This morning faculty member, inventor, all around amazing hustling for her big ideas, Melissa Bailey, OD, PhD in the College of Optometry presented her IXM Eye Exam application in an iPad at the College of Medicine’s Big Idea’s for Health event.
Melissa has been one of our stellar faculty members working on the commercialization of one of her inventions, essentially doing eye exams on an iPad. Her story for me started many many months ago. Disclosed to our office as a mathematical algorithm to do specific types of eye phoria test measurements easier, our office engaged, I went out to meet her, we rambled on ideas and talked about implementation examples.
Lets see we need a camera, a computer, and a light ok… so… ummm what about an iPad? Lets try it. Melissa had already been experimenting but we needed more. Convert the code, try some examples, wow that works, validate the science a bit more. Hey we’re on to something. Add a dash of ok what is this business, even better! Next up the narrative, gotta work on the narrative. Then its pitch time. We’ve done dozens of pitches. The more we tell the story the more people see the potential. This morning’s debut for her at Big Ideas on campus, was another resounding wow from audience members along with tons of questions, all of which is good.
After hear of her excited “I won!!” this morning, which means she moves on to a final round of pitches and a potential to win 10k. I thought of the many steps we had to take to get to where we are today. And every tech idea has to do this. It all starts with a conversation, and then a ramble, a brainstorm of what could be. Sure we get into the dance of patents and code and concept and validation etc, but vision is key, (no pun intended!) for realizing the big idea.
Melissa is hopping her way down and soon her idea will go to full execution and a business will be formed and will take her hopes and dreams to market. Good times!