Today was my last day as Director of Commercialization Services at Simbex, a medical device design and development firm in Lebanon, NH. This week also marked the 5th year since I accepted my fulltime role there after initially coming onboard as a postdoc in 2019. I calculated that I’ve led 54 projects in that time – providing consulting on commercial viability by assessing care pathway, clinical workflow, regulatory, reimbursement, evidence generation, and market opportunity for products including:
- Digital therapeutic for teenagers with depression
- Pressure sensing footwear for gait analysis
- Upper extremity robotic rehabilitation system
- Brain computer interface for stroke rehabilitation
- Lower extremity exoskeleton for foot drop
- Modular walkway for mobility and balance screening
- Sensor to monitor prosthetic wear-time and step count
Another part of my role at Simbex has been to develop curriculum and educational programming for several accelerator programs: Dartmouth Innovations Accelerator for Digital Health, TREAT cohort (NIH funded P2CHD 086841), DRIVEN Peer2Peer (NIH funded UT2GM130176), Dartmouth Innovations Accelerator for Cancer.
It has been a great experience, full of learning and growing. Although I’m moving on, I am not moving very far away. I will be working nearby at Dartmouth College as the Program Manager for Entrepreneurship at Geisel. As mentioned above, I had already been involved in the Dartmouth Accelerator programs as a contractor through Simbex, but I jumped at the opportunity to focus on this fulltime.
In many ways, changing to a university setting feels like coming home. I grew up in a college town, and I took classes there as soon as I was deemed “tall enough to look like a college student” (which in my case, was age 13). I think that because I was so young, it sort of imprinted on me like a duckling and I keep returning to it. There is an unmatched sense of potential and energy on a bustling campus. I am excited to be a part of that again, hopefully contributing a touch of real-world expertise that will help academic innovators translate their brilliant ideas out of the lab and into the clinic.
I am starting Dextraworks as a side project so that I can continue to offer consulting and research services for innovators who could use a push in the right direction for commercializing their medtech products. At first, those jobs will come via continued partnership with Simbex. But as all things do, I am sure that it will morph over the years. Let’s see where this goes!
DEXTRAWORKS 