Dec. 1, 2022
David Bigio, Department Head of Biomedical Engineering at Universidad de los Andes
Mr. Bigio is a professor in the biomedical engineering department, responsible for the Senior Capstone Design project. Currently, he is also serving as the department head. He comes to the university after having spent 30 years of professional experience working for large multinationals in different parts of the world, including the development of high technology start-ups in Silicon Valley, commercialization of technology used in large infrastructure projects, and coordinating strategic projects for a multinational consortium. Mr. Bigio clearly understands current challenges and opportunities in the biomedical engineering field. He is very focused on improving the education and skills of graduates in order to provide companies with better employees. He has been working with the Biomedical engineering students during their senior capstone design project to address two important aspects of their education; help them improve on the ‘soft’ skills that future employers expect from them, and also teach them about how to become entrepreneurs to give them employability alternatives and promote a much-needed activity in our country.
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Latin MedTech Leaders podcast, a conversation with MedTech leaders who have succeeded or plan to succeed in Latin America.
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Tune in.
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I heard radio, Pandora, or these are Welcome to the Latin Metech Leaders podcast, a conversations with leaders who have succeeded or plan to succeed in Latin America.
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Today our guest is David B, the departing head of biomedical engineering at University de Los Angeleses, or University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia, the leading private university in Columbia, and one of the top universities in Latin America.
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Hey, David, it's great to have you here today.
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Welcome to the show.
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Good morning, Julio.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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It's a pleasure and it's an honor to be here.
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Awesome, David.
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All right, so let's get started here.
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So let's speak about your journey, uh, David or David, I guess call you David, that Yeah.
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Call
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You.
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Let's go, let's go with David.
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Yeah.
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So, uh, let's talk about your journey.
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How is it that you got to where you are today?
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So, Julio, um, I graduated as a mechanical engineer from the same school where I am now.
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When you see that de los Angeleses in Bogota at the time, uh, biomedical engineering did not exist.
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This is an engineering that, uh, started, uh, becoming a formal program much later.
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But nevertheless, at the time, our professors and directors had a relationship with one of the teaching hospitals in Bogota, at university at Havana.
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It was, uh, hospital San Ignacio, and the idea for some of our professors was to pair engineers with, uh, doctors that were finishing their residents.
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And in my case, I was very fortunate to be put, um, in a, in a project with an orthopedic surgeon, uh, that happens to be Doctor Al, who today is, uh, the medical director of Fund San.
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And we were given the challenge to work on a partial knee replacement on an issue related with reconstruction of the knee.
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And, and that for me was a great, um, thing that happened, Julio, because it, it, it, it really made me aware of the fact that I had, um, an interest and a talent for developing medical devices, for thinking about solutions and so on.
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So that is something that stayed with me for a very long time.
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I wasn't able to put it in practice right away, because when I finished, uh, you know, the hospital there, even though they saw, uh, a person like me useful for talking about problems and trying to solve things they didn't really have in their, um, Human Resources department, an opportunity for a person like me.
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So I went and did some other things, Julio, and, uh, perhaps we can talk about that.
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But eventually, you know, I returned to the university, um, to teach, uh, innovation and entrepreneurship to our biomedical engineers because that is something that I was very passionate about.
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I wanted our engineers to learn about that.
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And the director of the program at the time also saw it as an important thing to teach them.
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So I came back to, to do that.
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And we can talk about in more detail if you want.
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Yeah.
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Let's talk about your experience in Silicon Valley.
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You have over 30 years of experience working, uh, for multinational companies, startups, and that's a fascinating piece of, uh, your story.
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So, uh, can you describe a little bit of, uh,
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Sure.
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So, so before I got there, I, I had, um, an opportunity to work for an oil field services company.
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I worked for Schlumberger for a number of years in the oil field, in the platforms in the North Sea.
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I was also in the jungles of Africa.
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And, um, and I started to become more oriented towards the development.
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And, um, I joined, uh, a research facility at, at, at Schlumberger in Texas and started developing technology.
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And I was, uh, learning about some other things that happened in Schlumberger.
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And one of the divisions that the company had was, um, involved with electronic transactions.
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They were getting into, you know, some parallel business or actually different business from the oil field.
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And electronic transactions was an area where they had patented this.
