Integrating biomedical engineering with entrepreneurship and management: An undergraduate experience

We describe aspects of our cross-disciplinary efforts between biomedical engineering and entrepreneurship and management. Specifically, we describe how these disparate programs are being integrated to encourage interaction between students, faculty and administrators to develop technical prototypes with market potential. In biomedical engineering, a design program is in place where 10-13 teams of 10 undergraduate students each work on independent projects annually posed by sponsors such as researchers, clinicians and individuals in need. The design projects culminate in a prototype and final report. About 1/4to 1/2 of these projects have potential for commercial application. In entrepreneurship and management, a program exists where teams of between three and five undergraduate students develop business plans for ideas that are proposed to them by biomedical engineering students. Business plans for projects with commercial potential examine factors necessary to convert the project idea into a viable enterprise. Such issues include market size, revenue and reimbursement, market penetration strategies, costs of operations, legal issues, return on investment, roles of the founding entrepreneurs, sources of funding, harvest strategies, and negotiating deals. To date, four technical teams have successfully collaborated with entrepreneurship teams to generate a prototype and an associated business plan to market a product based on the prototype.