Where Innovation and Technology Change the World
Let’s talk for a moment about innovation and technology. Innovation is the idea of renewing something or changing something. Technology in its purest sense is the use of tools and techniques to solve problems or create something specific. These two words are linked. You can’t have success with only one. Yes, you can have an innovative idea, for instance a car that goes two hundred miles on a tank of gas. But without technology this innovative idea can never happen. And the tools you need to build such a wonder car need innovative inspiration to be built.
The balanced concept of innovation and technology working together is RED THINKING and one of today’s most exciting inventors, Dean Kamen is Red Hot.
Kamen, hails from the Granite State, New Hampshire and makes his home there today. Though he’s a celebrated and wealthy genius and entrepreneur, we give extra Red Points to his desire to stay close to his roots and perhaps the source of his inspiration.
Kamen is best known as the inventor of the Segway PT, the popular upright personal transportation vehicle. But long before the Segway came the first wearable infusion pump, a medical device that changed how patients received chemotherapy.
Kamen began his formal studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts where as an undergraduate he invented the infusion pump. In 1976, he founded AutoSyringe, Inc., to manufacture and market the pumps. The company was then sold to Baxter Healthcare corporation.
With the proceeds from AutoSyringe and a mind spinning with ideas he started his next company DEKA Research and Development. DEKA has been responsible for some of the most innovative medical devices now is use including:
• HomeChoice™ peritoneal dialysis system for Baxter International Inc. This invention allows patients to be dialyzed at home
• ThinPrep® Pap Test
• UVAR™ XTS™ System, an extracorporeal photophereisis device for treatment of T-Cell lymphoma
• An advanced prosthetic arm in development for DARPA
• The Hydroflex™ surgical irrigation pump for C.R. Bard
• The Crown™ stent, an improvement to the original Palmaz-Schatz stent, for Johnson & Johnson
• iBOT™ mobility device
• The Segway® Human Transporter
Kamen has also been awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2000 by then President Clinton. He received the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002. In 2005, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He also holds 440 U.S. and Foreign Patents.
FIRST
But, let’s get back to the ideas of innovation and technology and what we see as Kamen’s Red Core. In 1989, Kamen founded FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), “an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology.” This organization will help over a 250,000 students ages 6 to 18, in more than 50 countries. “High-school-aged participants are eligible to apply for more than $14 million in scholarships from leading colleges, universities, and corporations.” In Kamen’s own words, “You have teenagers thinking they’re going to make millions as NBA stars when that’s not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is.”
We believe that a generation of Red Thinkers are now on their way to creating the next innovative solutions to solve our world’s most pressing problems. FIRST’s celebration of science and technology combined with Kamen’s creativity and leadership is a very RED road to follow.
