your marketing communications. The least you should do is subscribe to blogs. Don’t know how? Read this and subscribe to INpact’s blog.
• Did you know all of the tools mentioned in this post are FREE?

If this still confuses you and are still asking yourself “So what?”, that’s understandable. If you are reluctant because the applications seem to change too often, realize this: social media is NOT going away any time soon. The above mentioned tools have been around for several years. Sure, others are likely to replace them. But the practice is here to stay–for now.

Of course, if you have questions, I’m sure Erik would love to help (erik@problogservice.com). You can always contact me too. Once I get Erik’s slides, I’ll upload them.

Tags: erik deckers, facebook, INpact, LinkedIn, problog service, smaller indiana, social media, twitter

13 Oct 09 Notes from September 18, 2009 Meeting

My apologies for not posting these notes sooner. I hope I capture the essence of our discussion. Too much time has passed and my memory isn’t what it used to be.

Is Now A Good Time For Medical Device Start-Ups?

• Medical device industry recession proof (at least more so than other industries)
• Still issues to addressing (e.g. the changing approach of FDA)
• Pharmaceutical industry presents significant challenges:
• clinical trials are lengthy and expensive (pharma)
• R&D slow (pharma)
• foreign competition (pharma)
• access to capital (pharma)
• Now is a good time to introduce new products
• A+ team with an A+ product will always find funding
• Opportunities if product / service reduces waste in healthcare
• Opportunities if product is able to generate revenue quickly
• Lots of very good resources looking for work due to current economy
• Must add value
• Value – Costs = Incentive to buy
• Value = Benefits – Costs
• Fuzzy front end VERY important
• Important to know when the product is good enough; don’t need the perfect product
• Will there be more efforts to market directly to consumers?
• Emerging trend in orthopedics
• Blood glucose meters have been doing this for a long time
• Regulatory implications must be dealt with
• True innovations will surface (”Brand Busters” book)
• Consumers buy based on emotions
• Does the product improve quality of life?

Tags: Indiana, INpact, medical device, start-up