Mentor night is a fantastic networking opportunity for all Biomedical Engineering students! At the Mentor night they have clinicians, industry professionals, and researchers attending eager to meet undergrad and graduate students. The event is open to both Bench to Bedside participants, and any other students interested in medical innovation and healthcare technology. A more detailed description of the event can be found on the Eventbrite page here.
On Wednesday, January 11th, the Bench to Bedside Program hosted its Product Requirements workshop with speaker Shawn Fojtik.
Shawn Fojtik is a serial entrepreneur and thought-leader in the vibrant med device development industry in Salt Lake City and beyond. Mr. Fojtik spoke about several of his previous success stories regarding medical device development, including factors to consider when finalizing product design and developing a strategy to bring this product from the drawing board to industry launch. Shawn Fojtik has 100+ combined issued and pending patents and is co-founder of Distal Access, Control Medical, CIRCA Scientific, and others with experience at GE, Boston Scientific, and Black & Decker. His experience includes devices for cardiology, interventional radiology & oncology, electrophysiology, and other procedures. Shawn an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Utah with a BS from the University of Illinois and a MA from Harvard University.
BENCH TO BEDSIDE
Utah’s premier health care innovation competition, the Bench to Bedside (B2B) program offers students from all backgrounds the opportunity to learn from health care professionals about the problems facing day-to-day patient care, and develop tangible, innovative solutions.
The University of Utah’s flagship healthcare innovation program, the annual Bench to Bedside (B2B) competition brings together university students from across Utah to form teams focused on building innovative medical devices and digital applications to address real-world problems in health care. Participating students—who come from multiple disciplines ranging from architecture to the arts, engineering to law, and biology to business—learn the power which diversity of backgrounds and skillsets can bring to the innovation process.
Over the course of the academic year, students are given the opportunity to connect with health care professionals and learn about the challenges they face in their daily roles. With these challenges in mind, student teams work to define the clinical problem, evaluate the patent landscape and regulatory pathway, create a proof-of-concept prototype, and develop a go-to-market strategy for commercialization. Throughout the year, the Center for Medical Innovation provides training workshops on these topics from industry professionals and academic experts, as well as direct engineering and prototyping support for student teams.
The program culminates at the annual Bench to Bedside Competition Night event at the Utah State Capitol Building. Student teams showcase their projects in a gala-style event, meeting with competition judges, industry professionals, mentors, investors, University leadership, community members, family, and friends. After an evening of networking and celebration, judges submit their final scores. To end the evening, an awards ceremony recognizes the efforts of all teams and announces our award winners in each category, as well as the grand prize winners. The top teams receive nearly $100,000 in awards each year as milestone funding to further support project development.
Program Principles
- Provide an intensive experiential education through a hands-on real-world environment
- Develop interdisciplinary teams of innovators comprised of healthcare professionals, students, investors and industry experts
- Immerse our innovation teams into the clinical environment where they can identify and understand healthcare needs first-hand
- Provide teams the ecosystem, resources, and education to all them to accelerate new technologies from concept to commercialization
More information about Bench to Bedside available here.