The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Justin Bushko, MedTechMan, A Source for Medical Technology Innovation

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

Justin Bushko, MedTechMan, A Source for Medical Technology Innovation Concise-engineering.com Here are some key points from the podcast transcript: Justin Bushko is the founder of MedTechMan.com and Concise Engineering, companies that specialize in medical technology innovation. They help people with ideas for medical devices take them from concept to prototype and through regulatory approvals to get the product to market. Bushko has been in the medtech industry for over 20 years. As a kid, he liked taking things apart to see how they worked, which led to his interest in engineering and problem-solving. The medtech market is currently around $500 billion but expected to grow to $800 billion by 2030, so there is a lot of demand for innovation. Concise Engineering provides services including industrial design, mechanical and electrical engineering, software development, regulatory compliance, and quality systems. Some examples of devices they have worked on: surgical handpieces, wound therapy systems, dental appliances, arthroscopy tools, defibrillators, drug delivery systems for cancer treatment. Major recent trends are advances in robotics and AI for surgery and treatment. AI could significantly impact healthcare in the future. Bushko stays up to date by attending conferences, networking, and constantly talking to people in the industry about the latest medtech innovations. He enjoys collaborating with clients to quickly solve problems and get from initial idea to functional prototype. Bushko welcomes conversations with anyone interested in medtech at any stage of the process to see how he can help add value. In summary, Justin Bushko and his firm Concise Engineering aim to push the boundaries of medical technology and make the process smoother for innovators to develop breakthrough healthcare solutions. Biography With a passion for pushing the boundaries of healthcare solutions, Justin and his team are dedicated to sharing their expertise and insights. From breakthrough medical devices to cutting-edge engineering techniques, we delve into the most critical topics shaping the future of healthcare. Our mission is to inspire and educate, fostering a community of like-minded individuals who share a common goal: to drive innovation and improve lives through transformative MedTech advancements.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Never gets old, the opera singer. We hired her two weeks weeks ago and i think she's doing a great job write us and tell us if you don't like the opera singer and you want me to go back to singing it

but i think she's wonderful because i don't have to sing it after 15 years uh ladies and gentlemen welcome to the big show we certainly appreciate having you guys come by and be a part of our lives because the chris faust show is a giant family that loves you, but doesn't judge you. Remember that this holiday season, when you're at the Thanksgiving table going, why am I related to these people? You know what the great thing about the Chris Foss show too is when we have our family reunions, uh, three to four times a weekday, 15 to 20 times a week of episodes we're putting out, you don't have to hang out with the other people in the family. You can just sit in your car and enjoy spending time with moi and the most amazing guests we have on the show for 15 years.

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As long as they keep propping me up in the chair and paying me $5 to show up every day, I'm going to keep doing the show because I love it. And you know what? You learn so much because when you learn from all the wonderful people on the Chris Foss show, you get what they call the Chris Foss show glow. And it's like this combination glow of sexiness and exuding just this knowledge. When you're smarter, you're sexier. It's really true.

Trust me, you can Google it because you should trust everything on the Internet as well. But we bring on only people you can trust and the most wonderful guests. And today we have one as well. And it's going to be a fun show, too, because I love his name and title. And if you watch the YouTube video, he has a most epic beard, as it's stated in science. Justin Bushko joins us on the show today. He is known as the med tech man. And for those of you who are hippies in California, it's not what you think. And he is a source for medical technology innovation. So we'll get into that and what it's about. And we're going to learn some stuff today about the meds. He has a passion for pushing

the boundaries of healthcare solutions, and him and his team are dedicated to sharing their expertise and insights. From breakthrough medical devices to cutting-edge engineering techniques, they delve into the most critical topics that shape the future of healthcare. This is important because my whole body's breaking down as it goes. I need more healthcare and more. I need more innovation. Like, I need innovation to keep me from even going to the doctor.

That's what I need. So take care of your health, people. His mission is to inspire and educate and foster a community of like-minded individuals who create a common goal to drive innovation and improve lives through transformative medtech advancements. Welcome to the show, Justin. How are you? Awesome, Chris. Glad to be here.

