BCS Tecnologia has two characteristics that are not frequently seen together:
at the same time it’s a family business and an innovating enterprise.
Its owners, Flávio, Rogério and Cristiane, share their last
name Ulbrich – Flávio is Rogério’s brother and Cristiane’s
husband – and an enterprising spirit. Between January and August of
2005, they identified a niche to be explored in the market of medical equipment,
developed a valve that regulates pressure with innovating characteristics
for hospitals, deposited a patent request for it at Brazil’s National
Institute of Intellectual Property (Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial,
INPI), opened BCS and registered it in the selection process for the State
University of Campinas’ Incubator of Knowledge-Based Companies (Incubadora
de Empresas da Unicamp, Incamp).
BCS was admitted at Incamp in September of 2005. Since then, the company
has concluded a project in Phase II of the Programa Inovação
Tecnológica em Pequenas Empresas (Technological Innovation in Small
Businesses Program, PIPE) – the program of the State of São Paulo
Research Foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do
Estado de São Paulo, Fapesp) that gives support to research in small
companies – and came in fourth place in the competition Empreender
é Show (enterprising is a show), conducted by the National Association
of Entities that Foster Innovative Enterprises(Associação Nacional
de Entidades Promotoras de Empreendimentos Inovadores, Anprotec) during 2007.
For 2008 a lot of work is planned: BCS has already two research projects approved
by fostering agencies and is waiting for the approval of three others –
two of them through PIPE.
One of the projects waiting for approval from PIPE is running for the edict
Fapesp launched in July of 2007 along with the venture capital firm Imprimatur
to finance the program’s Phase III. The aim of this project is to carry
out tests with the pressure regulating valve directly in hospitals. If Fapesp
accepts it BCS may even get Imprimatur as a partner. The other project, submitted
last October, is for the program’s Phase I. With it the company wants
to investigate if a medical device “for emergency situations”
is viable – this is a project of which Cristiane won’t give details.
The only thing she tells at this point is that the micro-electronic part of
the equipment will be funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico
e Tecnológico (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development,
CNPq). The project CNPq has approved includes a visiting researcher.
Complementary competences
The chance to have their own business came up for Flávio, Rogério
and Cristiane in January of 2005. It was then that Rogério, a mechanical
engineer with a degree from the University of Mogi das Cruzes (Universidade
de Mogi das Cruzes, UMC), mentioned to his brother and sister-in-law a fact
that had caught his attention in his work in the commercial area of a distributor
of medical equipment: each time he visited hospitals and clinics he’d
see boxes full of damaged pressure controlling valves. Widely used in Intensive
Care Units to control the flow of pure gases or gas mixtures that have direct
contact with the patient’s body in diagnoses, treatments or prophylaxis
– the so-called medicinal gases, such as oxygen, carbon dioxide and
helium, for instance –, these valves were fragile and broke down easily;
besides, the health team had a hard time to deal with the mechanism that regulated
the pressure.
“We decided to sit down once a week to discuss the problem and try
to give it a technical solution,” says Cristiane. “By June we
had already developed the product and had a prototype of it,” she adds.
With a degree in Mechanical Technology from the Faculdade de Tecnologia de
São Paulo (São Paulo School of Technology, Fatec-SP), she has
an executive MBA from Ibmec São Paulo and a Master’s Degree and
a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Unicamp, where she is currently doing
her post-doc. Cristiane is in charge of BCS’ research and development
activities. But she makes a point in highlighting the importance of her brother-in-law’s
and her husband’s work. Flávio is a business administrator with
specialization in Clinical Engineering from Unicamp’s School of Electrical
and Computing Engineering (Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação,
FEEC). Clinical engineers manage the use of medical equipment in hospitals.
“We have complementary competences,” she points out. Currently
the three comprise the company’s staff.
The valve
The valve BCS’ owners have developed has two differentials: protection
against falls and a fast shutting system. “When the user removed a valve
from the wall, he/she held it from the hose [that takes the medicinal gases
to the patient]; that’s when the valve would fall on the floor and break,”
says Cristiane, explaining why Rogério saw so many boxes of broken
valves in the hospitals he visited. The solution was the development of a
rubber protection to reduce the impact on the equipment should it fall down.
The shutting system, on the other hand, has the advantage of being automatic.
According to Cristiane, in the models available in the market today, the person
in charge of shutting them is a hospital staff member. The patent the company
has deposited in INPI protects precisely the fast shutting system and the
protection against falls.
PIPE
Flávio, Rogério and Cristiane were admitted in Incamp thanks
to the valve’s project, but didn’t have the resources to turn
the idea into a product. The answer came in the incubator, where they learned
how PIPE works. “We had already had contact with a company funded by
PIPE, but we thought it wasn’t for us,” she recalls. So they submitted
a project to Fapesp. Approved directly to the program’s Phase II, the
project was carried out between May of 2006 and May of 2007.
“The objective of Phase II was to conduct experiments with the equipment
in order to see if it worked,” sums up Cristiane. She recalls that the
first prototype of the valve, manufactured before BCS was created, had the
whole engineering of the project, but was never tested with medicinal gases.
The company won’t disclose how much Fapesp has given it so far. In the
overview of the project submitted to the fostering agency, BCS requested funds
to manufacture and test 150 pressure valves.
The tests
BCS has hired Mecatron, a junior company of the course of Control and Automation
Engineering of Unicamp’s School of Mechanical Engineering (Faculdade
de Engenharia Mecânica, FEM), to conduct the tests with the valve. The
undergraduate student David de Jesus Santos, in charge of the project’s
management at Mecatron, says that the tests were aimed at verifying if the
valve complied with the norms of Brazil’s National Sanitary Surveillance
Agency (Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária, Anvisa)
for use in hospitals. He invited a PhD candidate from FEM advised by professor
Kamal Abdel Radi Ismail to take charge of the technical part of the tests.
