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Technology transfer works for you.

Article Excerpt
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Federally funded research is taking place throughout the United States, and some part of it might be just the piece you need to complete an innovation puzzle. The technology transfer process allows t private companies to apply fundamental research to their products. But developing products this way is a big financial commitment.

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Running a multi-billion-dollar organization charged with sending spacecraft into the great unknown is a daunting challenge. But this is the day-to-day reality at NASA. One major challenge is understanding how pressure from airflow over the wings and airfoils of spacecraft traveling very fast in unforgiving environments affects performance. This is why NASAs Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., needed an effective tool capable of reflecting pressure over an entire system rather than from just specific points containing embedded sensors. Like many similar government projects, NASA believed that the resulting technology also had potential benefits in the marketplace, so NASA sought a U.S. private-sector partner to create commercial applications of its system.

On the other side of the country, Dr. Don Baker in Camus, Wash., was concerned about the very down-to-earth problem of monitoring pregnant women who resided in rural areas many hours away from their doctors. At the same time, some women in inner cities were forced to ride several buses to reach their doctor. In either case, women with high-risk pregnancies didn't have many options when they needed immediate help.

Twenty-five years earlier in medical school, Baker witnessed something that changed his life. A woman hooked to a fetal heart monitor suddenly showed a dangerously irregular heartbeat for her baby. The unborn child was sitting on the umbilical cord and choking itself. Because the mother and unborn child were in a traditional hospital, a monitor detected the problem. A nurse immediately rushed to turn the woman on her side and relieve pressure on the baby Baker never forgot the incident. He remained haunted by the problem of providing similar help for women not fortunate enough to have a medical team physically there when problems occurred.

Baker envisioned a portable fetal heart monitor that a woman could use by herself. The data would be transmitted automatically to her doctor...