Thank you for the awesome intro, man. I love it. There you go. That's what we've done. We've done a few of these. And your beard is welcome as well. I think with a beard like yours, you coexist as two different people. The separate intro is great as well that's good i forget i forget the uh the joke about uh oh god who was it it was a it was a joke

about uh it was a famous marionette uh entertainer and he did a joke about uh i can't i think it was share or uh no it was uh it was it was someone who had a very large nose and he said how do you know how some so-and-so uh actress is gonna is going to uh come through the i think it was barbara streisand how do you know that uh uh she's coming through the door and and the marionette would go would go because you see her nose come through five minutes before. I think a beard is the same way. The beard, you know, it sticks out and shows up before everything. It precedes itself. It is a character unto itself.

Anyway, enough about beards because that's why I know you're here, but there's a bit of beard worship going on. What's going on, Chris? I'm trying to grow an epic beard. So, JustinGibbousYou.com so people can find out you're more than just a beard uh so you can hit medtechman.com or concise-engineering.com there you go so give us a 30,000 overview of what you do sure so anytime somebody's trying to develop a product could be a big company or a a doctor or a couple guys in a garage with a bucket of money, something for use in surgery, we can take them from a napkin sketch all the way to the market.

Now, is there a lot of guys running around with a garage with a bucket full of money? What's going on there? There actually are quite a few startups that kind of start that way. So it's pretty interesting. That's true. Steve Jobs and a few other people there, I guess, is the thing there. startups that kind of start that way so it's uh it's pretty interesting that's true steve jobs and a few other people there i guess is the thing there uh so uh tell us more about how this works my understanding from looking over your website is you call it where curiosity meets conversation

and it's a source for medical technology innovation you basically help people who want to do something cool in medicine. Is there any sort of low bar? Like if I've got an invention I'm thinking of for medical devices, it's where we do a frontal lobotomy on politicians, especially those that can't run the government well. But instead of going the usual way through the nose or the front of the face we actually go through the behind if you will yeah so a rectal yeah i can see a rectal lobotomy we could we could definitely assist with that we worked in that space right and and endoscopic

devices yeah yeah power tools i mean it's right now we're just probably just gonna use a one of those drills that has the long drill bit on it that goes about six feet. Where you just keep spinning the thing? Yep. The old manual ones, because it'll be more fun. And we're going to make it a public, not an execution thing. Jesus, I'm going to have the FBI show up. We're going to make it a public, we're going to do it publicly so that people can share in the joy.

It could be crowdfunded. It could be,funded it could be yeah i think i think we could raise money for this can we make this a political pack probably uh so moving on moving on it's only gets under january 6th craziness don't do that people uh uh so uh what what sort of people come to you do you help what are they trying to do and what are they up to uh you know so we've done projects in many different spaces, but it's in general, somebody says, I've got this idea. It's going to make things easier for the doctor or better for the patient. It's going to be faster and maybe cheaper for insurance. So let's see what

we can do to get this thing locked down. I need a quick prototype and I need to show it to some investors to move the next step. Now, the name of your company is called conciseengineering.com. So do you guys help with the engineering process, the hardware, the software? Absolutely. Absolutely. So typically when you're first starting out,

you've got to do some pretty pictures to make it look good. So that's typically called industrial design. So we can do that aspect. We can do the mechanical engineering, electrical firmware, software, mobile app, cloud-based technology, and then all the QMS and regulatory stuff related to that as well. So we can help you stand up a business from scratch, figure out how you're going to get through the FDA and then do all the design work for you. Wow. I mean, I imagine it's highly regulatory, all the stuff you have to do and go through and, but yeah, just prototyping it and, and trying to deal with the expense of it all

is probably quite a, quite a load up, but I imagine there's plenty of space for innovation. You know, we have the largest population of, uh, people in America that are going into their old age and, uh, you know you know they're they're kind of a population that's gotten used to hey man don't we have some innovations on this why are we still uh you know why are we still healing uh wounds by uh you know using voodoo and shit uh yeah why absolutely yeah as you mentioned that that basically baby boomers are pushing into that realm where more and more surgeries are needed because they're able to move around, be a lot more active than they were in the past. And so we want to keep them all as fit and healthy as possible. And there's always going to be room for innovation in different aspects of healthcare.

