Rethinking Life Sciences: an Interview with Benjamin Vespone, Principal Hardware Systems Engineer at G&H | ITL US

G&H (LON:GHH) is moving into its next phase of life science manufacturing by opening its Innovation Hub for Life Sciences in Rochester, New York, United States. Behind this new venture into medtech manufacturability sits a team of advanced technology experts who are the masterminds taking medical equipment ideas and turning them into full-scale, life-enhancing solutions.

Q: Ben, how did you start your career in the life sciences sector? What makes it special for you?

BV: My university degree in biomedical engineering helped expose me to the intersection of biology and technology. Pivotal hands-on experiences during labs, robotics clubs, and course projects further engendered a passion for creating devices that can sense the world and act on it, depending on what we want to achieve.

I was fortunate enough to start my career at a large medical device OEM as an intern for 4 consecutive summers, and later as a contractor supporting their ambulatory infusion pumps. During this time, I had contact with several different departments, including R&D, test engineering, and software QA. Crucially, exposure to a fast-paced manufacturing environment helped drive home the real-world impact of these devices, and the huge effort it takes to keep the wheels turning. To this day, I still feel a measure of pride when I see those devices in clinical settings, knowing I played a small part in the overall ecosystem.

Q: So, you have been involved with the development of the Innovation Hub for Life Sciences since day 1. How was it to be part of this growth process, now that we are so close to officially inaugurating the space?

BV: It has been a long road to get us to this grand opening, and I think we are all excited to be marking ourselves as officially “open for business”. The exposure and growth inherent in a whirlwind expansion endeavor has been very valuable for my career, and “wearing many hats” has become the order of the day. Despite this ceremonial grand opening, we’ve already been working on exciting R&D projects in tight collaboration with our colleagues at the G&H | ITL facility in the United Kingdom.

One recent project centered around a novel imaging application for surgical monitoring in collaboration with a US medtech startup. The goal of this technology is to reduce injuries associated with surgical removal of the thyroid through detection of nerve tissue. Around this gland, we have a lot of blood vessels and nerves that run through that area. For a surgeon, visualizing these nerves under normal white light is an extremely difficult task because they're almost translucent. These nerves are also covered in fatty tissue, so the whole procedure of getting around them is very delicate and complicated. The core scientific approach of this new technology leverages the unique response of biological tissue to different wavelengths of light and polarization states. This enables differentiation of nerve, fat, and blood vessels, creating a high contrast image to guide the surgeon. This approach promises to eliminate the high false positive rate and adverse patient side effects associated with the existing standards of care.

The G&H | ITL team leveraged our experts across sites in engineering and design to establish a commercial form factor and device architecture – something that would be viable outside an academic lab. Additionally, we utilized in-house prototyping capabilities and rapid manufacturing from G&H | GS Optics to produce custom optics for the integrated proof of concept prototype.

Q: Could you expand on that idea? What makes this G&H Innovation Hub stand out from other similar entities?

BV: I am optimistic about the value that G&H | ITL in the US can provide to customers and to the Rochester community. To my knowledge, there is no other company in the Western New York area that offers this kind of full-service engineering design and commercialization manufacturing specifically for medical devices. Even beyond New York state, there are few companies that provide both multidisciplinary R&D, design transfer, and full-service production, while allowing customers to retain their own IP. Streamlining these capabilities into a single offering is compelling. That offering, combined with the expertise coming out of the University of Rochester Medical Center, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and startup incubators like NextCorps, we quickly realize we are sitting on very fertile ground for synergistic opportunities.

What we have discovered at G&H – and a core value we bring to the table – is the understanding that the commercialization step of the medtech ecosystem is often just as important as the original innovation. In my experience, 9 out of 10 early-stage medical device programs fail to ever impact a patient due to the various constraints that the industry imposes and the difficulty of achieving market clearance. The combination of G&H | ITL‘s 45+ years of medical device expertise and our new US location will provide an immediately positive impact to the industry via commercialization support. Our decades of medtech manufacturing experience enable us to apply best design practices to ensure that these products are world-class and increase the chance that they will improve patient outcomes.