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.