And there's going to be more volume, so we need to get things done faster with those procedures that are happening. Faster, better, now. Like I say, I love telemedicine, so if I can just get surgeries through telemedicine, that would be fucking great if you can see if you can get that worked out for me. Um, but, uh, it's, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty amazing. The, uh, the, uh, the way the speed of everything's going, even telemedicine, uh, I think is great. But, uh, um, so what got you into this? How long, how long you been doing this business? And then what got you into us? What was your life journey that made you interested in this because i'm always interested in people's stories and how

they got there sure so i've been running this business for over eight years i've been in med tech for over 20 uh but basically at an early age i was one of those guys that likes to tear things apart try to figure out how they work so i still like i i attribute a lot of stuff to stompompers i don't know if you remember those things back in the day double a battery flip it on it's like a car that drives itself oh i tear those things apart play with the electric motors play with the gears and uh and then build new stuff out of it so that's always been my passion to understand how things work and fix problems there you go the stomper toy i'm looking at it yeah uh the you know people like you guys are the ones who really build our world engineering degrees we need more people coming out of school with engineering degrees uh we sent i

guess we spend more time of people coming from other countries to get engineering degrees in our country and then leaving uh we need to get them to stay here more. It's a real brain bleed because we don't put out engineers. You know, one of the things that made this country great was all the engineers we had in the 50s and 40s and stuff, et cetera, et cetera. You know, building stuff like Hoover Dam, you know, just crazy. The San Francisco Bridge, you know, takes engineers to do that. It's not YouTube stars tiktok influencers people that build those things they actually had really smart people that do it and and uh i've

always looked at stuff from an engineering angle where you look at stuff and you just go wow somebody did like math on that and we we now we know who the algebra is for um when i went to college so god bless people you i took apart my dad's watch, and we thought he'd be, and we were going to put it back together, me and my brother, on there figuring out my dad's famous watch, my dad's favorite watch. We took it apart, and we were pretty sure, because there was two of us as a witness, that we would know how to put it back together.

And, of course, we didn't. And then we severely underestimated how angry he was going to be about the whole thing. Really not sure if he was going to be angry over the rest of his course of his life. And maybe he shouldn't have. But God bless the people like you who can put the watch back together and figure out how it works. We,

we just, I don't know. We just took our beating and, and said, well, we'll probably take something else apart next time, the TV or something. It's always bad taking a watch apart, too, because you never know when

that one little spring is going to go flying, and that's it. You're never going to find it again. That's probably what happened to us. That or, I think there was a screw or a spring, and we're just like, there's a lot of screws here. We don't need that. That'll be fine. I have that now when I put together computers

or when I do stuff. You're building stuff from... What's that one place where you build the furniture from... You have to build the furniture all the time. IKEA? Yeah. That's kind of how IKEA is. You're like, there's a whole bag of screws, honey, left over and bolts.

I hope this thing's going to hold up, you know. So there you go. So if I'm out there in the listening audience and I'm thinking, you know, I've got an idea for maybe some really cool technology stuff. At what point does it need to be, you know, laced up or presented right or put together right before they come to you? Do they need to have their patents in place? Do they need to have some money?

Money is always good, but I'm always open to have a conversation wherever they are in the process. We can do what's called an NDA, which could be before their patents. We basically promise we're not going to do anything in that space and make sure that we're not going to disclose their information. And then we can have a candid discussion and figure out where they are,

what they're trying to do. Do you have any contacts for money? Can you help people get funded or is that not your purview? I would say that's not where we're experts but my my network is growing pretty rapidly and so we have folks in that area and we are continuing to add different contacts and network connections in that area to to help people in the future awesome i mean this is really great uh is there a lot of people in this space for helping people engineer i mean imagine it's pretty special because you're doing engineering and it's very complex work with regulations and stuff. It's definitely a specialized niche, but there are a lot of folks playing in this arena. It's amazing how big the market is, too.

So if you look today, it's about the med tech space is about a $500 billion market, but it's projected to be about $800 billion by 2030. So we're growing at a pretty rapid pace. So a lot of money being spent on new products, a lot of money being spent on existing stuff and keeping things moving and new factories and stuff like that. And I'm looking over some of the portfolio you guys have on your website. This is pretty wild. You've got surgical hand pieces uh negative pressure wound therapy that's kind of interesting uh dental appliances there's a sports medicine device that looks like it's a drill so there's that uh i'm not gonna ask what that's for yeah

um it looks a little lonely fans uh bionic pancrecreas. Is that really a bionic pancreas? Yeah, so that's basically a high-end insulin pump that does insulin and glucagon, and it has the capability of basically regulating blood sugar without much input from the user at all on its own. Holy crap-a-moly. I have some friends that are diabetic with a dead pancreas, and they need stuff like that. That's amazing. Does that go in someone's body?

