BY CHARLES CLAWSON

A new curriculum intended to stimulate the invention of medical technologies will be offered to both graduate and undergraduate students next fall.

The three-quarter course series, called the Biomedical Technology Innovation Program, will lead students through a full cycle of medical tool invention -- from evaluating needs and assessing the markets to intellectual property analysis, prototype development and presentation of materials to attract venture capital. The application deadline for program fellowships is Feb. 16.

The course has two tracks: a fellowship track, which is a full-time program that provides named fellowship positions ("Stanford Biomedical Technology Innovation Program Fellows"); and an elective track for which all Stanford graduate and undergraduate students may apply. Those encouraged to apply for the fellowship track include master's-level engineering students, medical residents, postdoctoral fellows or other postgraduates, and Stanford medical students who have a knack for applying technology to unmet clinical needs. Students with technical backgrounds in such fields as engineering or computer science are deemed particularly appropriate.

Enrollment in the elective course is limited to 30 students per quarter. Five fellowships will be offered for the program's first year. Program organizers believe the course series to be the first of its kind at any university.

Program co-director Josh Makower, MD, consulting associate professor of medicine and founder of TransVascular Inc., established a prototype of this program when he managed the strategic innovation group at Pfizer, Inc. Makower said students in the course will examine the medical setting from a fresh perspective. "When you take a relatively naïve but well-trained group -- particularly from an engineering or technology perspective -- and plug them into a clinical environment, they tend to see things that surprise the people who normally work there. It's an opportunity to re-examine procedures and technologies with fresh eyes."

The Stanford Medical Scholars Program is offering the technology-innovation curriculum for selected medical students in partnership with the Medical Device Network, a group of Stanford medical and engineering faculty. Since 1997 MDN has promoted device development through conferences, the Invention Challenge (a biennial, campuswide contest to develop technology that solves a specified medical problem), by mentoring young inventors and by maintaining contacts in financial and device industries.

The fall segment of the course will focus on "needs identification," said co-director Paul Yock, MD, the Martha Meier Weiland Professor of Medicine and director of the Stanford Center for Research in Cardiovascular Interventions. "Needs identification is a bit of a science, and it really separates the great inventors from the hobbyists. We'll look at how to identify a clinically significant opportunity -- one that has the right medical, reimbursement and regulatory parameters for becoming a real technology."

Fellows will undergo an intensive in-hospital immersion, joining physicians on rounds, participating in clinical conferences and observing procedures. "The Fellows will be part of a team that's plugged into the hospital where their whole purpose in life is to look at the way things work -- procedures, devices, the handling of information -- and to imagine what could be better," said Yock. Each project team will have four to five members and will include a mix of master's-level engineering students and medical trainees (residents or fellows).

During the winter segment students will create concepts to answer the most important of the clinical needs. "Elements of design come in at this point, as well as the ability to assess the patent and regulatory pathways," Yock said. "And there's simple practicality: Is this something that doctors and hospitals and patients will embrace?"

In the spring students will implement their ideas, developing prototypes and beginning pre-clinical testing. "Importantly, we'll work with the Office of Technology Licensing to figure out how to make the technology transfer happen," said Yock. "For example, should the invention be a product licensed to an existing company, or should it be a research program that needs to be nested in the university, or should it be the basis for a new company?"

New patents, licenses and/or startups are expected to result in some cases. As appropriate, faculty members -- together with the Office of Technology Licensing -- will facilitate contacts with a local network of venture capitalists and business developers. Yock noted that during the past 15 years more than 70 percent of successful medical-device startup companies have been located in the Bay Area. In conjunction, major laboratories for device testing have been established at Stanford.

"A lot of us handle technology transfer, but we dabble at it," said Yock. "Most of us have never had an education about how to really conduct technology innovation and transfer. Our goal is to provide intensive training that will develop leaders in technology innovation."