Akron Law students team up with NEOMED to bring medtech ideas to life
A NEOMED post-graduate student describes her team’s project to two students at the NEOvations B2B Awards event at NEOMED. Photo: Chris Smanto
NEOvations Bench-to-Bedside, Northeast Ohio Medical University’s (NEOMED) student-led medical technology concept-to-commercialization program, wrapped up its second year this summer with The University of Akron (UA) continuing to play an important partnership role.
NEOvations B2B brings NEOMED medicine and pharmacy students together with graduate and some upper-level undergraduate students from various backgrounds, mainly engineering, law and business. The UA School of Law is one of the founding academic partners, along Kent State University’s College of Business Administration and the biomedical engineering program at Cleveland State University. The program is open to any student in Ohio at no cost.
During the fall, the students engage with clinicians and researchers from NEOMED and other area hospitals to identify unmet clinical needs. Students then organically form into multidisciplinary teams, with each working toward a prototype design to address a specific need, explained NEOvations B2B’s faculty director, Fayez Safadi, NEOMED professor of anatomy and neurobiology.
Over the course of the year, along with their project work, the students also tune in to virtual presentations from local health care and intellectual property (IP) law attorneys, early-stage investors, health care professionals and others, who described their roles in the overall medtech commercialization process.
Competing for cash
Not all the teams were able to demonstrate their concept as potentially viable. The 12 that succeeded competed at a poster showcase gala in July for a $10,000 top prize, $5,000 second prize, $3,000 third prize, and $1,000 People’s Choice prize, to be used to support further development of their project.
The top award went to a 3D-printed nasogastric tube securement device developed by a third year (M3) NEOMED student with two Cleveland Clinic physicians as advisors. The team said they intend to work with the Akron Law SEED Clinic to further develop the product.
The showcase also included five “legacy” teams from the prior year that have continued to pursue their projects. An important aspect of the NEOvations program is that the team members retain the intellectual property if they are ultimately able to obtain a patent for their product.
UA involvement
Six Akron Law students and two from the College of Engineering and Polymer Science participated in the 2021-22 program. Akron Law Professor George Horvath, who teaches health care law and was a cardiologist before embarking on a legal career, was one of the experts who presented to the students.
Akron Law 3L Luke Elbert, who is focused on IP law program, has been involved with NEOMED since a summer 2020 internship. This past year as a 2L, he served as the law chair for NEOvations B2B, one of the four student leaders—along with business, engineering, and medical chairs—who comprised the board of directors. Like Luke, all had participated in the previous year’s NEOvations B2B program.
“Each of us oversaw three or four of the teams, but any team could come to me with questions, which were mostly about patent searches,“ Elbert said. “Of course, I couldn’t provide legal advice, but I could explain things and point them in the right direction.”
He also joined one of the teams that is developing a machine-learning app to provide customized diets to people with medical conditions like colitis and Crohn's disease.
Although the projects tend to be driven by the medical and engineering students, Elbert said the interdisciplinary aspect provides a great experience for the MBA and law students, whether or not the idea actually becomes something.
“We focus on things the medical students don’t think about. It's great for them to get a base level understanding of the team they will have to create if they ever decide they want to try to develop a product.”
Julia Meyers
Patent searches and prior art
Akron Law 2L Julia Meyers hopes to pursue a career doing IP with medical devices or pharmaceuticals, so she thought the NEOvations program would be a good opportunity to get some hands-on experience during her first year.
She and her four fellow teammates—all rising M2 NEOMED students—worked with a Summa Health IP attorney on a Summa orthopedist’s idea for a device that would provide a better solution for surgeons treating an increasingly common type of femur fracture.
Under the direction of the attorney, Meyers conducted patent searches in the hope of ruling out any prior art for the device. Two of the medical students who had undergraduate engineering degrees created models and did 3D printing, while another who had a business background interviewed physicians and researched the market.
Unfortunately, the team was one of those that did not make the cut. Based on Meyers’ prior art research, Summa Health concluded that the proposed device wasn’t novel enough to pursue a patent.
Even though the concept didn’t come to fruition, Meyers would definitely recommend the NEOvations program to other IP law students.
“It was a good experience. It was really cool to work with the other students from different backgrounds. And it was a real-world lesson: Not every good idea is patentable.”
Jonathan Cohen
A heightened experience
Akron Law 2L Jonathan Cohen teamed with two rising M2 students under the supervision of a Cleveland Clinic neurosurgeon and neurosurgery resident to develop an origami-inspired device for use in a spinal fusion procedure called transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion. The device would be inserted through a small opening to fill in the space where disk material is removed. As conceived, it would more effectively fill the space with less tissue damage and less pain.
“Overall, it was a great experience,” Cohen said. “I was pre-med in college, but this was a heightened version of that. I researched medical journals and interviewed doctors. We looked at aspects of the existing technology that could be improved and how ours could be different. I wasn’t the architect of the invention we came up with, but I helped with that. My particular role was on the intellectual property side of thing—how can we make this patentable? How is it different from other devices that are out there [for this procedure]?”
Cohen hopes to participate in NEOvations again this year.
The new term begins
The NEOvations B2B student leadership team for the upcoming season has already met ahead of the October 11 kickoff event, reports Akron Law MSL candidate Ayesha Ahmad, who earlier earned an MBA from Kent State and who was initially on a pre-med path as an undergraduate. She will serve as the NEOvations B2B business chair for 2022-23.
Safadi hopes to continue to attract a larger, more diverse cohort of student participants. He notes that NEOMED is building out a prototype and design lab on campus that will be available to the teams. New partners this year include Bounce Innovation Hub, an Akron nonprofit supporting entrepreneurs; JumpStart, a Cleveland-based venture development organization; and UH Ventures, the innovation arm of University Hospitals.
Students interested in learning more should visit NEOvations Bench to Bedside. There will be an information session (live and virtual) at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 12 at NEOMED.
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