MDG ::Medical Development Group - About Us

The November 2007 issue of Journal of Validation Technology features an article by Brian Shoemaker entitled “Lessons Learned in a Non-Regulated Software Validation Project” (click title for link to article).

Corum Medical (whose key players are Alan Kivnik and Olga Cherniavsky) has been selected as one of the three finalists in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Venture Forum Business Plan Competition, from a group of more than 20 entrants.

A Pain Management device which Marty Sklar helped develop for Biowave was recently featured on CBS News (click title to open news article). As a consultant for Biowave, Marty designed and worked with an excellent vendor to fabricate the metal electrode microarray (the metallic circular disc on the electrode pad).

The Rhode Island Business Plan Competition has launched its 2008 season, announcing that it will award $150,000 in prizes: the most since the competition began seven years ago, making it one of the richest business plan competitions in New England. The competition is open to all entrepreneurs, regardless where they live, who intend to operate in Rhode Island. For upcoming dates in this competition and details on how to enter, click here.

On Nov. 30, 2007 at 2:00 PM, MDG Vice President Edward E. Berger, Ph.D., presented a Center for Business Intelligence Webinar: Medicare Reimbursement for New Technologies: Standards and Strategies for Securing Add-on Payments (click title for details)

Brian Shoemaker was recently invited to present at QA&Test 2007, the 6th International Conference on Software QA and Testing on Embedded Systems (http://www.qatest.org/en/), in Bilbao, Spain. The talk, "Test-first Practices for Safety-Critical Development: An Agile Approach", derives from talks Brian has co-presented with Ron Morsicato at Agile Software Development conferences in November 2006 and August 2007.

On Oct. 29 at 1:00 PM, MDG Vice President Edward E. Berger, Ph.D., presented a Center for Business Intelligence Webinar: “Reimbursement Strategy for Companion Diagnostics: Emerging Models and Unresolved Issues” (click title for link to announcement).

On October 30 in Washington, D.C., MDG Vice President Ed Berger was a panelist discussing clinical trial coverage and reimbursement under Medicare’s revised Clinical Research Policy at “Emerging Issues in Clinical Research,” a day-long program co-sponsored by The American Health Lawyers Association and AdvaMed. (click title for link to program)

August 2007: The July/August issue of Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare includes Howard Perlstein's article entitled "Executive Primer: Solving User Adoption" (click title for link to reprint)

August 2007: The July/August issue of MX Magazine: Business Strategies for Medical Technology Executives features an article by Mike Gram entitled "The Road to Electronic Medical Device Reporting" (click title for link to article)

August 13, 2007: Richard Halpern (http://halperninfoservices.com) authored an article in the peer-reviewed Medical Device & Diagnostics Industry entitled "The Essentials
of Research in Successful Product Development"(click title for link to article).

Partners HealthCare has established a fund to provide seed money for healthcare technology startups, including medical devices. Discussion of the fund, including its targets and potential ethical issues, is featured in a Boston Globe article titled “Hospitals create fund to boost inventions; Ties to business draw criticism” (click title for link to article).

Marty Sklar and others are requesting a meeting with Governor Patrick to address small business concerns with the life sciences legislation, and are inviting small business owners to sign the letter to Governor Patrick requesting a meeting. (click link to article)

Allan Weeks' article “Testing tips when hospitals try out new software” appeared in the June 15, 2007 issue of Mass High Tech. Allan discusses legal and contractual issues that hospitals and IT or software companies enter into beta or evaluation testing arrangements.
(click title for link to article)

Medical devices form one of the fastest-growing segments of the Massachusetts export economy, according to a study commissioned by MassMEDIC (the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council). The study, as reported in Boston Business Journal, finds medical devices comprised 10.5 percent of the Bay State's total exports in 2006 and brought in approximately $2.5 billion. (click title for link to article)

The Bagazo Energy team (whose mentor is John Carlton-Foss) won the Development Track of the 100K competition at MIT. The SaafWater team (for which John is advisor) was one of two runners up.

April 11, 2007: Howard Perlstein (http://www.howmanagement.com) appeared on the Coach DQ radio show, WNRI 1380 AM, to speak on the common pitfalls encountered by business owners and senior executives when dealing with rapid growth and transformational change. He also provided helpful tips on what to do in a complicated change situation.

March 21, 2007: David Kaufman, Jerry Shapiro, Ralph Grabowski, and the Hemetrics Development. team (which also includes Major Luis Alvarez, Joshua Lake, and Irina Shklyar) were selected as semifinalists in the 2007 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Contest. About 142 teams from MIT competed in the Venture Track for one of 22 positions as a semifinalist, and the opportunity to submit a full business plan by April 25 for a chance to become one of 7 finalists and three winners at the awards ceremony on May 16th.

John Carlton-Foss and the Bagazo Energy team were selected as semifinalists in the Development track of the 2007 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Contest. As semifinalists, Bagazo will have the opportunity to submit a full business plan by April 25 for a chance at being selected one of the winners on May 16th. The Bagazo Energy team was featured in a Boston Business Journal on May 12, 2006 (click here to view). Further information about their project is available here.

Joe Kalinowski, founding Principal of Trilogy Associates, authored an invited article in the February 9-15 issue of Mass High Tech, entitled "Internal Due Diligence: Key to Product Success"

Jan. 14, 2007: MDG member Ralph Grabowski was featured in a Boston Globe business section article entitled “Why Good Products Fail: Skimping on market research can prove a fatal flaw ”

Dec. 12, 2006: MDG members Jerry Shapiro, David Kaufman and Ralph Grabowski won the MIT $1K business plan contest award in their category for their team, Hemetrics Development.

Other MDG Member Accomplishments