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They had purchased the patent for the smart card, and they wanted to develop something.
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The thing is, Julio, that they sent me, uh, to, to learn about marketing high technology in Santa Cruz in California.
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And I went there and I learned about how to market high technology, and I became aware of what was happening with the internet and Silicon Valley and the startups and this mentality.
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And then Julio, I said to myself, one day, soon when I am gonna be in control of my own destiny, this is the place where I want to be.
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Because I had visited Palo Alto in California, and I thought, this is paradise.
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I want to be here.
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I wanna have a chance to be here.
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So I went to to to, to Palo Alto after I left Schlumberger.
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And, um, after a while I joined HP Labs.
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And there, it was a beautiful time because the internet was happening, and so many people had so many ideas about what could be added to the internet.
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Some of them were silly, but some of them were powerful.
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But it was all about the internet, and it was all about startups, and it was all about companies coming to pitch, um, to HP about what we could do for them.
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So that was an area where I learned about what it takes to become a startup and the difficult obstacles that some of them face and, you know, pitching and, uh, business plans and these kinds of things.
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So that was something that I wanted to also add to my interest in, in the, the development of medical devices.
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Fascinating story.
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And I, and I think, um, the region on Columbia, specifically Bogota, Los Angeles, is very fortunate to have somebody with your background here, because a very few Latin Americans are exposed to the medical device innovation ecosystem, or the me or the technology innovation ecosystem in general, uh, in the Silicon Valley area.
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And, and to come back to your home country and to, uh, share your knowledge and experiences to with your students, I think that's quite a gift for the region.
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And thank you for that.
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I mean, that's, that's,
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Yeah, I feel also very fortunate myself, Julio, to be able to return, um, to, to my home country and to my school, um, because I am who I am, thanks to them.
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And I am the person I am thanks to growing up in Colombia, thanks to studying at university I, Los Angeles.
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And when I had the opportunity, um, I thought that was a good way to return.
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And I am actually, uh, learning a lot in this new adventure.
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And hopefully, Julio, I'm also being able to contribute.
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So we are all winning here,
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Ext.
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Excellent, excellent.
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I'm so happy to hear that.
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All right, uh, David, let's talk about trains in Latin America and Columbia.
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What's happening that makes Latin America specific Columbia a great place to do research, animal research, human research development, medical technologies and, and commercialization?
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I mean, what do you see?
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Sure.
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So Julio, let's, let's state an obvious thing that we all experience from the recent events of the pandemic, right?
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So it happens to all of us.
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It affects all of us, and we can see the level of preparedness or the lack of it that we all had in different ways.
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So this was an eye opening event for everyone, you know, including the United States that all of us sudden sees that they are not able to provide some of the things because either workers are not going to the factories to work, or most things are coming from Asia.
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And Asia has shut down because of the pandemic.
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And, and, and it's an eye opening event where we see that not producing things locally is a problem.
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And we become aware when something like this happen, and we can go from the simple things, uh, of, of face masks that all come from China to the more complex things of ventilators that people were going to need for the pandemic.
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And we realize we rely on somebody else for everything, for production, for commercialization.
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And I think Julio, that two good things happen as a result.
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First, we become aware of the fact that we need to have a little bit more control of our own destiny.
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And the second thing that happened is that great collaboration spurs to try to solve the needs.
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Um, and so people start working together and we see an effort to go and join forces.
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And that I think is gonna be, uh, very beneficial.
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But we saw some things that were, were alarming Julio in some of our neighboring countries, for example, that, that you run out of oxygen to treat patients and things like that, that should, that should open our eyes, and that should give an opportunity for us to know that this is not the last time something like this is gonna happen, and that we need to be better prepared.
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So yes, it is nice to think about all of the fancy developments of new devices and new technologies and telemedicine, which we are going to talk about, because I think, um, covid open an opportunity for telemedicine or for remote care, but also Julio, to think that we need to have our basis covered, our basic things covered.
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I think it's also very important.
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So a trend that I see is that we are gonna go back to basics, Julio.
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We have not produced vaccines in Colombia for humans for many, many years.
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For whatever reason.
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I think that this is a moment where we should reconsider things like that.
