|
"After months of trial and error, Shaw hit on the idea of surrounding the tip of the syringe with six petal-like flanges, which could flare open to make way for the catheter port. Unlike some of the solutions floated by big medical device makers, such as coating the ports with silver, Shaw’s innovation added only a few pennies to the cost of production. And it seemed to be remarkably effective: a 2007 clinical study funded by Shaw’s company and conducted by the independent SGS Laboratories found the device prevented germs from being transferred to catheters nearly 100 percent of the time. " As someone who is trying to finish his Master's thesis relating to prostate cancer, claims like this make me cringe. It's like paying a marketing group to conduct a survey for you. Of course the results will be positive. I didn't read the whole article since it's pretty long, but I bookmarked it for later. But this guy managed to burn through $42 million dollars and still hasn't achieved wide adoption? If this was really about getting his superior technology to market, he would attempt to strike a licensing deal with these companies instead of trying to supplant them. Fact is, many people in medical device and healthcare industry claim to be conducting research and ground-breaking work in the name of making people's lives better. But in reality, they're looking to get rich off of it. I respect that, but at a certain point, you need to decide what's more important: your personal profits, or the lives of the people you claim to be dying from this issue. The guy who invented/discovered/extracted insulin didn't patent it/the process, even though he could've made tons of money. Again, if you want to make money, I respect that. But in that case, don't go whining about lives being lost. I wish this guy luck, because it sounds like he has something new and novel. He just needs to realize that he has to pivot, not persevere. |