The Process
The design process takes much longer than I originally thought. After identifying a problem, in addition to inventing the product itself, someone must do market research, cost analysis, drum up funding, and find a way to manufacture and distribute it. For medical devices design, the FDA and special regulations come into play and must be considered. Even then, people may not actually want to use it. This multifaceted process means even good designs can easily fail. To be honest, it is very intimidating to risk putting years of your life into a great design that can go belly-up because it was not marketed well to hospitals or they were not interested in changing their system. During the Spark Engineering and Design guest speaker’s presentation (can’t remember her name…) I wondered if there were any companies that fully specialized in bringing ideas into production. Spark helps with the design work, but it seemed like it was still up to the inventor to turn the product into a company. I think this would be a good niche to fill for inventors who are scared of throwing themselves fully into an idea or who just don’t want to deal with all of the hassle associated with bringing an idea to fruition.
BME Design 