It looks kind of large. Maybe it goes on the outside. It's still an external pump, so you carry it in your pocket or on your belt loop. Oh, really? And the second generation of that product was actually just put on the market within the last six months. There you go.

People come up to you and go, Hey, is that your bionic pancreas or are you just happy to see me? Light therapy devices. We've had a few CEOs that have come on about light therapy, red light therapy, infrared. It's kind of interesting how that's working. It looks like there's some goggles or something for that. Yeah, there's some really cool devices you have here. And arthroscopy pump

and console. So basically, knee, shoulder, and hip surgery equipment. If you want to get into those spaces, you've got to do a lot of small cuts, small incisions, and be able to get the power tools, the instrumentation, the implants into those areas. And so we worked

on all those joint spaces. I'm a big believer in not getting power tools anywhere near me, but I'm working on that to make sure my health stays up so I don't have to do that. But I imagine that's the thing. It's pretty amazing if you get into an OR and you get to see those power tools going. It's an interesting thing. It's good to see bionics are working too. So there you go.

Uh, that's what I want. I want replaceable parts, just like Chevy or Ford where I can, I can just, uh, I can just call in and say, Hey,

I need a new kneecap and I can just go on an hour. They throw it in and they're just like, yeah, there you go. There you go. Got your new, got your new hubcaps on the old knees there, Chris. Well, if Amazon keeps delivering the way they are, maybe you just like walk there you go. There you go. Got your new hubcaps on the old knees there, Chris.

Well, if Amazon keeps delivering the way they are, maybe you just like walk out the front door. That's true. They just opened a medical wing hospital. It's a medical wing for like your meds and stuff. I think they're trying to, I think they're helping put CVS or, what was it that just filed bankruptcy? Rite Aid.

I imagine CVS is right behind them out of business. So there you go. CVS is going to remove some OTC staples. Yeah, the problem is my local CVS is I go in there and it's a ghost town. They have this huge parking lot too. It's like two

cars in it. I'm like where are the employees cars? They park out back? There's not any employees here what's going on yeah it's like a pharmacist and the front person person of the front desk that's it yeah i mean you're like walking through the place going what's going on here so uh what inspired the name med tech man uh actually kind of a an accident but medtech is what's you know commonly used today as referring to medical technology and man is uh short for manufacturing so i also want to sell another business medtech manufacturing so ah slight hand there i see yeah got the got the uh it's definitely the shortened version of it you know you could do, since you've got this easy top beard, maybe you could do

a cover song just to build your brand. He's a med tech man. Instead of sharp dress man. I like it. Can you keep singing and I'll just take that clip out. That'll be good. No, we don't want to have that advertised.

No one wants to hear me sing. You don't want to have that advertised that no one wants to hear me sing i mean you don't want to lose business man you want to hire someone i'll caution you people be like oh my god they'll run away screaming closing their ears when they hear me sing that's why we hired a opera singer to sing the the chris voss show intro after 15 years people are sick of hearing it at least i was i'm sick of hearing my own voice that's why we have podcasts with guests um so chuck norris things chuck norris things now so i mean you but it's chuck norris i mean you know i mean it's chuck norris i mean you know i mean you've heard all the chuck norris analogies or jokes or whatever the hell they're called uh you know, Chuck Norris can do whatever he wants because if you don't, well, he's Chuck Norris. So from your perspective, what are the most transformative advancements in med tech over the past decade? So obviously we're having a lot of changes in AI and that's starting to impact things.

I think it's still going to be a couple decades before some of that stuff's worked in, but a lot in surgical robotics has definitely started to change quite a bit more in navigation. So a lot of electromechanical changes that are improving the way that the surgeon performs. Nice. AI, I think, is going to be really interesting. But they say that AI might help make us better medicines, maybe solve cancer. If we could get it to solve stupidity, which seems to be the biggest human disease in the world. Dunning-Kruger's disease, maybe we can get something for that.

