This article originally appeared in the Health and Medicine print issue, in stands January 2o25. It has not been updated and some information may be out of date.
Every April, usually inside the Utah Capitol building, hundreds of students mingle with university leadership, healthcare professionals, venture capitalists and industry leaders while presenting their own medical technology start-up companies. This is the culmination of the Center for Medical Innovation’s (CMI) annual Bench to Bedside competition.
“It’s been one of the most interesting activities I was able to engage in as a University of Utah student,” Sam Nelson, this year’s Bench to Bedside student president, said. “It’s been some of my most valuable professional connections [and] one of my most valuable sources of social connections, both in terms of meeting new people, meeting new friends and developing existing relationships.”
The Bench to Bedside (B2B) program generally starts in September and runs for seven months before ending with its annual competition. The program opens with a mixer event where students can meet each other and potentially form teams.
“Then we usually start the design process with finding problems. Usually, the best way to start a medical device is, ‘Hey, where are these patch points?'” Nelson said.
This process stage also connects students to previous participants to help guide the proceedings.
As the year progresses, B2B will continue to host events to help guide students through identifying a problem, designing a solution and then building a company for that solution. B2B can even help students get provisional patents.
“The healthcare space is really hard to navigate. There are lots of rules, lots of regulations, and so we do everything we can to teach you everything you need to bring it forward,” Amanda LeMatty, CMI’s Bench to Bedside manager, said. “So it’s really an awesome opportunity you can’t get unless you’re taking coursework in it otherwise.”
Technology born from the competition covers all sorts of procedures and problems. Last year’s grand prize winner, for example, was given to a start-up called C-Blu. They created a device that uses blue light to identify cervical cancer.
Another company that started from Bench to Bedside is the popular Doxy.me, a worldwide telehealth platform. Brandon Welch and Dylan Turner created the platform and started the company when they joined the Bench to Bedside program in 2013.
“One was a PhD student working up in the hospital system. The other one was a local kid, I think, from Highland High, and they met at one of the mixers,” Mark Paul, the Center for Medical Innovation’s executive director, said. “They wrote the software and created it, and they made a company.”
He added that the healthcare system’s current problems require continued innovation to fix.
“There’s 12,000 baby boomers retiring every day in the United States. We don’t have enough hospital beds. We don’t have enough doctors. We don’t have enough hospitals,” Paul said. “Our only solution is technology innovation. We need to invent technologies that treat patients better and get them out of the hospitals quicker.”
This year, the Bench to Bedside competition will take place on April 14 in the Ken Garff University Club at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Like any other B2B event, it is open to anyone.
One thing Bench to Bedside works to emphasize is the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, LeMatty said.
“As an engineer only, I know nothing about the clinical side,” she added. “I don’t work in a hospital. I don’t interact with patients. So that’s where medical students have a lot of value. And then once you actually build the thing, it’s like, okay, my background is in engineering. I have no clue how to sell it. I can’t make a brand.”
Generally, teams are composed of people with engineering, medicine, business and marketing backgrounds. However, the competition is open to all students of all majors. Students don’t have to attend the U to compete, either. Teams can also register for the competition throughout the year.
Students participating in the competition and others can also take advantage of the CMI’s range of resources and tech for producing medical technology. These include a prototyping lab and help applying for patents, with more to come in the new Sorenson Center for Medical Innovation, which began construction last spring.
“I think your [students’] generation is born into innovation, and I think your generation thinks differently about innovation, and I think your generation is going to be the greatest innovators in all history,” Paul said.