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We may not have the technology and the capability to develop a vaccine from scratch, but we should certainly be able to produce vaccines that, um, companies are gonna license to companies here.
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So these are the kind of things that I would say going into, into thinking about how the pandemic affected, um, access to health.
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Julio.
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I think that a big opportunity has opened up for, for remote care, for remote diagnosis, which even after this pandemic passes, should give us an opportunity to think about the people that live in, in remote areas that should not come to the big cities as the only alternative to receive good care.
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I think that now we have an opportunity to develop technologies and improve technologies that will be able to bring good healthcare, good diagnostic, um, to remote areas.
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I think that this is a good opportunity and this is a trend that is happening.
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Absolutely.
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Mm-hmm.
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?
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Yeah, continue.
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Go on.
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I'm sorry.
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I thought,
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No, and I was just going add onto that, uh, Julio, that, um, that the other thing that is happening is the understanding or the need to understand the treatments that work better compared to others.
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So, so, so I'm thinking about data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence terms that we hear.
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We don't know exactly what they mean, but we know they're, they are good, they are fancy, they are nice to talk about.
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I think that here, for example, we, it took us a while to learn what was working for patients, Julio, and imagine if we could really build a cooperation where not just in one hospital or one local area, we learn about what happens to a patient that comes in with, with a certain condition, but we join all of the information and we analyze this data and we say, look, these, uh, procedure works and it works well, and here is the data that's supported these medicine works, this treatment works, this course of antibiotics work.
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We have a nice opportunity to co cooperate with others for better results towards the patients, which is something that we should all strive for.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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All right, David, uh, let's move on and let's talk about your current work.
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I mean, what interesting technologies your students are working on.
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And I also like to, to speak about the obstacles that they have in the local ecosystems.
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Um, what would you see happening in Columbia that will make Columbia a country of innovation, medical innovation, please.
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Great.
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Who you, so, so let me tell you a little bit about, um, the biomedical engineering department at university los, and is, just to give you a sense for the kinds of things that we do.
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So I'm, I'm currently, you know, very fortunate to, to be, you know, the head of the department, which is an, uh, an opportunity that I welcome knowing that some of the things I can do is, is, is bring more visibility to the great talent that we have.
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So I'm gonna take this opportunity to share with you some of the things we do, um, with the nine professors and the nine research areas that we have.
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Um, just to give you a sense, you know, we, we work in the area of biomechanics, something that is very, uh, top of mind on people when they think about biomedical engineering.
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They think about biomechanics, they think about human movement, they think about prosthetic devices, and that's an area where we work.
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We also work in computer vision.
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We have one of the top 100 scientists in the area in Dr.
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Pablo ar who directs a center for the learning of information, uh, artificial intelligence, um, not only for health application, but for general application.
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But he happens to be our professor.
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And a lot of our students are interested in that.
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We have research in the area of biomaterials and bioprinting.
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So you, you mentioned briefly, um, animal trials and trials using animals, something that we know Julio is becoming very difficult to do.
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So one of the things that we are developing is, uh, we are developing artificial human skin so that we can do trial of, um, cosmetic products and pharmaceuticals on artificial skin that resembles human skin so that we don't have to use animals.
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I think that this is a good potential for companies that are interested in, in, in trialing things related with, with the skin.
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Um, just to continue, um, we do research in nanomaterials, uh, to help us improve drug delivery methods and also to try to understand how some of these, some diseases, like, like the Parkinson, if we can bring the right pharmaceutical product to the right element that is affected, could be better.
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Uh, treatments.
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We have a professor that have been studying and working on the cardiovascular system for a long time.
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So we are developing some devices that are built here for, um, for, for patients, for example, just to give you, that's, to give you an example around that, uh, Julio, for infants that are born with, um, cardiovascular problems, neonatal, uh, that are congenital heart diseases, most of the devices that exist, uh, are made for adults.
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And here we saw that, uh, we could help some doctors at Puntil that had some idea on how to minimally invasive go and address some problems in these patients by modifying some devices and building them specifically for neonatal patients.
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So these are the kinds of things that we are able to do here, um, very efficiently and at a very good cost or very good value, which we hopefully will talk a little bit later.