It might be Dunning-Kruger's disease. The best result is my lobotomy surgery from the uh bum the bum on in as they like to call it science uh that that would be ideal but yeah ai doing this little mixture until it figures out that how do we make humans healthier and get them to eat right well we just wipe them off the planet with the nuclear war and that that'll fix all the humans problems and all the humans and there'll be better people i've often said if you want more peace kill all the humans seems to be true if you watch the news these days jesus um what are some other uh things we need to talk about about your business that we haven't touched on i think just in general uh that we're here to help right um there's a lot

of stuff going on people have a lot of questions on how do I address something? How do I work in the regulatory space, the quality space? What's the fastest way to get from A to B? And we're happy to have those discussions and see where we can add value in getting a new product, a new company started. Do you think that the global pandemic impacted the pace and direction of innovation? It definitely stifled innovation in some areas and kind of pushed it into different areas, right?

So a lot of people started doing masks and PPE and weird things that, you know, there was never demand for in the past, which stifled innovation on some key things that were already funded. But I think that's kind of level set. People are going back to where they really think they can add value. Yeah.

It really would be cool if AI can help us solve some problems, if it could figure out how to fix cancer. I really hate cancer, and I think most people do. I'm not sure anybody who's running around going, cancer? Yeah, I'm on that team. And so this is really important to have a lot of this collaboration in the world to help people build ideas. Because you never know where

the next big idea is going to come from. You know, I mean, some little immigrant person from Syria had a kid. He grew up to be Steve Jobs. And I think he stands the landscape in a lot of different ways. There's a lot of innovators out there. And you just never know where an idea is going to come from.

And those two little guys, like you said, they did things in a garage. They didn't really have money, but they built it and got money and all those things. So how do you stay updated with the latest trends and research in the med tech arena? Uh, how do you stay updated on all that stuff? I would say a lot of it's my network and travel, right? So I'm, I'm connected to a lot of folks. I have a lot of conversations on a regular basis. I go to different med tech conferences to, to hear the latest speakers and meet people on a regular basis to address, uh,

you know, what's out there, what's actually, what's actually being done versus what's really marketing. Cause some of this stuff is just marketing. You know, you'll hear about some cool advancement, but it's 10 years out.

Uh, so you got to understand what's possible today. Uh, so just networking and travel and staying connected. There you go. Uh, I would imagine the hope is, you said 10 years out, maybe AI can close those timelines or maybe for drug trial

timelines or something where they can, I don't know, maybe research how it's safer or maybe innovate stuff. I know that during COVID with the COVID vaccine, it was, I forget what the MRNA imprint, the blueprint had been made for something else that they were trying to solve in health. And they were like, hey, we can use this over here. Maybe it can help do more of that where it turns all that different things.

Any exciting projects or initiatives you can talk about maybe that you see on the horizon that you guys are working uh that might come to fruition soon uh yeah i mean we're always working on something new so i you know currently there's a really cool portable aed device a defibrillator that you can basically carry around with you that's uh we're working on that uh and we also are working on a new, uh, cancer treatment, which it's going to be a few years probably before it's really in humans. Uh, but definitely a cool way of delivering meds, uh, and much more effective in cancer treatment. Awesome sauce. Anything to get the world better. It's kind of one of the things I've been hoping

for is that, is that my health will hold up so that by the time I reach my old age, all the innovations will be there. And they can just keep me alive and happy. Because the worst thing to do is spending time in hospitals and doctor's offices. It's just the worst. I'm sorry, doctors. I love you, but I don't love you that much. Yeah. It's, it's amazing how, uh, how much a little bit of pain or that suffering is, uh, dramatically impacts your life.

So definitely, especially when you get the bill. Oh, so give us your final pitch out on what you guys do and how you do it. And, uh, I'll offer to people that, that, you know, need to onboard with you, how they can get to know you, reach out to you, talk to you, and all that good stuff. Yeah. So we do all the engineering and problem solving for MedTech in any way, shape, or form.

Go from napkins and sketch to on market, and we'll help you. If you have some questions, reach out. MedTechMan.com. Concise-Engineering.com. There you go. Well, it's been fun to have you and your epic beard on the show. Thank you very much, Justin. We really appreciate it.

Alright, thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. And thanks to Mattis for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com Fortress Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com Fortress Chris Foss, YouTube.com Fortress Chris Foss. Subscribe to the Chris Foss show newsletter over there on LinkedIn and Chris Foss 1 on the Tickety-Tockety. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.