In four days, three kinds of tests were carried out at FEM’s Laboratory
of Thermos and Fluids (Laboratório de Térmica e Fluidos): impact
resistance, to evaluate the valve’s protection against falls; performance
and functionality, to analyze the product’s durability; and flux characteristics,
to check pressure level of gases in and out of the device. According to Santos,
who is no longer at Mecatron, the valve got good results in most items, but
not in all of them – something which, he says, Cristiane was expecting.
In spite of that, he believes the evaluation was positive because “it
gave feedback to the company so that it could improve the product.”
Market and commercialization
According to a market study BCS has carried out, about 8,000 pressure control
valves are sold each month in Brazil. They cost between US$ 31.50 and US$
250 – imported models can cost up to US$ 500. The company plans to launch
its product in the beginning of the second semester of 2008 and wants to grab
10 percent of the market in the first 12 months. Cristiane believes BCS’s
valve can not only compete with the imported products in terms of quality,
but be cheaper too. The definition of the price, however, depends on the manufacturer
that will be chosen. Because it doesn’t have a certification from Anvisa
to manufacture medical equipment, BCS needs to have a partnership with a manufacturer
that does.
“It took us more than one and a half years to understand why Anvisa
can’t approve this building,” she says, referring to the fact
that the incubator doesn’t have the infra-structure the agency requires
to issue the certification. BCS has already talked with a potential manufacturer,
and, with it and the company in which Rogério works (both names are
kept secret), has submitted a project to the program for the formation of
local productive arrangements (Arranjos Produtivos Locais, APLs) of the Brazilian
Innovation Agency/Research and Projects Financing (Financiadora de Estudos
e Projetos, Finep) and the Brazilian Service for the Support of Micro and
Small Businesses (Serviço Brasileiro de Apoio às Micro e Pequenas
Empresas, Sebrae). “If the project doesn’t come through we’ll
have to look for an alternative,” says Cristiane. “BCS is a new
enterprise and this is going to be its first product to be commercialized,
so we won’t be able not to get around the need for a partnership in
order to put it in the market.”
Although the problem of manufacturing still has to be solved, BCS is aware
that a lot of valves will have to be sold so that it has profits with them.
“That’s why we want to export,” she explains. “If
we go for the domestic market only we won’t get the volume we need.”
Export plans are already outlined: the idea is to start with Argentina, Portugal
and Spain, countries in which BCS’ owners know people who could make
the first contact with distribution channels. Before that, though, they’ll
have to request an international patent for the equipment and get a certification
from the European Union.
According to the executive director of the Brazilian Association of Medical,
Odontological, Hospital and Laboratory Articles and Equipment Industry (Associação
Brasileira da Indústria de Artigos e Equipamentos Médicos, Odontológicos,
Hospitalares e de Laboratórios, Abimo), Hely Maestrello, the UE certification
“is the passport to export.” To get it companies must comply with
the norm ISO 13485, which deals specifically with medical equipment, and then
be approved by a foreign certification institution. Maestrello is familiar
with BCS, which is a member of Abimo, and also with its pressure control valve.
In his opinion, the innovations in the valve are “very important differentials
both in Brazil and abroad.” For that reason he believes that the company
has a good chance to take part in the program of exports that Abimo has in
partnership with Brazil’s Export Fostering Agency (Agência de
Promoção de Exportações do Brasil, Apex).
Quick prototyping
BCS is not developing just medical equipment. The company also has two research
projects under way in the area of quick prototyping, in which Cristiane is
specialized – she studied the theme in her Master’s Degree and
PhD. As the name itself indicates, it’s the manufacture of prototypes
in a few hours. The technique, which combines software with special prototyping
machines, was created to make possible the manufacture of detailed prototypes
of industrial parts. A few years ago it got a new application: the manufacture
of customized models of human bones and bone prostheses, used by physicians
and dentists to plan complex surgeries.
The two BCS projects on quick prototyping involve FEM’s Department
of Biomaterials (Departamento de Biomateriais) and investigate the possibility
of the technique be used also for manufacturing bone prostheses proper. One
is financed by Fapesp and CNPq; the other, just by CNPq. “We’re
in the phase of understanding which characteristics a material must have in
order to be at the same time bio-compatible and applicable to quick prototyping,”
says Cristiane. “In the future we’re going to develop a material
that may be used in implementing prostheses.” She thinks the results
of this research line should begin to be seen by 2010.
Learning and future
Now that it is about to complete 2 and half years, BCS’s slogan is:
planning. “We’ve learned to plan the company’s management
and the product’s development,” Cristiane recognizes. She highlights
PIPE’s role in the learning process. “It was PIPE that gave us
the energy to understand what it is to develop a knowledge-based product.
Without it we’d still be in the realm of ideas.” While the project
funded by the program was under way BCS created a protocol with ten items
to be analyzed before the development of a product begins – among other
things, the company checks if the product would be economically viable and
if it would be solving a problem. “There were cases in which we thought
of a product to develop, but gave up after carrying out a search for patents
because there were similar products in the market. Or the opposite: we’d
see that the product was good, was innovative, but the market wouldn’t
buy more than 1,000 units.”
As for the possibility of having a venture capital company as a partner
should it be approved in the Fapesp-Imprimatur edict, BCS still has no clear
position. “We’ve conceived two projects to manufacture the valve
[the other is Finep’s and Sebrae’s] and both will take us to the
same place. We want to have a choice,” says Cristiane. However, she
doesn’t deny her pride for having reached the selection’s final
stage. “If a renowned company [Imprimatur] is interested in us, the
investment in time we’ve made has been already worth it.”