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We have also worked in ma mathematical modeling, Julio, and it became very important now when we had the pandemic and we wanted to assist our officials to measure the impact of their decisions or the recommendations, you know, mathematical models, support decision making.
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And we had, um, professor, uh, Juan Manuel Cordo, a very good mathematician, and a group of people that were able to help.
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We have, um, another researcher that works on brain signals.
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So he wants to help, um, understand better problems related with sleep, Julio, something that is affecting many, many people for different reasons, but also to be able to gain from, from what we learned, for example, how can you learn things better by sleeping in a certain way or by having some things done to you while you're sleeping or before or, or, or something like that.
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Um, one of our professors is also an expert in genetics, and she's studying behavior.
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So she's studying, you know, how, for example, posttraumatic stress changes, uh, the, the, the genetic makeup of a person and what will happen in the future.
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And finally, um, we work in areas of innovation and entrepreneurship where we are, um, um, giving the students the tools to become entrepreneurs, to solve the local problems, um, to start the small companies to stop a little bit their reliance on, on everything coming from the outside or perhaps, you know, developing something for, for the companies that listen to these kind of podcasts to say, we can give a little help to the students to bring their ideas to complete products.
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So this is, um, quickly an overview of what we do, Julio, which I don't know if it answered the question because I think the question had more to it.
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Well, there's another part of the question that we can address in a, in a moment.
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But, um, to, to kind of, uh, summarize what you're saying and to pinpoint an opportunity or two opportunities that I see here.
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I mean, first of all, it looks like you guys are doing some world class research, and you have some world class, uh, faculty in your department, uh, David, and, uh, the global medical device ecosystem can take advantage of your platform or of your infrastructure and your resources and at a, at a much lower cost than, than, uh, doing the research in other, in developed countries.
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Uh, because we all know that cost in, in, in, in places like Columbia, especially now that I just, I just read the news a couple days ago that the Columbian peso is the most devalued currency in the world right now.
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So it's really a bargain to collaborate and to, um, and to, to buy services from, uh, labs or places, uh, like, like Los Angeles.
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And, um, that's one thing.
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And another thing is the intellectual property that you guys may be generating.
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I don't know how much volume of intellectual property you guys are generating every year, but, um, if there is, uh, something unique, something that you see as a, that has great potential, certainly if you're looking for, uh, funding or a partner that can take the, that inter property to the next level, you know, setting it up a company in the United States and developing the technology in the United States for global markets.
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Not, not necessarily local markets, cuz they're probably too small.
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But, uh, if the, if the intellectual property that you guys are generating has global impact, I'm sure, uh, people in the Silicon Valley, Minnesota and Boston, et cetera, the hops of medical innovation will be interested in, in collaborating with you to commercialize, uh, to be the vehicle for commercialization development and commercialization, uh, of that technology and to bring it to global markets.
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Yeah.
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So, um, yeah, go ahead.
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Let me, let me, let me address the, the first part of, of, of the comment, Julio, about the capabilities, uh, that we have here and, and, and certainly the fact that the cost is gonna be much lower compared to doing it in other countries doesn't necessarily mean that the quality is gonna be inferior to that of, you know, uh, the United States of Europe.
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We have world class hospitals here and doctors, uh, that provide, you know, very good care.
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So to do clinical trials and to bring some of the hospitals here, we, at the university, I Los Angeleses now have, um, uh, a program in, in, in medicine.
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So we are also, uh, teaching, um, uh, a medical doctors at our school, something that is relatively recent, and we work together with our teaching hospital, which is p but we have also relationship with, I would say many hospitals here in the area or any hospital that we need to work with, we can work with, and we can do, um, the support that the clinical trials need here with, with our professors, with our students, undergrad postgraduate students.
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We have good talent here and people are much more interested in solving real problems and working in real needs than in some theoretical aspects.
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You know, we, we will continue doing research and, um, expanding on the basic knowledge, but we rather work on real problems and, and pro and help people that are making real solutions.
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So it is definitely an invitation to look at our country, to look at our school, to look at the resources that we have here, to do clinical trials with us, to help us, because that's another beautiful way to teach our students, to give them tools, Julio, that they don't have to go into other countries to learn how to do things like they are done in the US and in Europe.
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So that will be another win-win situation at very good value, I would say.
