Medical Valuation Laboratory FAQ

The Medical Industry Valuation Laboratory is a 2-credit, graduate-level elective that uses an interdisciplinary and intercollegiate approach to provide a rapid production market analysis of promising medical technologies and services that have the potential to benefit and expand Minnesota's economic development.

This Laboratory provides students the opportunity to work on an interdisciplinary team with students from Carlson School of Management, College of Liberal Arts, College of Science and Engineering, the Academic Health Center and the Law School to develop "first look" 10-page market analysis white paper and presentation for clients with a promising new technology in a rapid production model (5 week turnaround). Working with students from various disciplines, the teams will analyze the market size, evaluate a technical, business, preliminary intellectual property, and regulatory challenges, as well as develop a 'go or no go' recommendation for continuing product development or market feasibility.

This course is open to all MBA students and to students enrolled in any other graduate programs across the university.

There are no course pre-requisites, but you must be enrolled in a graduate or certificate program at the university to register for this course. Students would benefit from having taken a course with a medical industry focus. The best overview class to prepare students is MILI 6990 - The Healthcare Marketplace.

Part-Time MBA students can take this course up to three times for a total of six credits. Since projects and interdisciplinary teams will vary from semester to semester, taking it more than once will provide you the opportunity to experience a variety of clients internal and external to the University, and to have leadership positions on the interdisciplinary teams.

Since Full-Time MBA students have access to the other Carlson Enterprises, they will only be able to take MILI 6995 once. Full-time students are also eligible to take MILI 6997 and IBUS 6997 in addition to MILI 6995.

Note: There is an opportunity for a Full-Time MBA student to take a 10-credit version of the course as their Enterprise requirement. Interested students should contact Jessica Haupt (jahaupt@umn.edu) for more information and special application instructions for this opportunity. Note that Full-Time MBA students selected for the 10-credit version of the Valuation Laboratory will not be able to enroll for additional credits in MILI 6995 beyond the 10 credits.

At this time, you only need to register online for the two credit Laboratory as you would any other elective course.

Yes you can, but you will only be able to take the 2-credit Medical Industry Valuation Laboratory course once.

Classes are held on Thursday evenings. There is a mandatory daylong "bootcamp" on the first Saturday of each semester. This daylong session provides detailed information and presentations by experts on intellectual property issues, regulatory issues, and technology commercialization. Teams will be assigned and project information distributed.

Team meeting days/times are flexible and determined by the team members. Meetings with clients will be schedule on an as needed basis. 

Note: the Laboratory space is available to registered students via UCard access whenever the school is open.

The Laboratory is staffed by a full-time faculty and adjunct faculty drawn from the business community. Key faculty include:

• Mike Finch, Ph.D., Principal, Finch and King. Finch directs a health consultancy focusing on program evaluation. He has consulted for UnitedHealth Group and different medical specialty societies as well as technology companies. He retains his rank as a tenured faculty member of the University of Minnesota and actively collaborates with colleagues in the Academic Health Center and the Carlson School.
• Matt Stoll is an Instructor for the Medical Valuation Laboratory. Over his 20-year career in product management and marketing, Mr. Stoll has launched multiple products in the telecommunications and medical devices industries, launching multiple product lines in both industries and managing annual revenue of up to $30M. He has extensive experience leading cross-functional marketing and development teams for new product development. During his career in the medical device space, Mr. Stoll has actively raised and managed more than $20M in non-dilutive funding through the NIH SBIR program.
  Mr. Stoll has a BS in electrical engineering from Penn State University and an MBA from the University of Minnesota. While at the University of Minnesota, Mr. Stoll was a Innovation Fellow, working with post-doctoral fellows in medical device innovation with business plan creation, commercialization planning, and valuation.

Interdisciplinary project teams will be assigned by the course instructors based on information submitted in student bios. Teams will be identified in the daylong boot camp.

The Laboratory provides students with a unique opportunity to work on cross-disciplinary teams to complete a rapid market evaluation of a real-world medical innovation. 

Each collegiate unit will determine their own course designator for registration through their program. If a non-Carlson students wants to register for the course through the Carlson School, they will need to complete the Non-MBA Graduate Student Registration form. This form can be found on the Master of Business Administration, Course Petition Form Web Page.

Student's grades will be determined from three sources. First, the majority of the grade will be based on the instructor's assessment of your work. Second, the client's response to your work will be considered. Finally, the student's initiative and effort working on teams will be assessed by the instructors. 'A' work in the course will be based on active participation in report and presentation development, active posting on the secure course website as appropriate, and client's responses to the project work.