BIEL had a visit from Dr. Fischell on 2/26, he is
Post# of 7805
It seems Dr. Fischell has a strong interest in magnetism.
In addition to having a brilliant mind for innovation Dr. Fischell also knows how to make money with his inventions. This is demonstrated by the 14 companies he started and tens of millions of dollars he has donated to Universities.
One of Dr. Fischell's companies, Angel Medical, spent $160 million and 16 years bringing his early warning system for heart attacks, Guardian Device, to market.
His current project for a drug free pain relief device uses extremely high voltage so it is a clinical device.
I do not think that it is a coincidence that 3 weeks after our FDA Musculoskeletal Clearance Dr. Fischell wanted to visit BIEL.
Below are a few excerpts but I would recommend reading the full Q & A article.
What are some of your most memorable achievements in spacecraft?
You’ve heard of the GPS satellites? Well, the precursor was called Transit. It was a navigation satellite that just does exactly what GPS does, but it does it using about four different satellites that go around the planet. I probably had 20 patents on the design of those satellites, and many are still in orbit being used for research.
I also did a lot of research in magnetism. I convinced NASA to spend tens of millions of dollars on MagSat, which precisely defined the Earth’s magnetic field. I was the first one to invent aligning the axis of a satellite along the Earth’s magnetic field so that one side wouldn’t get too hot while the other got cold. Then I invented how to remove the last bit of spin out of a satellite by using magnetic rods that rub against the Earth’s magnetic fields. It’s interesting how much I’ve dabbled in magnetism.
So you pivoted into the biomedical realm for the past three decades. What are some of your most memorable achievements?
I was co-inventor of the heart defibrillator and coronary stents. I invented a device (approved two years ago by the FDA) that senses epileptic seizures before they happen and turns them off. I invented a device that tells that you’re having a heart attack before you have any symptoms. It alerts you and sends heart data to the nearest hospital and registers you there. I invented another device that creates intense magnetic pulsations onto the brain, which erases migraine headaches. That one is now FDA-approved and is already in use by a few thousand people and growing.
Now I’m working on a technique putting intense magnetic pulsations into the human body, where they turn into electrical pulses. We’ve discovered that electrical pulses on pain neurons prevent them from sending the exact message for pain to the brain, so the body thinks there is no pain.
At the moment, the medical school at the University of Maryland in Baltimore is conducting clinical trials to use this magnetic pulsing technique to relieve lower back pain. We’re also going to use it for relieving the foot pain from diabetic neuropathy and cancer chemotherapy. My goal is to use these intense magnetic pulsations to erase or at least reduce most human pain with no drugs or side effects. I think there’s an opportunity there to have a great company that can help millions of pain patients throughout the world.
It sounds like you’ve worked with licensing technology and starting companies a lot in your decades of work. Is that difficult?
I’ve started 14 companies and my patents have been licensed through Medtronic, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories and Boston Scientific. That names a few of them. So I guess they got around.
But every time, they will not give you any support until you have absolutely proven that it works and you have FDA clearance. So it is a very difficult thing to succeed in the medical device business today. I saw a statistic recently that said that 9 out of 10 startups fail, and that doesn’t surprise me. It’s not an easy field.
Q & A
https://pratt.duke.edu/about/news/medx-reflec...innovation
Pain Relief Device starts at min 22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaRzBSHsmzQ