ProMedica Establishes Medical Device Innovation Incubator in Ohio

ProMedica Health System, based in Toledo, Ohio, has launched a business incubator to nurture startups in the medical device and bioinformatics sectors.

Located in a 6,000-square-foot facility on the system’s Wildwood Medical Center campus in Toledo, the ProMedica Innovations incubator will provide entrepreneurs with office space and support services. Startups that participate in the incubator  also will receive capital funding as well as networking and mentoring opportunities.

ProMedica created its innovations division in 2012 to create medical devices and other inventions that could be commercialized and used to improve care. The company’s goal is to eventually make the incubator program financially self-sustaining.

VentureMedGroup, the first startup to participate in the incubator, will receive $1 million in investments, half from ProMedica and half from the Ohio Third Frontier Pre-Seed Fund Capitalization Program, a state initiative that provides loans to technology startups.
VentureMedGroup has developed the FLEX Scoring Catheter, a device that makes shallow scores in plaque lesions that can more effectively prepare patients’ arteries for angioplasty treatments.

The startup was founded by John Pigott, M.D., a vascular surgeon and medical director of ProMedica Innovations. He estimates the market opportunity to be more than $1 billion for a device such as the FLEX catheter. Clinical trials for the FLEX platform began in Poland in October 2014, and VentureMed hopes to enter the U.S. market by the second quarter of 2015.