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And the fact that the peso is, is, is where it is at the moment compared to the US dollar, it's another advantage.
00:25:19.039 --> 00:25:36.400
And as you know, Julio, because you are a big advocate of this and you have been working the regulatory, uh, uh, department here, the Invi ema, the FDA equivalent here in Colombia is also aware of the fact that they need to improve on their processes.
00:25:36.930 --> 00:25:47.640
So things that used to take very, very long time don't take so long now, things in part to work of people like yourself have done in that area.
00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:52.640
Um, and, and that is also something that is, that is very bene beneficial.
00:25:52.650 --> 00:25:59.319
So that in the area of, um, of the clinical trials and the things that could be done here.
00:26:00.059 --> 00:26:05.319
And, um, and, and then the second part on the development of the intellectual property.
00:26:05.849 --> 00:26:27.849
So one of the things that was not well done before Julio, in my opinion, is that the universities here in Colombia, and I will speak for my own university, did not appreciate the potential that commercializing the intellectual property had.
00:26:28.230 --> 00:26:38.329
But, but one of the steps that you need in order to do that is to create a technology transfer office or, or strengthen a technology transfer office.
00:26:38.618 --> 00:26:50.118
We now have one, um, which is, which is very well equipped to take advantage of the intellectual property that is developed at the university.
00:26:50.119 --> 00:27:11.500
Which I think also if we see the model of universities around the world and universities in the US that have made their commercialization of their intellectual property a very good source of revenue, that is something that we have not utilized here in a Hulu.
00:27:12.569 --> 00:27:28.108
So we patent and we do have professors that, um, patent some, some really good innovations, but we stop there, we feel happy that we have a patent and that we can put it into our statistics.
00:27:28.779 --> 00:27:41.349
I would love to see that we start working with companies that see the value of those patents and help us bring those patents to the real world into commercial products.
00:27:42.190 --> 00:27:52.368
Um, and, and everybody gains, which is also where I think things will work, is when everybody will gain and will benefit.
00:27:52.460 --> 00:27:54.608
We have some good ideas here, Julio.
00:27:55.529 --> 00:28:14.890
Um, I give you, give you an example that, uh, catheter that I was just mentioning for the intervention of neonatal patients that have congenital heart disease was something that was patented and, and it could be a good thing for, um, medical device companies that would like to, to use that.
00:28:15.358 --> 00:28:21.849
I have been working myself on a challenge that was given to me to treat burn patients, Julio.
00:28:22.230 --> 00:28:49.650
And, um, and, and when a patient is burned, the, the, especially with, you know, deep burns, not the superficial burns that are going to heal without an intervention, but the deeper wounds where you are going to need to remove the revitalized tissue and create, um, the, the, the capillary bleeding that is going to promote tissue regeneration.
00:28:50.119 --> 00:28:53.650
That is something that is, it's a procedure called dermal aion.
00:28:53.651 --> 00:29:12.240
And it's done not just here in Colomb Julio, but in many places around the world, even in the first world countries, it's done with sandpaper sand, sand paper, sand paper, because it's very effective or with mechanical devices that are difficult to control and don't provide a very good result for the patient.
00:29:12.569 --> 00:29:20.240
So we were given this challenge by the wound, uh, care unit here at Wound San TAFE to come up with an alternative.
00:29:21.119 --> 00:29:31.099
And we developed a device that when you see it looks like a very, very simple device, and people that see, say, well, you know, anyone could have come with that.
00:29:31.240 --> 00:29:38.180
And, and that I think is what is great about good innovations and good inventions, is that they become very obvious after you see them.
00:29:38.390 --> 00:29:45.799
So we developed a device, Julio, that converts the hand of the surgeon into a medical device.
00:29:46.289 --> 00:29:54.880
We have added the abrasive surface directly onto the glove that the surgeon uses to remove theit eye skin.
00:29:55.490 --> 00:29:56.920
We have filed for a patent.
00:29:57.420 --> 00:30:12.599
And hopefully it's one of those ideas that people that commercialize medical devices would say, we would like to bring that to the world and to the plastic surgeons that are working on derma elaboration for burn patients or other patients.
00:30:12.769 --> 00:30:22.799
So we do have some good things here, Julio, that hopefully, um, others are gonna be interested and together we can develop it.
