Can anyone please tell me about programs that teach you about bringing a medical device to market?

Graduate School
1

I am very interested in starting my own medical device company. I have found that the Master’s of Translational Medicine is a very good track for this. So far, the programs I’ve found are

Case Western Reserve - Masters of Translational Health
CCNY - Master’s of Translational Medicine
UCSF & UCB - Master’s of Translational Medicine
Johns Hopkins - Medical Device Innovation

Does anyone please know programs similar to these? I am looking to find some more that I can apply to so I can have a broad range when I apply to grad school.

Thanks!

2

You’re approaching this the wrong way. I glanced at the curricula for all the programs you listed: Case Western, CCNY, UCB/UCSF, and JHU.

I still can’t tell what any of those programs are actually supposed to teach you. Although several of them are offered by an engineering department, none of the courses involve actually learning engineering, which, IMO, defeats the entire purpose of a graduate degree in BME. And while some of these might expose students to ideas of business/entrepreneurship, they’re also not business degrees.

None of these programs lend themselves to a job as an engineer. Nor do they lend themselves to a job in business/finance/administration in a medical device or biotech company. I’m guessing most graduates of these programs end up in project coordination or lab tech type roles (or further education in the form of MD or PhD programs), and this could later on lead to the types of roles that would be useful. Which is fine, but it’s not the best way for you to achieve your goals.

If your end goal is starting a medical device company, you’ll need to be 1) an excellent engineer, or 2) someone with excellent business sense and financial skills and a basic understanding of engineering and medical technology, or 3) someone capable of finding the aforementioned people, or most likely, 4) some combination of the above. You’ll also benefit greatly from actual experience in the medical device industry in one of those capacities, which will require you to have the right degree and experience to actually get a job in the medical device industry first.

None of the programs you’ve listed will directly help you achieve that. It might be tempting to think that, just because the content of these programs is interesting and relevant to your goals, having a degree in “medical device innovation” or “translational medicine” will be exactly what you need to reach your goals. But, if you don’t have an understanding of the industry or what is actually important, seeking out such programs will be counterproductive.

Getting a degree in medical device innovation is not a shortcut to actually creating an innovative, successful medical device; doing so will require expertise and skills that none of these programs will give you.

3

Thank you for such an informative answer. I didn’t realize that. Can you tell me what do you think of these programs and if they’d be more relevant? I thought Purdue might be good because it teaches about the biomedical device industry and it offers actual experience too.

https://engineering.purdue.edu/BME/Academics/Graduate/Degree_Options/MS/BDDImmersion
http://bme.umich.edu/academics/graduate/curriculum/
http://catalogue.usc.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=7&poid=6663&returnto=2081

4

Also, I was leaning towards doing a non-thesis track because I don’t enjoy doing bench work in research. Do you think it’s more fruitful for my end goal to do a thesis track?

5

@Vreddy704 - I would also check out these two programs.
UC San Diego: http://be.ucsd.edu/master-engineering-degree
UC Berkeley: http://bioeng.berkeley.edu/meng

Both are one-year programs with no thesis from top-ten graduate programs.

6

Where are you in your career right now? Based on prior threads it appears that you just graduated from UCLA less than a year ago and you don’t have any work experience.

I’m not an engineer. But it’s my sense that if you want to start your own medical device company, and if you don’t have any experience with medical devices or working at/running a company yet, the thing that would probably be most useful to you right now is to go work at a medical device company…and get some experience with how it’s done.

7
The Purdue program seems good because it is technical and also requires internship experience--however, keep in mind that you don't need a program that requires an internship. Generally speaking, you can do an internship regardless of the program you're in; it will add time to your degree and will require you to be proactive about finding an internship, but it's time well spent. Either way, getting industry experience should be something *you* should be focusing on, regardless of what a particular graduate program requires or doesn't require.

The U-M program seems good, too, because it’s largely technical.

I would stay away from the USC program–it focuses too much on quality and regulatory and fluffy sounding “innovation” and project management courses.

More broadly, I agree wholeheartedly with @juillet. If you really want to start a medical device company, your goal should not be trying to find a graduate program that teaches you about the medical device industry. It’s easy to learn about the medical device industry once you’re in the medical device industry. The hard part is getting into the industry, and the best way to learn about medical devices is not by taking courses on medical devices, but by getting a job in the industry as an engineer. This requires you to be a competent engineer with sought-after technical skills.

In other words, what you should be looking to get out of a graduate program is technical engineering competency–not courses on regulation, not courses on innovation, not courses on project management, not courses on medical devices. But rather, real technical skills. Mathematical modeling of complex systems. Microfluidics. Finite element methods. Dynamics and control theory. Programming experience. Machine learning, computer vision, robotics. Knowledge of tissue biomechanics. Circuit analysis, electronics, signal processing. These skills will help you become a better engineer and get your foot in the door of the medical device industry, where you will learn all about (and design) medical devices, and find out what you’ll need to start your own company, at some point.