Brian Fahey walked into Stanford University Hospital looking for problems. With nearly full access to the hospital’s departments and operating rooms, Fahey’s search seemed unbounded. During this time, he observed a number of patients on ventilators, some of whom succumbed to the potentially lethal problem of developing pneumonia—from the ventilator itself. The problem wasn’t unique to Stanford University Hospital, affecting roughly 60,000 people a year in the United States, with more than half a million patients at risk—a problem that can cost a hospital more than $40,000 per patient. A biomedical engineer by training, Fahey found this problem “particularly compelling,” he says. “People that are on the ventilator are, by definition, critically ill and fighting for their lives, and we have just made them sicker.”
During his 6-week-long stint at the hospital, through the Stanford Biodesign’s entrepreneur training program, Fahey and four of his classmates found about 350 problems, or ...
