Don't look for money, look for partners

Newspaper "Search", Elizaveta Ponarina

There are six dials on the wall of the meeting room in the Engineering Center of the National Research Nuclear University "MEPhI". Each has its own inscription: Moscow, Bahrain, Lesnoy, Istanbul, San Francisco and Shenzhen. For some reason, mythologists need to know what time it is now in the south of China, in the cities of Turkey and the USA, in a tiny state on the Persian Gulf and in the Sverdlovsk region...

– The locations of your partners? – I'm trying to guess, having barely met Konstantin Mezhankov, the deputy head of the IC. 

"Well, yes," he smiles. – There are our partners in Bahrain, Turkey, the USA and China, a factory is being built in Lesnoye for the production of products. And the fact that Lesnoy is a closed administrative–territorial entity (BUT) does not bother us: he, like MEPhI, on the basis of which our center was created, is "of the same blood" with Rosatom. Of course, we have a lot of Russian sites. To designate everything – the wall would not be enough. Thanks to the activities of Rector Mikhail Strikhanov, due to the extensive structure of the NRU, any regions are open to us. In Lesnoye, we plan to launch a multifunctional production workshop by the end of the year. They are building it with the money of Rosatom, he is interested in creating knowledge-intensive enterprises in the city for the employment of the population. They will begin to master our developments there, because all of them, one way or another, are tied to one element base: certain microcircuits with the addition of the necessary functionality. The first product is an endoscopic complex called "Lily of the Valley capsule". It should save people from the need to "swallow the gut" when it is necessary to examine the gastrointestinal tract.

– And why "Lily of the Valley"? In medicine, it is used with caution – it is poisonous...

– Lily of the Valley is a name. This is the name of the doctor with whom we started working on this endoscopic complex. Lily of the Valley Ildusovna Gubaidulina from hospital No. 85 in Moscow, a doctor of the highest category. As soon as the clinical trials of the device are completed, up to 300 thousand capsules will be produced in Lesnoye per year. According to our calculations, this will cover the country's need. 

– So the main goal of the development is to save the patient from an unpleasant procedure? You swallow something the size of a large olive and..

– You live an ordinary life while she walks for eight hours through your gastrointestinal tract, looking at what his condition is, and a reader that is attached to the patient's belt or put in his pocket records this data. Then the examinee gives the doctor this box, and he transfers the recording to the computer, where a special program created by us analyzes what is recorded. The following modifications of the capsule will expand its functionality and improve the quality of the examination. For example, a doctor cannot sit and watch videos of each patient day after day. We have developed software that detects damage to the gastrointestinal tract automatically – and immediately sends a signal to the doctor to take a closer look at the problem area. The last word is always with the person, no matter how effective the program may be. Moreover, in comparison with Japanese and Israeli analogues, our software can be installed on any computer. And abroad, along with the capsule, you need to buy a serious special computer. It's expensive. When, even before the currency appreciation, we checked the cost of a capsule examination in private clinics in Moscow, it turned out that the patient had to pay about 70 thousand rubles for one diagnosis. In our country, most people cannot afford it. No matter how unpleasant, but people, after looking at the capsule, will go to swallow the hose for free. Therefore, we aim to give the population a product that would cost an order of magnitude less than imported ones. And in terms of technological characteristics, I assure you, our capsule is already better than foreign analogues. Plus, there are initiative developments at the output, which allow us to hope that soon the patient himself will send videos to the doctor over the networks, and not drag himself to the clinic with his reader. The only disadvantage of the capsule compared to endoscopy is that you cannot take a biopsy. But a serious plus is the possibility of checking the small intestine, where no hose gets. In the future, we plan to release a magnetic capsule, which the doctor will use a joystick to drive back and forth through the patient's gastrointestinal tract... To quickly slip in where everything is in order, and slow down the movement, even to return to the area where something aroused the suspicion of the doctor. 

– The next step is to deliver the medicine to the disease zone?

– Yes, the magnetic capsule, when it is finalized, will be able to carry the medicine. We also plan to do it in Lesnoye. We, as an Engineering Center, serve for Rosatom as an integrator of transformation ideas that will help keep young people in the outback – qualified personnel from among our graduates. I assure you, there are now a huge number of Russian developments with good potential. They have no analogues in the world. 

– Why do they know little about them?

– Because there is a gap between development and production. We are trying to overcome it: accumulating engineering solutions and the ability to turn breakthrough technologies into a marketable product in the activities of the CI. We tell everyone: bring the developments, we'll see, we'll tell, we'll show what needs to be done to start their production. 

– I heard that soon you will have to reach self-sufficiency, that is, to attract money from customers at least as much as you received for this project from the Ministry of Education and Science for all three years of the life of the IC...

– We don't see anything terrible in this requirement. We want to achieve self-sufficiency at the expense of foreign investments. The priority task is not to pull money from the national economy, but, on the contrary, to attract it from abroad. It seems to everyone that with the current geopolitics, business is not up to investing in the Russian economy, but in fact, due to the fact that we have been working with our partners for quite a long time and painstakingly, they are not afraid of the current situation. They are interested in our developments.

– How did you find out about them? 

– The director of the IC Dmitry Mikhailov studied at the English Warwick Institute, which is considered one of the best in the world from the point of view of commercialization of high–tech developments, he made a lot of useful acquaintances there and received an MBA diploma, his first diploma is MEPhI. We strive to notice the trends of development in the world and look for new things for Russia in order to increase its credibility. One of the working white label strategies is a white label. It is actively involved in Europe. Its essence is that, having a pilot production facility where we debug the chain of product release, we offer it, ready, to a profile promoted company that undertakes to trade it... under its own brand. 

– Is it not a pity to give your child to the side – they gave birth, raised, and glory to strangers?

– We, engineers, can invent and make a product, but we do not know how to sell, because in principle we should not be engaged in trade. The engineering center was created in order to develop, and when the product is completely ready, its entry into the market under the name of a large company is reduced to a matter of days. When we bring our product to a powerful integrator – Rosatom, companies like Yota or InfoWatch, they do not bear any risks by introducing this product into their product line. They get the finished product, production and development team at once, and put their own label. From this we will have a royalty, which must be negotiated separately each time.

[…]

– What are the prospects of the center? 

– The budget of our engineering center consists half of state funds, half of the money of private companies. We try not to move the border in either direction. If you go into government orders, you will lose competitiveness. In the high-tech market, you need to be at the helm all the time, move, maneuver, track new products, compare with your own. And accordingly – to start new lines. In general, I think our experience is an example of how such centers and scientific groups in general can work. And experience needs to be shared. We work as openly and efficiently as possible, no one sets unrealistic goals. People often do not think that there are quite simple ways to implement their idea. At the same time, we are ready to learn ourselves. Apparently, it's time to start visiting other engineering centers to find new development opportunities. Because it is extremely important that it is Russian developments that begin to displace foreign ones today.

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15.07.2015