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INDEPENDENT PRACTITIONER TODAY: 'Necessity' was the mother of invention
11.03.10
This is an abridged version of this article, the whole of which can be read in the March 2010 edition of Independent Practitioner Today magazine. Here, you will find business tips, useful agencies for advice and where to seek out finance and development help.
After a busy surgery ten years ago, I mused with my sister Giovanna about the number of women patients who had berated me that day for requesting a urine sample, and giving them the standard Universal Container to deliver it. Somewhat accusingly, each one said that asking a woman to deliver urine into such a narrow bottle was a typically male expectation ...
I designed the Female Freedom Funnel, in which incarnation (and under patent protection) in 2001 it won the inaugural Medical Futures Awards, Medical Category.
What happened next?
Giovanna shares my love for a challenge and believed in the Female Freedom Funnel from the start. She increasingly devoted more time to “our project” which was renamed the somewhat snappier “Peezy”. She then embarked upon the business of product research and development, financing, manufacture, and ultimately market profile, position and sales.
By Spring 2006 the invoices were piling up, a steady drain on our personal resources; patent fees, designers, raw materials, engineers, consultants … we weren’t running out of enthusiasm or passion, but money. We sought out, and got, investment funding.
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