The BioMedical Design Programme (BMD) is an intense 10-month experience loaded with tons of

invaluable learnings. Here are some of the reasons we, Team Inventricle, think we got 5 years wiser in 10 months.

Since interdisciplinary teamwork is a cornerstone of the BMD programme, there was a lot of

excitement leading up to the team announcement and team building seminar. We were lucky to

be placed in a very diverse team, with both engineers, doctors and a nurse. At the seminar we

were introduced to the phases you have to go through to become a high performing team –

Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. Like most other teams we also had to go through

these and it wasn’t always easy. But we learned a lot about each other and our team dynamics

along the way. One thing that we implemented was to have a “facilitator of the week”. That made

sure that everyone had the opportunity to plan and direct the team in the tasks at hand, and we

learned that our team worked a lot better when someone explicitly took the role of facilitator.

Get out of the building

See one, do one, and raise the bar

During the programme, a general learning concept is the “See one, do one” concept. Monday

could be filled with inspiring teaching from domain experts, and then the rest of the week is for

you to go out and try what you’ve learned in your specific project. This is an excellent way to

make knowledge stick with long term memory. In addition, outcomes are frequently shared

between the teams to inspire each other. A sense of healthy competition among the teams

helped us all raise the bar for what can be done, like going across the planet to validate a need or

meet with key opinion leaders.

Never too late to pivot

During our time at the programme we have heard many tales of all the amazing pivots that have

happened in the previous cohorts. Luckily, we got to try one ourselves as well, and hopefully it will

be added to the list that the future fellows will hear about.

We only had about 6 weeks left before the final pitch when we decided to pivot and focus on

children with urinary incontinence instead of collection of urine samples, so we had a lot to do in

a very short time. But we learned that this time we could really divide and conquer because we

had learned so much the first time around. It made it a really fun and exciting experience to try

and get as much as possible done in such a short time. We managed to talk to a lot of

stakeholders and interview several parents and children in both Denmark and the USA. We even

did a Facebook campaign to understand more about our potential customers and the willingness

to pay.

Pitching

All of this led us to the culmination of the programme, which was the final pitch. All through the

programme we have been training our pitching skills both formally and informally. This is such a

valuable skill no matter what you do – to be able to clearly communicate a need and idea to

anyone no matter what their background is, and in a way that they will remember it afterwards.

While I am not experienced with tech-things like 3D-printing, digital prototyping or electronic devices, I am certainly always up for a challenge. I love learning new skills and for this reason, I was particularly excited about the prototyping workshops, we had as part of the Creative Skills Phase.

My background is nursing but…

I want to challenge status quo

I applied for the BioMedical Design programme because I sought to broaden my horizons and challenge myself professionally. In my job, I felt I was beginning to increasingly accept bad or mediocre solutions because of the narrative “that’s just how it is”.
I want to continuously be able to challenge the status quo and therefore the BMD programme felt like a perfect match for me. Learning about design thinking and improving my skills as a facilitator have been some of my favourite parts of the programme so far, and these are skills I will be able to use in my future career, whatever it may bring.

Going on a learning journey

On March 10^th, 2022, my teammate Gülçin and I took a train from Aarhus Central station at 5.55 am. We had a long day ahead of us. We were scheduled to visit the Danish Technical University (DTU) in Lyngby and spend the entire day being introduced to the Aduino platform. At DTU we met Jacob Pedersen who described himself as an electronics design engineer and all round hacker. He assured us that he was used to teaching coding to kids at summer camps, and it would be easy-going.

The AHA-moment

Knowing the electronic field is good

I am still far from being a programmer, but this was such a cool introduction to an area that I had no prior knowledge about. Now I know that it is possible to do various electronic prototypes without spending significant money or time on it! We are currently experimenting with ultrasound modalities in my team, but since our concept and idea is constantly evolving, we cannot know if we will pivot into a new solution next week. Luckily, we have an electronics-engineer with experience in this field on my team, but the insight I got into coding and user design really benefits me in a way, that I too can be a part of this.

Future possibilities

We are now in the Commercial Skills Phase with the focus of further developing our solution while concomitantly looking into our Intellectual Property, business models and funding strategies. We have a lot of things to do in the next few months, and I am excited to see how far we will be with our solution by the end of the programme.

Webinar about the BioMedical Design Programme

If you have unanswered questions about the BioMedical Design Novo Nordisk Foundation Fellowship Programme then you should watch this webinar. It can tell you more about the learning process and some examples of why people have applied, and what they think about the learning process.