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Accelerating time from medical device design transfer to production

Nick Ciccarelli is the president of Neuma, LLC a medical device engineering company based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. With a primary focus on drug delivery devices, Neuma is dedicated to helping pharmaceutical and medical technology companies accelerate the transition from design to production. The company’s Design for Production (DFP) services allow clients to address costs and risks related to testability, manufacturability, and assembly early on a product’s lifecycle.

EDWIN WARFIELD: What sets Neuma apart in the medical device engineering field?

NICK CICCARELLI: Our immediate goal is to enable medical device technologies, but I think what sets us apart is our sense of urgency and our efficiency in moving through some of the hurdles of the product development lifecycle. I’ve worked in small businesses since graduating college, and small businesses need to get their product out in order to survive. Larger businesses don’t necessarily see that urgency or that need because they already have a revenue stream. But for independent entrepreneurs or physicians running small companies or inventors who are trying to get their technology to the next level, funding is obviously a daily problem. We’re very sensitive to that ourselves in our own business, but we understand that a sense of urgency and a philosophy of efficiency to get to the next step is imperative because, again, IP is worthless unless it’s out there helping the community, helping the population at large, and it’s in patients and physicians’ hands. That’s what our drive is, that’s where our focus is, and that’s what we’ll be dedicated to.

Q. What are some key milestones you’ve gone through?

A. I would say key milestones have been broadening our network and meeting new contacts in the industry. We had a strong network to begin with just because of where we came from, but realistically we knew people and pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies. As engineers, they were resources for us to develop our designs or our products. Now, as a business owner, We're reaching out to those companies to say, “hey, we don’t work for one specific company anymore, we can work for you and really help progress your ideas and your product portfolio.” Things turned around for us in the sense that from a business development perspective, we’re now reaching out and creating relationships and creating value for our customers and people who we used to work with but in a much more lateral basis. We’re now actually working with and for them to help progress their ideas.

Q. What specialties and experiences does your team bring to the table?

A. Two partners, Alexis [Dechelette] and Shaun [Devitt], who formed the company with me—we were the three technical leads on a project and we all complemented one another in terms of the pieces of the project we worked on. It was natural that we, as the technical leads, were the three that kind of worked and communicated the most closely at that time. I don’t think we ever knew as deeply as we do now what each other’s skill sets are—strengths, weaknesses, et cetera—but I think the great thing is what we’ve learned is that we all complement one another well as far as what we can do and how we push each other.

As part of one of our strategic initiatives for 2019, we’ve been reaching out to and working with incubators at universities as well as private incubators to determine if they need help on the product development side to push their products forward. That can come in a number of forms. Again, some people may have expertise on the front end development side or on the manufacturing side, or generating IP, and so we think that we can plug in a number of different areas. But ultimately, that comes on a case-by-case basis and we realize that every organization is different.

In terms of our employee base and including the owners we are really interested in STEM amongst local schools, high schools, elementary schools. One of our colleagues is very involved in the first robotics program, which is to get younger kids involved in engineering and robotics. Kids generally gravitate towards that, but it’s a little intimidating or scary, and maybe their parents or their siblings aren’t as interested in it. But having access to it and having your friends or other children around, I think, make it a much more comfortable environment. So, having mentors or engineers who are in the industry help out there is invaluable, because you need to nurture that environment so that people continue to be interested in it.

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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