Med-tech inventors tackle anaphylaxis
UCT’s Medical Devices Lab is fostering an ecosystem of innovation.
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UCT’s Medical Devices Lab is fostering an ecosystem of innovation.
And the fruitfulness of its teaching practices, founded on ideas of Frugal Biodesign, is being proven in the form of biomedical engineering graduates Gokul Nair and Giancarlo Beukes.
Both alumni of the medical device design course, they have teamed up to form Impulse Biomedical – a company presently incubated in the Medical Devices Lab. The pair are working on commercialising the ZibiPen, a reloadable adrenaline auto-injector, along with other technologies that were developed in the lab.
They hope the device will be the first of many medical innovations they bring to the market.
The ZibiPen was recently recognised in the Emerging Medical Innovation Competition at the Design of Medical Devices Conference, where it placed second and was awarded a full technical and market evaluation by the Medical Industry Leadership Institute (MILI), valued at R180 000.
The evaluation is an incredible tool for the start-up, which will need investment to take it through the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process, and eventually, to market.
“We can develop innovative solutions in a very low-cost way.”
Being recognised at the world’s largest medical devices conference is a significant accolade, noted Dr Sudesh Sivarasu, who heads up the lab.
The competition is open to all technologies with potential to create an impact in the healthcare space. The inventors were up against stiff competition, including state-of-the-art technologies, some fully developed and already out in the market, others addressing complex medical problems.
Of the six devices recognised at the competition, ZibiPen and Impulse Biomedical were the only competitors from outside the United States.
“The rest of the companies spend millions of dollars to get where they are. We have spent so little, but we have done so much.That is the whole Frugal Biodesign that Sudesh has developed … So, we can develop innovative solutions in a very low-cost way,” commented Nair, who invented the technology alongside Sivarasu and Professor Mike Levin.“
