About 10 years ago, Nottingham Spirk Design Collaborative began using its decades of consumer product design expertise to develop medical devices.
It's not that scientist- or physician-inventors weren't thinking about how patients could interface with their products, but the Cleveland design collaborative has developed a knack for tapping into the minds of consumers.
This "mind melding" can mean millions of dollars for medical device makers and investors, as well as richer, more productive lives for patients.
"Eight to 10 years ago, we started a very deliberate path of looking into the area of medical devices," said John Spirk, co-president of the design company.
"We hired our first medical engineer. We have added several more as we developed a great expertise in medical devices," Spirk said.
Now, "We have several medical device startups," John Nottingham, also co-president, said.
Here are other Nottingham Spirk stories in this series:
- NYC investor partners with Nottingham Spirk on telehealth technologies: Through its recently raised $75 million telehealth fund, Swiftarc Ventures is working with Nottingham Spirk to support the next wave of disruptive technologies to improve health care coverage, increase access and lower costs.
- Nottingham Spirk takes team approach to developing medical devices: Most medical devices are developed in silos, which is partly why only about 5% of them are commercialized, says John Nottingham, co-president of Nottingham Spirk. "While the world has gone specialized, we’ve done the opposite," Nottingham said.
Consumer product roots
Spirk and Nottingham started their design company in 1972 in a carriage house on the grounds of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The two had just graduated with industrial design degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Art.
For most of their 50 years in business, Nottingham, Spirk and their teams have specialized in bringing consumer and industrial products to market.
The Twist & Pour paint container for Sherwin-Williams in Cleveland — a Nottingham Spirk innovation.
Same for the SpinBrush, a low-priced electric toothbrush initially licensed to Crest, a Proctor & Gamble brand, as well as the Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner, initially developed for Royal Appliance Manufacturing in Highland Heights, Ohio.
Medical devices are different
But unlike developing most consumer products to solve a problem within months, developing medical devices takes years that include clinical trials, quality management programs and regulator approvals.
"We started with proof-of-concept technologies, but they needed to be designed and commercialized to put into the marketplace," Nottingham said.
Typically product design houses specialize in part of the process of taking an idea to the marketplace, Nottingham said.
But Nottingham and Spirk have built their product design practice around the entire design and commercialization process — something the two call "vertical innovation."
CardioInsight
Nottingham Spirk was the design partner for Cleveland startup CardioInsight, said Charu Ramanathan, who was cofounder, president and clinical support officer for the diagnostics startup.
The design company "took our clinical prototype and helped us build a product out of it," said Ramanathan, now cofounder and CEO of vitalxchange in North Royalton, Ohio.
Nottingham Spirk also served as the contract design manufacturer for CardioInsight's diagnostic device for heart patients.
What started out as a heavy, electrode-studded canvas vest became a light-weight, disposable vest embroidered with florets of electrodes used to gather electrical information about a patient's heart.
"They made it comfortable for the patient to wear," Ramanathan said.
Nottingham Spirk also made CardioInsight's device investable. Dublin, Ireland-based medical device giant Medtronic acquired the company and its device for $93 million in 2015.
