Submission Process Overview

Boston Scientific has long been interested in reviewing unique and original ideas from our customers. We also welcome innovative ideas and solutions from inventors outside of our company that make improvements to our existing products as well as define new product opportunities in related technology areas.

Over the years we have learned that many ideas, inventions and technologies submitted to us for evaluation are already available to us through the work of our own employees or from other sources such as publications or previous disclosures by others. Therefore, when evaluating outside ideas and inventions we only want to evaluate those which you do not wish to maintain in confidence. To avoid our receiving information about your ideas and inventions that you believe is confidential, we ask that you understand and acknowledge that the information you provide to Boston Scientific through this portal will not be considered confidential by Boston Scientific. There are two ways to provide non-confidential information through this portal:

by providing enough non-confidential information for us to sufficiently understand your invention to allow a strategic decision to be made on the level of interest in the idea
by providing a patent or published patent application that describes your invention. You may provide a filed patent application which has not yet been made public if you desire, however, this too will not be treated as confidential.

To get started, please go through the following three-step process:

STEP 1: Submit Your Idea

Submit your idea by completing the form on our site. Once we receive your non-confidential disclosure of your idea, your disclosure will be logged into our system. You will be notified via email that your idea was received. Preview example of submission form >>

STEP 2: Review of Your Idea

Your idea will be assessed by our internal experts, including a few select senior members of our Marketing, New Business Development, R&D, and Intellectual Property organizations. You will receive an email once the review process has begun.

Additional Non-Confidential Information Needed: Sometimes our evaluation team may need more information regarding particular aspects of your idea. In such case, you will receive an email request to provide additional information which will also be treated as non-confidential.

Confidential Information Needed: In some cases, our evaluation team may need more information in order to fully evaluate your idea, some of which you may consider to be confidential. In this case, you should not provide the requested information until Boston Scientific agrees to accept the additional information as confidential and you and Boston Scientific have entered into and signed a Confidentiality Agreement.

STEP 3: View Your Status

View the status of your submission at any time.

If you would like to check the status of your submission please log into your account, select ‘View My Ideas’, and view the current status of your submission. The ‘Communications’ tab available for each idea you have submitted to us allows you to send inquiries to us directly. You can also attach additional non-confidential information using the ‘Attachments’ tab.

Please note that our evaluation can take a few days, weeks or months depending upon complexity and applicability. In general, it may take up to 2-3 months for us to complete the process and follow up with you.

We want to emphasize that we receive hundreds of ideas each year from outside of Boston Scientific. While we have had a few major successes with ideas received from outside, in reality very few disclosures make it through our screening filters. Today the time, cost and regulatory hurdles involved in developing and commercializing a medical product are high and often require several millions of dollars. For this reason we must be very selective in those ideas that we explore further and choose to pursue.

Submit Your Idea