00:30:22.799 --> 00:30:23.440
Yeah, yeah.
00:30:23.441 --> 00:30:29.039
Animal trials, you guys have a great animal facility in at the university.
00:30:30.319 --> 00:30:34.400
Uh, and that's something that nobody has, uh, looked at yet.
00:30:34.549 --> 00:30:45.000
I mean, companies pay like$50,000 for one animal in the Silicon Valley area, whereas in Columbia is at a fraction of the cost with great talent.
00:30:45.599 --> 00:31:31.529
We have a research lab, yes, we have a research lab, uh, with, um, with, we are, we are currently in, in, in a, in a trial, um, Julio, where we are, uh, looking at, at alternatives to, to graft for, um, for cardiovascular disease that are from animal sources that have been, um, uh, properly treated, you know, animal cells have been removed and the, the, the grafts have been prepared in such a way that hopefully could be an alternative for, for humans.
00:31:31.589 --> 00:31:40.569
And we are at the moment starting and at, at trial, uh, to validate some of the improvements that we have done on those grafts.
00:31:40.779 --> 00:31:42.369
So yes, you are right.
00:31:42.410 --> 00:31:50.410
There is a very good, um, facility there, even though it's a lot tougher to do animal experimentation.
00:31:50.720 --> 00:32:08.450
It's still possible here with all the, the ethical considerations with ethical committees on the side of the hospital and the university doctors that are extremely proficient in this area, veterinary areas that are involved also in the care of these animals.
00:32:09.190 --> 00:32:28.329
And a lot of improvements have been, uh, since the time that I work with my orthopedic doctor friend, where we, where we used animals to validate our partially replacement, um, in ethical ways because, you know, we all care for the animals.
00:32:28.539 --> 00:32:37.160
So I know that people feel bad when we use animals, but if we do it, if we do it in the right way, we will benefit the society.
00:32:37.660 --> 00:32:41.440
And it's not that that we can do it here because nobody cares.
00:32:41.529 --> 00:32:44.200
No, we care as much as everyone else.
00:32:45.319 --> 00:32:47.079
Um, and we can do it the right way.
00:32:47.170 --> 00:32:53.039
So don't, don't think that we're gonna cut the corners or be cruel to the animals, because we want
00:32:53.759 --> 00:32:53.759
Yeah.
00:32:54.039 --> 00:32:54.279
Good to know.
00:32:54.519 --> 00:32:54.519
Yeah.
00:32:54.520 --> 00:32:58.759
My experience with the human trials in Columbia has been very good.
00:32:58.760 --> 00:33:09.880
I mean, strict guidelines, ethical approvals, regulatory, national regulatory approvals of the Ministry of Health, and, and, and every, I mean, everything has been done, uh, by the book.
00:33:10.019 --> 00:33:25.799
And I'm sure animal trials can also be done by the book, uh, because that's what companies want at the end, because we wanna show your investors and your, uh, partners, your strategics, uh, that you get proper, uh, animal trials at top facilities.
00:33:26.490 --> 00:33:34.519
So, and the other opportunity is, um, licensing of, uh, ip, uh, that you guys are generating.
00:33:34.520 --> 00:33:49.640
I mean, that's a, that's such a, an overlooked, uh, possibility that, uh, I mean the, the, the innovations that you're describing are something that nobody, I'm sure nobody thinks that they're coming from a country like Columbia.
00:33:50.059 --> 00:33:51.359
But, uh, in
00:33:51.359 --> 00:33:53.440
That sense, Julio, we welcome the help.
00:33:54.079 --> 00:33:54.079
Yeah.
00:33:54.440 --> 00:34:16.400
Because when we go out here into our local environment to look for support, to look for financial support, to look for investment, to, to, to, to talk to a venture capital here about one of these, um, investments in, in, in a medical device or a procedure or something where you, you have very uncertain results.
00:34:16.840 --> 00:34:29.730
And, and a in addition to that, it takes a long time, as you will know, some of them say, my money is safer on a, on a building, on a brick building, because I can see where my money goes.
00:34:30.320 --> 00:34:33.570
I, I know that at the end it is going to be sold.
00:34:33.570 --> 00:34:36.809
I may not make as much money, but my money is going to be saved.
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