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Biodesign Innovation Fellow Developing Prototype to Combat COVID-19
David Hindin ’02, a surgeon and fellow in Stanford’s Biodesign Innovation Fellowship, has shifted his focus from working on a vascular surgery project to identifying problems and working on solutions relating to COVID-19. Hindin majored in molecular biology and English in undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania, attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and completed his residency in general surgery at Temple University Hospital. During his residency, he spent two years researching tissue engineering and earned a master’s in innovation management and entrepreneurship from Temple’s Fox School of Business. During that time, he also launched an iOS-based, digital magazine app called Invented that highlights new innovations and technology in medicine, and started a YouTube channel focusing on a similar theme, with a series called "Why Your Doctor Should Daydream." He began the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship in June 2019.
What is the Biodesign Innovation Fellowship?
The Biodesign fellowship itself is an academic program at Stanford designed to train new generations of leaders in health technology. The boots on the ground reality of what they do is to train you in a process that Stanford’s developed over the years—a way to find areas in the healthcare space where there’s an unmet need, matched with a decently-sized market, favorable IP landscape, etc. Some incredible companies have already been formed by alums of the program, many of which began with technology that was created during their time in the fellowship. Several of these startups have gone on to IPO, and even more were later acquired by major companies in the health tech space. Stanford tracks the patient-facing impact of Biodesign-formed technologies, and as of several years ago they had quantified that more than a million patients have already been helped by technology created out of the fellowship.
For me, it was like my dream program—a way to combine all the things I loved about medicine with everything I loved about creativity and innovation. It’s been a full-time fellowship, so for the year, the clinical part of my life has been scaled back: a few weeknights each month and one 24-hour weekend shift a month, I work as a pool surgeon in the Kaiser Permanente system, covering emergency surgery needs. I’m mainly doing that to keep my skills sharp.
The Biodesign Fellowship itself is split into segments throughout the year. In the beginning of the year, we spent a lot of time getting immersed in the clinical space to see what seemed like interesting unmet needs to us, and then as the year went on, we were brought through the process of how to generate ideas, how to create a prototype, how to test concepts, how to create a solid marketing plan and how to strategize a regulatory pathway to get through the FDA.
The course of the year has gone from learning about the clinical states that we’re working on to learning the Biodesign process and then putting it into practice—you’re trained as you go through the process and start building prototypes.
How has your work changed due to COVID-19?
One of the obvious ways that it’s changed is that there’s a whole new ocean of needs out there. My teammate and I had been working on a design for a vascular surgery device to treat patients at risk of needing an amputation, and even though it was such a promising project, we’re now starting to pivot a bit and put more of our attention into COVID needs.
Basically the process that I described to you, we’re repeating for COVID. My teammate and I have been recreating what we did over the course of the year: we’ve given ourselves about three weeks to generate a list of all the problems that we find, and then begin to rank these based on what seems like the biggest opportunity. Once we get to that point, we’ll spend a few weeks working on different concepts and technologies, and then we’ll begin looking into the regulatory pathway. We’re basically doing everything that we learned to do in the fellowship, but applying it in a sprint format to COVID.
What stage of that process are you in now?
We’re in what we call “needs finding.” There are SO many unmet needs. But when you run a Google search for “Coronavirus problems” and “Coronavirus needs,” a few of the more surface level needs and issues keep popping up: the issue of healthcare providers not having enough PPE, the question of how to deal with aerosolized virus, and the question of measuring and determining antibody response. That’s all surface level stuff that is broadly recognized, so part of what we’re applying from the Biodesign approach is taking it a step further.
For instance, where PPE is concerned, we recognize that the supply chain is going to catch up sooner or later, so the question then becomes, what needs are still going to be there, even once people have all the PPE that they need? We've learned from watching the Ebola epidemic that a huge number of healthcare providers contaminate themselves in the process of taking off their PPE: one study found nearly 70% of providers who have a typical amount of training contaminated themselves when removing PPE—the majority doing so twice during a single episode of removal. It's incredibly hard not to get contaminated when removing a respirator or taking gloves off. And unless done perfectly with our existing PPE, this poses a real threat of infection of the provider through contamination. I’m not sure that’s going to be the particular need that we pursue, but to me, it's such an interesting example of the Biodesign process at work. It teaches you to peel off the layers of the onion and look a couple steps deeper to see what the real problem is that needs to be solved.
What are the next steps?
My teammate and I are working to narrow down to the most interesting and most pressing opportunity. We’re placing a priority on solutions that would take six months or less, as opposed to a complicated ventilator, for instance, that might have a years-long regulatory pathway. So in terms of next steps, we’re trying to give ourselves a pretty quick timeframe to start getting some concepts on paper and prototypes out in the world.
What has it been like pivoting your work so quickly and drastically?
It’s definitely been a challenge to pump the brakes and restart, but it’s also exciting. It’s kind of like you suddenly have all the tools to do something you’ve been training to do, and now you’re thrown into the real world to put it into play.
What interested you in a career in healthcare and Biodesign?
The healthcare interest definitely came before the interest in Biodesign. When I first decided to go into medicine, I didn’t even know that Biodesign existed. I’ve always been a sciencey guy, but I like working with people, so I never fully considered being in a lab and having that be my full-time career. Originally I thought I was going to be a pediatrician. I love working with kids, and I had a great pediatrician growing up, but in med school I realized that I enjoyed working with my hands and doing procedures, and I realized I wanted to become a surgeon. As for the Biodesign part of things, I felt frustrated that there weren’t enough creative outlets within medicine. When I was doing a [two-year] research block [during my surgical residency], I launched a YouTube series to go around and interview people doing innovation within med schools. I stumbled on Biodesign when I was doing a Google search to find what innovation programs there were. And as soon as I heard about it I was like, “Wow—this is exactly what I’ve always wanted to do with my life.” I didn’t even know it existed until halfway through my surgical training.
What do you love about your job?
Clinically, I love being able to help someone and feel I’ve made a tangible impact on their life—that I've fixed a problem and connected with someone in a way that's left them better off. On the Biodesign end of things, I really enjoy being able to tap into my imagination to invent something new in the world that can do good. Thanks to the fellowship I've been in, it's exciting to finally have the tools to go from having an idea to building the actual thing. Before this year, I loosely understood it, but being immersed in the creative environment of Silicon Valley and learning how to actually execute on that knowledge is really amazing.
