mHUB teams at premier medtech accelerator cohort

mHUB, one of the nation’s leading independent hardtech and manufacturing innovation centers, has selected the startup teams that will participate in the premier cohort of its 6-month, hands-on accelerator for high-potential medical device businesses. Teams will move from across the country to participate in the program at mHUB’s state-of-the-art facilities in Chicago. The program is set to commence in November 2021.

Supported by Baxter and Edward-Elmhurst Health Venture Capital, the program’s industry partners will engage with the startups over the course of the program, providing mentorship and guidance for strategic connections within industry and clinical access. Community partner MATTER will provide additional programming and industry access, and Cooley LLP will provide legal programming, resources and office hours.

The selected cohort features early-stage ventures focused on commercializing disruptive medical device solutions such as: a needle-free platform to deliver biologics; wearables for reducing tremors, detecting, and treating vestibular disruptions, and capturing wellness markers in elderly patients; as well as monitoring solutions for fetal care, cancer patients, diagnosing sepsis, and tracking IV drug delivery through sensors.

“Chicago is a great place for entrepreneurs, and mHUB has built an incredible community around supporting startups that are manufacturing products, including medical devices,” says Lyle Berkowitz, MD, a Chicagoland physician, entrepreneur, and investor. “As a program mentor, I’m excited to welcome to the city a group of hardtech focused healthcare startups that will help revolutionize how we diagnose and manage patients across the world.”

The selected startups are the result of a rigorous selection process that included an advisory committee of healthcare industry experts, venture capitalists, manufacturers, and serial entrepreneurs. The startups were selected based on their ability to address large, unmet needs with innovative solutions that will transform patient care.
In alphabetical order, cohort teams include:

• Bionode (Indianapolis, Indiana) developing smart contact lens system that rapidly reduces intra-ocular pressure in patients with glaucoma
• Equibands (Chicago, Illinois): developing Minimize, a lightweight, non-invasive, and discreet bracelet designed to counteract hand tremors – restoring independence for over 120 million people worldwide
• HIVE (St. Louis, Missouri): developing CloudConnect, a smart IV line that monitors when patients take (and forget to take) IV medication, continuously sending data to clinicians to empower them to act quickly and prevent expensive re-admissions
• Neursantys (Calgary, Alberta, CA): developing NEURVESTA, a wearable which detects neurophysiological impairments disrupting balance and gait and delivers personalized neurostimulation to treat vestibular disruptions caused by aging, head impacts, and other medical conditions
• NovaXS (Berkeley, CA): developing Telosis, a needle-free medicine delivery platform delivering biologics into the lymphatic system for applications such as gene therapy, oncology, muscular degenerative disease, and endocrinology while improving treatment compliance
• NXgenPort (St Paul, Minnesota): developing NXgenPort (NGP), a device that maximizes remote care in cancer patients by combining proven chemo-port efficacy with microchip and sensor technology to monitor and report physiological measurements in vivo
• Ping (Chicago, Illinois): developing wearables that capture the wellness information of seniors to drive up engagement between aging populations and their family caregivers
• ProMedix (Portland, OR): developing HydraSense to provide a rapid, accurate, and noninvasive assessment at the clinical bedside or remote care setting to help diagnose sepsis and monitor patient decline and response to treatment
• Walela (Mundelein, Illinois): developing sensor technology that measures fetal heart rate and blood pH to improve fetal and maternal outcomes and reduce unnecessary c-sections

“When the mHUB accelerator program was launched, MedTech was an obvious vertical for mHUB to support,” says Melissa Lederer, mHUB chief experience officer. “The development of medical devices is a complex process. mHUB is positioned to help accelerate the product development of hardware while supporting the teams with the resources, guidance and healthcare industry access they need to navigate the commercialization path to market.”

The MedTech cohort is the second cohort of mHUB’s Accelerated Incubation program launched in 2020. The program was founded to address the specific barriers of bringing a hardtech solution to market. Mainly, the ability to rapidly prototype and scale and connect with investors who realize the upside of disruptive hardware solutions.

The mHUB accelerator provides access to capital through a $15M Product Impact Fund, nearly closed, with follow-on investment opportunities from the program’s corporate partners as well as access to over $6M of capital-intensive prototyping equipment and business resources. It matches seasoned mentors to each startup, focuses on business and leadership training and offers access to a broad manufacturing ecosystem. Being situated in Chicago, one of the nation’s largest manufacturing regions, mHUB has built a supplier network of over 500+ U.S. manufacturers and growing.

“Advances in technology are revolutionizing digital health and personalized medicine,” says Cathy Skinner, CEO, NXgenPort. “The mHUB accelerator program provides tremendous value to a medical device company like NXgenPort that uses microchip and sensor technology to enable remote monitoring of cancer patients. As an entrepreneur with over a decade of startup experience, accessing a prototyping lab as well as investment, on top of mentorship from healthcare leaders in Chicago, is a unique opportunity.”

“The healthcare industry is primed for disruption, partially due to the global COVID-19 pandemic and partially the speed at which smart technologies are transforming industries,” says Heather Walsh, executive director, MedTech Cohort, mHUB Accelerator Program. “Demand-driven, novel medical device technologies are being developed in response to the identification of new pain points in healthcare and an understanding of how the current technology can meet those challenges. I’m thrilled to work with this group of startups who are bringing novel approaches to solving large, unmet needs.