Projects

Advancing Product Development at NIH-Funded Small Businesses

Bridging the gap between early stage companies funded by the NIH and the right partners to move their products forward

Executive Summary

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program funds companies to perform critical early-stage research on biomedical products; however, this support is usually not sufficient to allow companies to complete all the studies required for FDA approval. Furthermore, few small companies have the skills to navigate the product development process from discovery to commercial launch.
The NHLBI SBIR office provides advisory and partnership facilitation services to SBIR awardees to help them to advance their products to commercialization. To improve the services that the office offers, the Ignite team interviewed a number of companies to learn more about their product and business development needs. Outside of funding, expert advice during the early stages of product development emerged as their most significant need. Based on these results, the Ignite team proposes building an advisory network of industry experts who would be matched by NHBLI staff to awardees based on areas of expertise. The service would be facilitated by an existing cloud-based customer relationship management system, which would enable awardees to submit requests for assistance.

A project supported by the: HHS Ignite Accelerator

Team Members

Gary Robinson (project lead)
Kurt Marek
Matt McMahon
Eric Padmore
Mike Pieck

Milestones

January 2017: Project selected into the HHS Ignite Accelerator
February 2017: Time in the Accelerator began