Dr. Roger Huckfeldt holds one of the numerous Theraworx personal cleaning products developed through the St. John's Medical Research Institute, of which Huckfeldt is medical director.
St. John's institute leader explains R&D process
Jeremy Elwood
Posted online
Ideas for new medicines and medical devices can come from a variety of sources.
Dr. Roger Huckfeldt, medical director of St. John's Medical Research Institute, says he gets most of the institute's ideas - from a silver fabric that disinfects wounds to a personal cleansing product that offers longer protection from germs than alcohol-based cleansers - from medical professionals on the front lines.
Huckfeldt was the featured guest at Springfield Business Journal's 12 People You Need to Know breakfast Tuesday morning at the Clarion Hotel's Newsroom Café.
The doctor and his staff of 22 full-time employees now have 11 products that Huckfeldt thinks should be available for hospitals to purchase within the next 12 to 18 months.
One new product, which will be available in about six weeks, is a bed for surgery on children suffering from craniosynostosis, a congenital skull deformity. The current system requires a cumbersome positioning process, which has to be performed while the child is under general anesthetic.
"Dr. (Bharat) Shah said, 'Can't we make that better? I have an idea how we can do it,'" Huckfeldt said. "That's typically how our ideas come to us."
The resulting bed cut the average positioning time before surgery from 43 minutes to just two.
Projects like the new surgical bed are part of the reason the institute is involved with the Jordan Valley Innovation Center, which seeks to turn scientific research and ideas into manufacturing and commercialized products that create jobs and keep young talent in the area.
"Missouri State, as well as the other universities in the area, does a great job of training people, but you get scientists coming out that want to do research and development, and they really had to leave - there wasn't a lot of opportunity for them to stay in the region," Huckfeldt said.
The process of creating a new device or drug is not cheap; the creation of a prototype costs between $40,000 and $50,000, while the costs for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration range from $60,000 to $100,000 for medical devices to more than $1.2 million for a new drug.
To help offset some of those costs, Inveno Health was created as a for-profit venture that allows the not-for-profit St. John's institute to develop products. Huckfeldt said he hopes to be able to use proceeds from the sale of current products to pay startup costs of future projects.
Springfield event venue Belamour LLC gained new ownership; The Wok on West Bypass opened; and Hawk Barber & Shop closed on a business purchase that expanded its footprint to Ozark.
