One question rarely asked at medical technology conventions is if it is possible to build a successful, knowledge-based company, capable of competing internationally in a highly competitive industry, if you are still a virgin and living with your parents at 32.
Or, are you best placed to scale-up an industry-disrupting biotech business through multiple funding rounds, if you have spent all weekend playing League of Legends with people you have never met, and only know through their online handles.
This week it was announced that the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering (LIHE) at King’s College London has launched its pioneering MedTech Venture Builder programme, backed by funding from Research England.
This UK first is aimed at equipping young company owners with relevant business skills and marks a significant step in nurturing the next generation of medical technology companies in this country.
The inaugural programme has selected 12 promising companies to participate in an intensive, 12-month experience. It will provide essential structures for establishing robust MedTech companies.
These include the development of regulatory plans, clinical evidence roadmaps, and stakeholder mapping. All of this will be facilitated within a medical-grade Quality Management System (QMS). This executive support is delivered by King’s specialist in-house translation teams, all located within LIHE.
But can they boil an egg?
What is currently missing from the curriculum is some recognition that people working in MedTech tend to be – how best to put this sensitively – special.
While they may be experts in MR fingerprinting and plasmonic biosensing and be able to tell their acoustic radiation force impulse imaging from their spectrally encoded confocal microscopy by the age of four, when it comes to boiling an egg or tying their shoelaces, things can start to go awry.
The problem with technology start-ups and university spin-outs is that their biggest assets – the people behind them who give them their value, based on years of study and research – are often their biggest liabilities.
The world of MedTech is littered with the corpses of failed companies founded by very clever people with brilliant ideas who spent years bringing their ground-breaking products to market, only to remember that they needed customers to buy them.
So engrossed were they with fine tuning their device that promised to revolutionise the world of Perfusion Computed Tomography, that they hadn’t given any thought to recruitment, marketing or business development.
Far be it from me to generalise but the kind of science, spoddish individuals who are great at inventing things, can often lack the soft, social skills necessary to build a successful business. Let’s face it, many of them are just not people people.
As long as you’re talking to them about the motion of electrically polarised particles in non-uniform electric fields, they are fine. But ask them if they saw the match last night and they start to look at their feet and hum.
Experts-in-residence
Here’s hoping things will change. The selected companies are developing a diverse range of innovative products, from software-based medical devices to advanced surgical robotics and active implants.
Each company will be paired with experts-in-residence who will provide hands-on guidance and conduct monthly strategic progress reviews. The programme also benefits from a strategic collaboration with Cambridge Consultants, a leading innovation consultancy that is part of Capgemini Invent.
The MedTech Venture Builder represents a collaborative effort among four partner institutions. King’s College London leads the programme in partnership with Queen Mary University of London, City University of London, and St George’s University of London. Together, they will form a Collaborative Centre of Excellence (CCoE) for medical device translation.
The MedTech Venture Builder is the UK’s first go-to programme for the translation of the most cutting-edge and challenging MedTech innovations, generously supported by Research England, and hosted in our landmark LIHE.
The strength of our consortium and of our partnerships means we can support ventures from across MedTech, from software as a medical device, to active implants, to surgical robotics. We are excited to be welcoming 12 ground-breaking ventures, selected based on our conviction of their future impact to patients.”
To discuss issues raised here or anything related to MedTech recruitment, get in touch with us today.
