Eskew+Dumez+Ripple ArchitectsRunning from patient to patient while fielding calls from reporters, investors, biotech CEOs, and medical engineers, William Kethman isn’t your typical medical student. The calls are coming because of his second job: moonlighting as a medical device and biotech inventor in the thick of New Orleans’s burgeoning biotechnology economy.
With a jumpstart from Tulane University’s bioengineering innovation course, which teaches students how to shape their ideas into medical devices that can make a difference, Kethman and his partners have turned their undergraduate school project—an improved umbilical clamp they call the SafeSnip—into a brand new biotech medical devices company, known as NOvate Medical Technologies.
But Kethman could not have done it alone, he says. “My experience was in engineering and medicine, so I had little experience with the business side of it.” He credits their success to the New Orleans BioInnovation Center (NOBIC), a state-funded, nonprofit organization that helps local biotech start-ups by providing them with lab facilities as well as business training and legal aid. “We were sort of walking in circles,” says Kethman. ...
