Superstar Inventor Segues Into Health Care

BOSTON (TheStreet) -- An entrepreneur has a few choices when setting out to create a successful business. There's the road to going public, the road to getting bought, and there's the inventor's rotary -- creating a loop of innovation and finance. Superstar inventor Dean Kamen is a poster boy for the third track, having partnered with corporations to bankroll potential medical miracles.

"I internally develop stuff," says Kamen, founder of DEKA Research and Development Corp. in Manchester, N.H., "and then we sell it to Baxter Healthcare(BAX Quote) or Johnson & Johnson(JNJ Quote). That's why God invented large companies."

For better or worse, Kamen is best known for the Segway, the low-emission gyroscopic two-wheeled electric vehicle that received more buzz than the Apple(AAPL Quote) iPhone before its 2001 release, but which ended up largely relegated to use by mall cops and tourists. But as a founder of DEKA, which has been around since 1982, he holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of which are for novel medical devices. (He holds a spot in the National Inventors Hall of Fame, along with the likes of Thomas Edison and Eli Whitney.)

Baxter Healthcare licensed DEKA's HomeChoice PD, a peritoneal dialysis system that lets patients receive treatment at home instead of in the hospital.

iBot, an ultra-stable wheelchair that climbs stairs -- and the predecessor to the Segway -- was built for and licensed to Johnson & Johnson's Independence Technology unit, although the company stopped selling it earlier this year due to slow sales. (With a price of up to $25,000, insurance companies weren't exactly champing at the bit to pay for it.)