These Stories of Medtech Derring-do Will Inspire

Fretting over barriers stifling your innovation? Read these stories.

Chris Newmarker

Qmed readers this year were once again drawn to stories of necessity driving people to invention.

For example, there was the story of Harry Paul (shown above), who has a congenital form of scoliosis, spending three years in high school working on a spinal implant. Paul, now a student at Tufts University, partnered with the K2M Group (Leesburg, VA) to refine its design and file a patent for it.

Don't let any product development challenges that pop up diminish your desire to create groundbreaking clinically relevant products, Paul said at this year's BIOMEDevice Boston.

Another story involved Khurshid Guru, MD, a robotic surgeon who got creative rigging together ordinary objects into a nebulizer when a child suffered an asthma attack on a transatlantic flight.

Guru--who is director of robotic surgery at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY--created a nebulizer using an empty water bottle, a plastic cup, some tape, and an oxygen tank, according to media reports.

Whether it is do-it-yourself medical device inventors or even teenaged medical device innovators, there are many stories out there to inspire.

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed and MPMN. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to our daily e-newsletter.