IIT Bombay (BETiC)

Choosing the right route

• If you have a working medical device prototype and an industry partner in mind, the BETIC-ETA translation programme is the route to check.
• If you are a student or young professional with an idea and a team, look at the MEDHA hackathon and watch for its next edition.

How applications work

• For the translation programme, send a proposal of up to 2 pages, with one-page appendixes.
• Proposals are accepted periodically, so there is no single deadline to plan around.

What reviewers look for

• A clinical need that is established, not assumed.
• Prototyping and testing that are complete to about TRL 3 to 4.
• Patent filing or documented know-how that can be licensed.
• A named industry partner willing to licence the technology.

The Biomedical Engineering & Technology Innovation Centre (BETIC) is based at IIT Bombay in Powai, Mumbai. It works on medical devices, starting from an unmet clinical need raised by a doctor or hospital and moving through prototyping, testing and validation towards a product that an industry partner can take up.

BETIC's own material says its team has gathered over 500 unmet clinical needs from clinical partners and hospitals, and developed 250 proofs-of-concept of different medical devices, over the last 9 years.

How the translation programme works

The BIRAC Early Translation Accelerator, known as BETIC-ETA, was set up at IIT Bombay in March 2020 with support from the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC). It takes a research prototype at about TRL 3 and aims to turn it into a marketable product at about TRL 7, working with an industry partner. It operates out of the BETIC lab and services include clinical need validation, product design, rapid prototyping, pilot production, pre-clinical and clinical validation, intellectual property, regulatory compliance, business planning and funding avenues.

Funding is shared by design. BIRAC provides the majority of support for each project, covering manpower, consumables and travel. The industry partner provides minority support and takes the licence to the technology.

Who can apply

The translation programme is aimed at researchers and inventors who already hold a medical device proof-of-concept or prototype. It is not an intake for an idea alone. A project needs four things: an unmet clinical need that is established, core research and functional prototyping complete at about TRL 3 to 4, intellectual property potential (a patent filed or documented know-how), and an industry partner identified to license the technology.

How to apply

A proposal has a main document of up to 2 pages, with one-page appendixes such as market research, a research summary, an initial design, comparable products, relevant patents and publications. Proposals are accepted periodically and evaluated. An expert committee shortlists and ranks proposals on how feasible the implementation is and how likely it is to be commercialised within one year.

Medical device hackathon and training

BETIC also runs the Medical Device Hackathon (MEDHA) with partner institutes, usually over weekends from May to July. Teams of four with medical, engineering and design backgrounds work on clinical problems and present prototypes to an expert jury. The most recent dated edition on the centre's events page is MEDHA 2023, so registration for that edition has closed.

Who runs it

BETIC is a centre of IIT Bombay. Its team members have founded 15 start-up companies, which the centre reports on its impact page. Most of those companies were incubated at SINE, IIT Bombay, or the Venture Centre in Pune. The centre says innovators working with it can incubate their companies in any business incubator.