The Texas Medical Center’s accelerator TMCx unveiled the members of its inaugural class: 22 healthIT companies in informatics, medical devices, and biomaterials.
TMC executives hosted a meet-and-greet Monday morning to introduce the startup founders to the media just before the six-month accelerator program begins. “Our job is to make you successful,” says Bobby Robbins, TMC’s CEO. “We think we have a distinctive advantage over other accelerators, sitting in the shadows of the largest medical center in the world.”
For many of the companies that make up the class, having access to the dozens of hospitals and medical schools that make up the TMC—potential customers all—is a large part of the reason they applied to the program.
The companies are primarily in the healthIT and devices space, trying to leverage software and mobile to improve care for the elderly, cancer patients, and other patient groups. They are also trying to help providers be more efficient and precise in treating their patients. TMC says that 260 companies applied to be part of the accelerator.
Among the companies in the first class is Medical Adhesive Revolution, or MAR, which won last year’s Rice University Business Plan Competition. And we’ve met two of the TMCx companies previously in Xconomy: NanoLinea, which is developing a minimally invasive therapeutic implant treatment for cardiac ventricular arrhythmia based on carbon nanotube fibers, and DiBS, software that takes health data and creates customizable and dynamic maps that can easily be updated when new information is added to the data stream.
During the six-month program—which is designed to be a blend of traditional accelerator and incubator curriculum—the entrepreneurs will work on customer recruitment, develop a regulatory strategy, and how to get funding. Bill McKeon, TMC’s COO and chief strategy officer, says the companies were deliberately selected so that they would not be in similar spaces and, therefore, competitors. “We want you to help each other,” he says.
About half of the companies are from Houston, with one from Germany and Israel. The companies will finish up the program with a pitch day September 10. Here is the full list:
Adient Medical: Developing absorbable medical devices that vanish without intervention after use.
Admetsys: Developing a fully automated glucose control system for use in hospitals.
Brain Check: Has mobile-based software that can measure brain function, targeted toward athletes and concussions.
Clear Ear: A device to better flush out wax from ears.
Creative Bioinformatics: Has an online marketplace for freelance bioinformatics scientists.
Delafield Solutions: Has developed hardware that can provide real-time disinfection of air and surfaces in office, home, and institutional environments.
DiBS: Developed software to transform health data into customizable maps.
ECM Technologies: Uses bacterial-derived proteins as a platform for designing collagens for biomedical needs.
Gauss Surgical: Has developed a real-time monitor for surgical blood loss.
iShoe: Has taken NASA technology to develop a scale that can track your balance and is designed to prevent falls among the elderly.
Laser Tissue Welding: Has developed non-ablative hemostasis for sutureless surgical repair using materials in human blood plasma protein.
Medical Adhesive Revolution: Is developing what it calls the next generation in surgical adhesives.
NanoLinea: Has a minimally invasive therapeutic implant treatment for cardiac ventricular arrhythmia.
Noninvasix: Has developed a non-invasive monitor of fetal cerebral blood oxygenation.
Oxitone Medical: Has a bracelet that can continuously monitor patients with pulmonary, heart, and sleep-related diseases.
Proximare Health: Has developed an automated referral process that matches patients, treatments, and providers.
Redox: Developed an API for the integration of electronic health records.
Sage Health: Has developed a “digital nervous system” for hospitals to expand electronic health records with sensors and analytics.
SemanticMD: Has developed a collaborative annotation and visual search platform for medical images.
Seratis: Collects “digital conversations” on a patient into a single cloud-based platform.
Skylit Medical: Has a lighting technology to provide skin care for patients with immune system conditions.
Will 2 Love: An online platform for cancer patients and others with chronic illness who are suffering from sexuality or fertility problems.
