My university (University of Hartford, in CT USA) had a required course for all engineering majors: "Engineering Practice". Essentially it was a course on how t

My university (University of Hartford, in CT USA) had a required course for all engineering majors: "Engineering Practice". Essentially it was a course on how to take an engineering idea & turn it into a business. Find a problem, find potential buyers for a solution, figure out what they say they're willing to pay, determine other design constraints, rough design a solution matching the constraints (IE that can be sold for what people will pay), create a business plan, including estimates of how much funding is needed and a method to get that funding, build a prototype, pitch the product to faculty as though they were VCs/banks/other funding sources. If you're trying to make a product you need to know how it will sell. If you're trying to run a business, you need a business plan! If you can't make money you're better off planning to register as a charity, and your budget will need to take that into account. This product could maybe have been a good business, if it was aimed at someone willing to pay for the data. Mainly, the insurance companies. They want to make money, so if they could profit by denying coverage of drugs that are less effective they might pay for it. This could also have been a good charity. Providing helpful information is what educational charities do. Making a nonprofit would save on costs, and might have been enough to make this viable (though certainly not a lucrative money-maker).