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Safer healthcare via medical innovation

Bobby Grajewski, President of Edison Nation Medical, talks about helping entrepreneurs bring medical innovations to commercialization, including the role of packaging.

MEMSCap smart electronic medication packaging system tracks each time the medication bottle is opened, a corollary for measuring when a pill is taken.
MEMSCap smart electronic medication packaging system tracks each time the medication bottle is opened, a corollary for measuring when a pill is taken.

Packaging World: How would you describe Edison Nation Medical?

Bobby Grajewski: Edison Nation Medical is a healthcare innovation marketplace with expertise in open innovation, product development, and medicine. We’re based in Charlotte, NC, and were born out of collaboration with Carolinas HealthCare System (one of the largest public health system in the U.S.). Our mission is to create more effective, more efficient, and safer healthcare by providing nurses, entrepreneurs, even patients and caregivers, a means to submit a medical invention idea for full evaluation and potential commercialization and by helping inventors to break through the traditional barriers of healthcare innovation. We focus on three main areas: acute care, durable medical equipment, and retail consumer products that you might see on the shelves at Rite Aid, Walgreens, CVS, etc. These are all medical products, not pharmaceuticals.

There are numerous challenges in bringing any product to commercialization, but in the healthcare space that becomes even more difficult given financial issues, regulatory matters, clinical trials, and so forth. How does ENM help entrepreneurs get through some of these barriers to market?

We do that by breaking down the traditional barriers that have inhibited the individual from taking part in the innovation process. Individual inventors often lack access to capital and expertise and knowing how to build out a business. Some are risk-averse and have no desire to quit their regular job to become an entrepreneur. Or they lack access to the healthcare supply chain, which is a critical aspect of launching a successful medical innovation. Through our online portal at EdisonNationMedical.com, individuals or small businesses can submit their healthcare innovation idea for full medical efficacy, intellectual property, and market commercialization evaluation. If our evaluation team agrees the idea has value we look to unlock that value, matching the innovative technology with a manufacturer that has the operational, sales, and distribution capabilities to ensure the new medical invention gets to market successfully.

What does this service cost in financial terms?

Submitting an idea to Edison Nation Medical costs $25 and that’s the only fee an inventor will ever be charged by Edison Nation Medical. After conducting a thorough evaluation, if we agree an invention has strong market potential, we invest 100% of all subsequent dollars necessary to further design, prototype, patent, and develop the idea so that it’s more attractive for potential licensing or acquisition. We are very careful in selecting the products we invest time and money to commercialize, since Edison Nation Medical only recoups this investment when we are successful bringing that inventor’s idea to life. For every product licensed, at least 50% of that royalty goes to the inventor. That balance is what Edison Nation Medical receives and is how we generate revenue for our business. In select cases, we will take a technology innovation submitted to us and “incubate” the idea (i.e., build a company around it), allowing the inventor to take part in the ownership of the company. Even if they choose not to be a part of that, they will receive at least half of the royalty that’s paid to the new company.

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