Workshop Co-chairs: Paul Iaizzo and William Durfee, University of Minnesota
This fast-paced workshop takes you through the process of early-stage innovation for medical devices. Through lectures from experts, hands-on design activities, and networking you will learn the steps needed to develop a new medical device including understanding and refining needs, creating and testing prototypes, regulatory and reimbursement, and what investors and company managers look for when you pitch your idea.
Program Details
2026 Agenda
Workshop Welcome and Networking (8:00 am)
Paul Iaizzo & Will Durfee, University of Minnesota
Trends in Device Development (8:30 am)
Will Durfee, University of Minnesota
Documenting Your Innovation Process (9:05 am)
Paul Iaizzo, University of Minnesota
Ethnography and Design Process (9:25 am)
Danny Gelfman, Medtronic
Networking Break (10:00 am)
Testing Your Idea (10:20 am)
Paul Iaizzo, University of Minnesota
Innovation Exercise #1 (10:55 am)
Lunch & Networking Break (11:45 am)
Patents (12:15 pm)
Will Durfee, University of Minnesota
Reimbursement (12:50 pm)
Speaker to be announced
Early Stage Prototyping (1:25 pm)
Carlye Lauff, University of Minnesota (invited)
Networking Break (2:00 pm)
Innovation Exercise #2 (2:20 pm)
Corporate View of Medtech (3:50 pm)
Tim Laske, Medtronic (invited)
Expert Panel (4:20 pm)
Adjourn (5:00 pm)
William Durfee, PhD
Professor and Director of Design Education
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Minnesota (retired)
Former Director, Bakken Medical Devices Center.
His research and professional interests include the design of medical devices, rehabilitation engineering, muscle physiology, wearable robots, product design and design education. Dr. Durfee is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Editor-in-Chief of the ASME Journal of Medical Devices and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at the University of Minnesota.
Danny Gelfman, BSID
Sr. Distinguished Designer
Innovation Lab
Medtronic
Danny directs innovation activities corporate wide, working with teams to create clear product, system and service solutions that address identified user needs. Before Medtronic he was an industrial designer with redgroup. He received his BSID in Industrial Design from the University of Cincinnati.
Paul Iaizzo, PhD, FHRS
Professor
Departments of Surgery
Integrative Biology & Physiology
Carlson School of Management
University of Minnesota
Paul also serves on the graduate faculties in Biomedical Engineering, Neuroscience, Integrative Biology & Physiology, Biological Science, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and Mechanical Engineering. He is the Director of the Malignant Hyperthermia Diagnostic Center and Medtronic Professor of Visible Heart® Research. Additionally, he is the Associate Director and Medtronic Chair of the Institute for Engineering in Medicine, also at the University of Minnesota. He earned both MS and PhD degrees (Focus: Physiology/Neurophysiology) from the University of Minnesota. His main research focus is translational systems physiology, where his research group does a broad range of studies. The Visible Heart® Laboratories are well known for their multimodal imaging techniques of functional cardiac anatomies and device testing within large mammalian hearts, including human: see the Atlas of Human Cardiac Anatomy. Other research areas include: cardiac pacing and ablation, muscle pathophysiology and biophysical properties, thermoregulation, black bear hibernation, 3D computational modeling and printing and educational uses of virtual reality. In 2002, he was acknowledged as a “Distinguished University Teaching Professor”. Since 1990, he has trained over 200 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and medical students in his laboratories. Dr. Iaizzo, has authored more than 280 original articles, over 100 book chapters, edited 5 books, and is on numerous patents related to medical devices. In 2012, he was named to College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) for "outstanding contributions to research and education in translational systems physiology and cardiovascular engineering". In 2015 he was named a Fellow of the Heart Rhythm Society and in 2016 was made a Senior Fellow of IEEE.
Tim Laske, PhD
Vice President
Research & Development
Medtronic
Adjunct Assistant Professor
University of Minnesota
Dr. Tim Laske is currently the Vice President of Research & Development for the Cardiac Ablation Solutions Business at Medtronic. He is a Medtronic Bakken Fellow and Technical Fellow and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. His previous roles at Medtronic include VP of Research and Business Development for AF Solutions, Senior Product Development Director for Heart Valves, Senior Program Director for Transcatheter Heart Valves, Technology Director for Cardiac Rhythm Therapy Delivery, and various technology management and design engineering positions. Prior to his 31-year tenure at Medtronic, he worked as a Design Engineer at Ford Motor Company in Crash Safety and Advanced Vehicle Systems Engineering. He has a B.S. degree in both Biological Sciences and Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University. He received his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Minnesota where he serves as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery. His doctoral research was centered on the use of isolated working hearts in the design of medical devices and in parallel co-founded the Visible Heart® Laboratories. In addition to medical device design and cardiac physiology, his research interests include the study of hibernation physiology in wild black bear and brown bear populations and conservation of endangered species. He has more than 95 U.S. patents and numerous publications in the fields of Biomedical Engineering and Wildlife Biology/Ecology.
Carlye Lauff, PhD
McKnight Land-Grant Professor
Product Design
University of Minnesota
Dr. Carlye Lauff is an Assistant Professor of Product Design at the University of Minnesota. She earned her PhD from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow studying the role of prototypes in companies. Carlye’s research is in the field of Design Theory and Methodology, and she studies how designers engage in the product development process and then improves tools and methods to support them. Carlye works at the intersection of multiple disciplines including engineering, product design, education, management science, and the social sciences. She often draws on qualitative and mixed methods research in her work and collaborates across diverse disciplines. Dr. Lauff has worked with more than 25 global companies, ranging in industries from medical devices to consumer electronics to transportation systems to educational toys to footwear/apparel.