While FDA recommends that device developers incorporate real-world feedback into their designs, increased restrictions in hospitals make it difficult to get early-stage designs of medical devices into actual end-use environments.

This is why Columbus-based Battelle, thought to be the world’s largest, independent research and development organization, is collaborating with “neighbor” OhioHealth’s Center for Medical Education + Innovation (CME+1) at Riverside (Methodist Hospital), a five-year-old, state-of-the-art facility used for medical training and new product testing.

 “We’re simulating real-world user feedback from almost the inception of the idea without the worry of compromising a patient’s privacy,” says Reed Harpham, Manager of the Human Centric Design group in Battelle’s Health and Life Sciences Global Business.

CME+1 Director Jennifer Beard says, “By working collaboratively with Battelle, we can seamlessly serve as a ‘one-stop-shop’ to be instrumental in new product development. By taking a product from the earliest phases of design on through early ‘hands-on’ user feedback, we can help better define commercial stability. We have the ability to demonstrate, in a clinical context via our virtual hospital, the end-users’ impressions and needs before, and even after, market entry.”

The CME+I facility is one of 10 certified (American College of Surgeons) Level 1 Training Institutes. It can simulate anything from a quiet doctor’s office to a hectic ER, allowing the prototypes Harpham’s team designs to be put through paces to yield data.

This early insight can cut development costs and time to market.