Every day, millions of people in health care, from oncologists to rehabilitation specialists to dentists, use the tools at their disposal to help patients get better.
“And everyone runs into times when they say, what if?” said L. Franklin Bost, MBA. “What if I had something better? What if I could give someone better treatment? What if I could improve this patient’s health care, or many patients’ health care?”
Maybe there’s a device that doesn’t quite do what a surgeon wants it to do, a machine that doesn’t fit a nurse’s needs, or a treatment that a researcher thinks a new drug formulation could improve.
In his 30-year industry career, Bost worked through many such challenges faced by medical practitioners. Later, as a VCU College of Engineering professor and co-director of the VCU Institute for Engineering and Medicine, he became a leader in medical device development and commercialization. Now his experience – and that of several other leaders in the field – is preserved in a six-part seminar series for faculty and clinicians looking for guidance in the complex process of medical device and drug development.
Hosted by the Institute for Engineering and Medicine, the Wright Center for Clinical and Translational Research and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, the Bench to Community series provides a framework and pathways for inventors whose ideas could lead to innovations in medical care that improve health care for all patients.
“It’s not a journey that you go on alone,” Bost said. “It’s a journey you go on with a multitude of partners.”
Videos of the series are open to the public and available for viewing at Kaltura. (CME credit is available for VCU physicians, surgeons and nurses who watch the recordings. They can email cmeinfo@vcuhealth.org with the course code found within the video.) Read More
