GVSU center will bring medical devices to market
A new institute at Grand Valley State University is supporting
Grand Rapids' growing medical research and biomedical industries by
bringing medical device inventions to market.
The applied Medical Devices Institute (aMDI) — a first of its
kind in West Michigan — provides access to researchers, engineers,
medical professionals, and business and entrepreneurial professionals.
It uses an integrated approach that includes intellectual property,
business review and mentoring. The center is located on Medical Mile
in the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences on Grand Valley's Pew
Grand Rapids Campus.
Brent Nowak, director of aMDI, said the center fills a
much-needed gap in West Michigan.
"Grand Rapids has the ideas, the engineers to design them
and the manufacturers to build them, but we're missing a central group
that focuses solely on developing and guiding those medical device
ideas and inventions to the point where they are ready to be mass
produced and marketed," said Nowak.
The institute has been a few years in the making. Nowak, a
native of Jackson, has founded several medical device companies and
spent 25 years developing intelligence systems for organizations
across the country. For 11 years he led initiatives at Southwest
Research Institute, which is the basis of aMDI's business model. He
came to Grand Valley in 2013 and noticed the need for an enterprise
that can mature ideas from conception through commercial viability.
The institute serves a variety of clients, from individual
inventors to large organizations. One client is a Spectrum Health
Innovations-Grand Valley team that invented the female urinary
collection device. The device is designed to lower the number of
infections women experience from indwelling catheters. The idea came
from a nurse at Spectrum Health and the first prototype was created by
a group of Grand Valley engineering students in 2014. aMDI was sought
out to take the device to the next level.
"We've been working with Grand Valley from the start and
the institute is located in downtown Grand Rapids, so it has been a
natural fit to work with aMDI," said Brent Mulder, senior
director of SHI. "We're relying on Brent and his team to look at
the next steps required to bring the product to market. That includes
creating a manufacturing plan, testing new prototypes and making
recommendations."
Other clients include Lansing-based Running Form Labs, which is
studying how to improve human motion in running.
Nowak said aMDI is steadily growing. In the first six months,
Nowak has hired three graduate students, two undergraduate students
and a full-time engineer, Kevin Weaver; he is currently seeking a
post-doctoral research associate in robotics surgery modeling,
simulation and analysis.
"It'll take another three to five years for us to become
fully sustainable," he said, "but we are demonstrating our
continuous growth through each project. It is exciting to see all the
enthusiasm for aMDI from the West Michigan community."
For more information, visit www.gvsu.edu/amdi.
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