The MedTech Innovation + Entrepreneurship Program is an 11-month professional graduate program (early June to early May) offered by the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC–Chapel Hill and NC State University. It is designed for students who want to lead early-stage biomedical ventures or advance new product development within the healthcare industry.
The curriculum is structured to guide students through identification, development, and commercialization strategies for novel biomedical technologies. Through clinical immersion, students identify unmet healthcare needs, explore regulatory and market pathways, and gain insight into the unique challenges of bringing medical devices and pharmaceuticals to market. Throughout the program, they receive mentorship from experienced biotech entrepreneurs, legal experts, and venture capital partners.
Students benefit from the combined resources of both NC State and UNC–Chapel Hill. The program collaborates with the College of Engineering, School of Medicine, Poole College of Management, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, College of Veterinary Medicine, and the growing biotech ecosystem in the Research Triangle Park.
The summer session is a time-bound, yet comprehensive search for a clinical problem worth solving. Students are first credentialed and then connected with local healthcare providers for interviews and shadowing. They use fresh eyes to identify clinical pain points & subsequently perform analyses into market attractiveness, technical feasibility, resource requirements and exit potential. By early Fall, each student presents a need they feel is worth solving to providers, entrepreneurs, and healthcare venture capital investors.
In the Fall Semester, students form companies while iteratively designing and testing solutions against critical requirements. As the solutions are developed, students write grants and participate in pitch competitions to fund future development activities and protect novel technology embodiments with invention disclosures. In general, students own any intellectual property they generate while developing solutions for needs identified in this program.
The Spring Semester immerses students in a Structured Design & Development Process including risk analysis and risk controls, finalizing design outputs and preparing for verification and validation while preparing a Design History File for a future regulatory submission. The Spring culminates in a MedTech Showcase and Demo Day where students demonstrate their solutions to an audience that includes healthcare providers, industry stakeholders, angel investors and other venture capitalists.
Click here to learn more about the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering
