Focus Feature: Eureka!

Passersby wouldn’t know from the gray stucco exterior, but inside the unmarked building on Springfield’s southwest side Dr. Roger Huckfeldt is inventing history.

The owner of Palm Medical Solutions LLC, along with wife and co-owner Jennifer, is a former Mercy trauma and burn surgeon with more than 20 years of active clinical practice and project development under his belt.

Now, his product development and testing consulation company is preparing to send his latest invention to market – the Tether Tug.

Originally invented by his son, Adam, out of spare parts in the garage to tame the insatiable play of his three-legged rescue dog, Lizze, the dog toy consists of a rope on a flexible fiberglass stick, anchored in the ground. Capable of being bent more than 90 degrees, the toy allows dogs to tug to their delight without snapping or wearing out their owner’s arm.

The Tether Tug caught the eye of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) officials and the father-son duo made it to the second round of the Bentonville, Ark.-based company’s second-annual Get on the Shelf competition. While the toy didn’t find Wal-Mart’s shelves, the company recently began a limited online launch at TetherTug.com for $50 and hopes to have the Tether Tug in local brick and mortar stores by December.

Roger Huckfeldt admits the dog toy is outside his typical realm of expertise. “Invention is a unique creature, you never know where an idea will come from,” he says.

While Palm Medical – named for the faux palm tree Huckfeldt was sitting under at a burn conference when first discussing the company’s creation – has only officially been in business since May 2012, Huckfeldt has been inventing medical solutions his entire career, first at the University of Missouri-Columbia Medical Center, then for Mercy Research and Development in Springfield.

“As the director of a Level I trauma center, I had to do research each year to maintain that status,” he says. “I’ve always had a lab, and I’ve always leaned heavily toward product development. It just made sense to do more of what I love.”

During his career, Huckfeldt has been involved in the development of an alcohol-free hand sanitizer, infection prevention products, burn and wound care dressingss, and pet skin health products.

“I’ve worked with Roger since he was at Mercy and we have done some good science together,” says Paul Durham, a Missouri State University cell biology professor and director of the Center for Biomedical and Life Sciences at the Jordan Valley Innovation Center. “When Roger needs more space, he works in our lab. We do basic science research and testing on formulations for him.”

Durham says the CBLS lab and Palm operate on a memo of understanding in which Huckfeldt retains all intellectual property and patent rights from the lab work.

“For us, it’s all about the learning,” Durham says. “These are usually simple tests I can have students do and they get that real-world experience. This way, I’m not making up something for them to test, they get that experience and Roger gets the results he needs.”

Durham says the CBLS lab only seeks to recoup minimal costs for test materials and graduate student pay, noting tests run in the low thousands of dollars depending on the procedure performed.

Huckfeldt says lab costs are all part of doing business.

“Development on the Tether Tug is just north of $100,000 so far,” he says. “There really is no average when it comes to research and development. It just depends on how many hoops you have to jump through. Projects can range from $50,000 to multimillions.”

Patent pending
Twelve prototypes later, Huckfeldt says the Tether Tug is 90 percent complete and will be ready to ship as soon as all the “nuts and bolts are in place,” including the new product’s patent.

“We filed a provisional patent on the Tether Tug, which protects the invention for 365 days,” he says, adding filing costs are typically less than $1,000. “It can take two to three years before an actual patent is approved.”

Huckfeldt says Palm Medical typically works in conjunction with other companies, such as New Jersey-based Ansell Healthcare, to develop products and utilizes their in-house counsel when available.

“We are listed as inventors and we co-hold licenses on all products, but that takes a lot to maintain,” he says. “Having in-house counsel available to monitor the product development and keep up with the patent stages is valuable.”

Huckfeldt has worked with Ansell for more than two years to develop a burn glove in the company’s Gammex brand line of surgical gloves. The Gammex Silver Barrier Glove is 99 percent coated in silver, allowing doctors to cover burn wounds to prevent infection. Designed for easy wound care, each finger can be accessed separately and the silver glove is accompanied by a fast-drying, gauze-type covering glove Huckfeldt says took 23 fabric mixtures to perfect.

“Roger has the clinical background to understand the gaps, understand how the glove will be used and how it can be improved,” says Kristin King, director of active infection protection for Ansell Healthcare’s medical global business unit. “The biggest strength between our two companies is synergy. Roger’s background in burn gives him the ability to educate and bring others up to speed on the gloves’ needs.

“Ansell has done surgical gloves, so we know gloves. We wanted to branch out into infection protection and the group at Palm Medical is making that happen.”

While a patent was filed on the silver barrier glove a year ago, Huckfeldt says the glove must undergo extensive Food and Drug Administration testing and won’t receive final results for another year or two.

Product placement
Utilizing an in-house staff of three for all sales and communications, Huckfeldt contracts out most other work to local companies such as Springfield-based Revel Advertising to produce trade show materials for Ansell and Nixa-based Austin Metal Crafters LLC, which manufactured the metal ground stake for the Tether Tug.

“You can build the best product in the world, but if it just sits on the shelf, it’s not good to anyone,” Huckfeldt says. “Those people are arguably more important than the developers.”

Huckfeldt says Palm Medical offers three basic services: purely acting as a consultant, as is the case with Ansell; a joint venture and development agreement, where Palm takes on part of the cost and responsibility of product development and shares in the profits, such as a removable leg cast for diabetics developed with Athens, Ga.-based sportswear protection company EvoShield; and self-launching products developed completely in-house, such as the Tether Tug.

“Many clients, such as Ansell, prefer to have us do things like their print work and video production because it’s immensely cheaper here than on the East Coast,” Huckfeldt. says. “We try to keep everything as local as possible. I know there are good people around here, so when I need something done, I look in my backyard first.”

Huckfeldt says the Ansell glove, Tether Tug and the EvoShield cast should all hit the market in early 2014.

“It’s going to be a busy few months around here, but we like that,” he says.[[In-content Ad]]