Center Assists Medical Device Startups

Supported by a $7.9 million grant from NIH, the Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center (M2D2) https://www.uml.edu/Research/M2D2, is going to develop a new center to assist inventors to develop promising new point-of-care devices and technologies to help patients with heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders.

Today, heart, lung, and blood diseases account for 41 percent of deaths in the U.S and produce more than $400 billion in health-care expenses and lost income to patients and caregivers, according to NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) https://www.nhlbi.gov

“The new center will address the urgent need to bring medical technologies and devices to market to provide fast, accurate information to patients with heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders so they can better monitor their conditions,” said Stephen McCarthy, M2D2 Founder and Chairman of UMass Lowell’s Biomedical Engineering Department who will also co-direct the new center.

The new center called the “Center for Advancing Point-of-Care Technologies” (CAPCaT) will enable entrepreneurs to have resources available via scientists, business developers, legal experts, along with other resources at UMass Lowell http://www.uml.edu and UMass Medical School https://www.umassmed.edu.

Examples of innovations to be developed at the center can include portable devic3es and sensors able to measure the amount of medication in a patient’s blood, develop products that use smart devices to record heart or respiratory rates, and technologies that alert patients to health changes such as worsening asthma. CAPCaT also seeks to support technologies that promote holistic methods to manage diseases, including devices that are able to measure stress levels or promote mindfulness.

Entrepreneurs working on innovations that are close to being tested in clinical settings are invited to apply to join the Center. Applicants may be physicians, doctorate-level faculty from any U.S college of university, or an officer of a small business based within the U.S.

Successful applicants will receive seed funding and support not only from M2D2’s medical, business and legal experts, professionals in the private sector, but also from the staff at NHLBI and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health https://nccih.nih.gov. If interested in more information, email M2D2@uml.edu.