In this special Innovation episode, Dr. Aravind Arepally tells us the stories behind what inspires him to shoot for big impact projects, how he built a startup device company with Jim Chomas, and the importance of working with people who give you energy and challenge you.

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SHOW NOTES

In this episode, Dr. Aravind Arepally joins Dr. Bryan Hartley to discuss his development and innovation of medical devices. Dr. Arepally tells us how his childhood experiences influenced him to become a physician and how his mentors during fellowship inspired him to become an innovator. We discuss how a grant writing class opened up the world of research for Dr. Arepally and connected him with engineers.

We talk about how important it is to have collaborative partners and why not to ignore any of the crazy ideas. Dr. Arepally shares his experience working in Germany for four months and how he started focusing on obesity and minimally invasive procedures. We discuss some of the challenges of trying to innovate while working in a private practice.

We explain the origin story of Dr. Arepally’s company, SureFire and how he developed a business plan. We discuss fundraising, finding investors, and developing prototypes. Dr. Arepally tells us about his current projects, his future plans for innovation, and why he wants to focus on need based devices.