Six new products poised to improve the quality of health care will take center stage at a June event for life sciences innovators and investors reshaping the industry.
The Big Company/Little Company Showcase on Thursday, June 16, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., will be a free, online program spotlighting new medical devices and technologies. It will connect entrepreneurs, researchers and venture capitalists to one another and resources with an aim to advance their work.
The event is presented by the UMass Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies (CAPCaT), a business incubator funded by the National Institutes of Health that promotes innovations designed to improve the well-being of patients with heart, blood, lung and sleep disorders. The center is housed in the Massachusetts Medical Development Center (M2D2), a joint venture of UMass Lowell and Worcester-based UMass Chan Medical School. M2D2 assists entrepreneurs with all aspects of moving new products and technologies from the drawing board to the marketplace.
Among those welcoming participants to the session will be UMass Lowell Chancellor-elect Julie Chen.
This event spotlights M2D2's commitment to engaging with life science entrepreneurs, corporate partners and investors to advance innovations that improve health outcomes. UMass Lowell is proud to partner with our colleagues at UMass Chan Medical School to provide the expertise and resources needed to assist medical device and biotech entrepreneurs to realize their vision and develop viable commercial products."
Julie Chen, UMass Lowell Chancellor-elect
Entrepreneurs from six startups developing point-of-care innovations will pitch their inventions before a panel of experts. Products featured include mobile apps that monitor lung and airway health as well as devices that assess iron levels in pediatric patients, monitor blood pressure, regulate the delivery of oxygen to patients receiving emergency treatment and provide hearing protection to infants in neonatal intensive care units.
"The CAPCaT collaboration between UMass Chan Medical School and UMass Lowell is among the most innovative and gratifying I'm involved in," said CAPCaT co-director Dr. David McManus, Richard M. Haidack Professor and chair of the Department of Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School, where he is the founding director of the program in digital medicine. "We look forward to another great Big Company/Little Company event exploring cutting-edge solutions to improve patient health."
Offering the session's keynote remarks will be Girardin Jean-Louis, professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Miami and director of the Center on Translational Sleep and Circadian Sciences and the NIH-funded PRIDE Institute on Behavioral Medicine and Sleep Disorders.
"We're very excited to host Dr. Jean-Louis, one of the world's leading experts on advancing the science and practice of sleep and circadian sciences. His research focuses on the multi-level barriers that prevent the adoption of healthful practices in underserved communities," said Bryan Buchholz, CAPCaT co-director and UMass Lowell professor and chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department.
Mara Aspinall, managing director of health care investment and policy at BlueStone Venture Partners, and Kadir Kadhiresan, vice president of venture investments at Johnson & Johnson Innovation, will also lead an interactive discussion about the medical device and biotech industry.
M2D2 has vetted more than 250 medical device and biotech ventures and supported more than 100 startups since its inception in 2007. In total, M2D2 resident companies have secured more than $150 million in external funding for their innovations.
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