Ranica Arrowsmith, Associate Editor 07.29.15
Medical Product Outsourcing’s Top 30 issue highlights giants in the industry, providing insight into the successes and pitfalls experienced by the companies in medtech that bring in the most money. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the emerging companies that are revolutionizing their own fields in numerous small and not-so-small ways. With an aging population and new technology that allows for more customizable, niche products, more people that need specialized medical technology now are able to receive good care to solve unique problems from startups catering to specific needs. For instance, San Francisco, Calif.-based startup Standard Cyborg is making a 3-D printed, customized waterproof leg for amputees that’s reportedly 28 times cheaper than a normal walking prosthetic leg; and Somerville, Mass.-based Sensible Baby Inc. won the SXSW Accelerator’s Bootstrap Award in 2014, which is given to the company that has achieved the most thus far with the fewest resources.
Let’s take a look at some of the small companies making big splashes:
Standard Cyborg was founded by engineer Jeff Huber, who also is an amputee. For most of his life, Huber has used a prosthetic leg. He was born with a congenital birth defect that left him without a fully formed fibula. As a growing child, Huber would get a new leg every nine months or so, a familiar and expensive problem for children who need prosthetics. Once he became an adult, insurance only would cover a new leg every three to five years. His current leg costs $23,000; for patients who are above-the-leg amputees, it can cost double. In his own Emeryville, Calif. workspace, Huber started tinkering with 3-D printers and various different plastics including ABS and PLA. One of the materials was promising, but wasn’t quite strong enough until he found the perfect blend of traditional techniques to form a plastic covered with carbon fiber.
“The process has this interesting blend of human and machine labor,” he told TechCrunch in February. “What’s interesting is how the machines help us print the legs. But the machines couldn’t design this on their own.”
All of Standard Cyborg’s prosthetics are custom-made; the final lamination process takes two hours and is done by hand. Even with the more labor-intensive portion, Huber’s techniques allow him to sell these prosthetics at just $799 a piece. The company is backed by the seed fund Y Combinator. Huber remains the founder and currently is the sole employee.
Sensible Baby makes what it calls a “baby monitor for the 21st century.” The tiny device called the SmartOne clips onto a baby’s clothes and monitors ambient temperature, posture, movement and breathing, and wirelessly sends updates to a parent’s smartphone. This is a boon to new parents for whom the looming threat of the as-yet unexplainable sudden infant death syndrome is a constant fear.
“We believe there’s uncaptured information around your child and the behavior of your child that can be used to a parent’s advantage,” company CEO Ben Cooper told the SXSW judges. “We see [SmartOne] as being able to unlock all of this data and information and being able to correlate that with different events.”
SmartOne will be able to look at data over time and offer predictive metrics. For instance, a text message from the device’s app might predict 45 minutes of additional sleep time if the child is fed in the next 15 minutes. The device will be sold direct to consumer—it’s not on the market yet—and will cost approximately $149.
At the end of 2014, Kinsa Inc. closed $9.6 million in Series A financing on the heels of a new program called Fluency, which allows Kinsa to track the spread of illness in schools and other close-knit communities. Kinsa makes a smart thermometer that pairs with an app to constantly monitor temperature as well as encourage continuous use via animations and other tools.
“What’s really special about Kinsa and the thermometer in general is that it is the first device, the first piece of hardware, that actually verifies that you’re sick,” said founder and CEO Inder Singh. “It’s the most ubiquitous medical device in the world, and we’re simply piggybacking off of, and improving, regular behavior.”
The company is based in New York, N.Y.
Let’s take a look at some of the small companies making big splashes:
Standard Cyborg was founded by engineer Jeff Huber, who also is an amputee. For most of his life, Huber has used a prosthetic leg. He was born with a congenital birth defect that left him without a fully formed fibula. As a growing child, Huber would get a new leg every nine months or so, a familiar and expensive problem for children who need prosthetics. Once he became an adult, insurance only would cover a new leg every three to five years. His current leg costs $23,000; for patients who are above-the-leg amputees, it can cost double. In his own Emeryville, Calif. workspace, Huber started tinkering with 3-D printers and various different plastics including ABS and PLA. One of the materials was promising, but wasn’t quite strong enough until he found the perfect blend of traditional techniques to form a plastic covered with carbon fiber.
“The process has this interesting blend of human and machine labor,” he told TechCrunch in February. “What’s interesting is how the machines help us print the legs. But the machines couldn’t design this on their own.”
All of Standard Cyborg’s prosthetics are custom-made; the final lamination process takes two hours and is done by hand. Even with the more labor-intensive portion, Huber’s techniques allow him to sell these prosthetics at just $799 a piece. The company is backed by the seed fund Y Combinator. Huber remains the founder and currently is the sole employee.
Sensible Baby makes what it calls a “baby monitor for the 21st century.” The tiny device called the SmartOne clips onto a baby’s clothes and monitors ambient temperature, posture, movement and breathing, and wirelessly sends updates to a parent’s smartphone. This is a boon to new parents for whom the looming threat of the as-yet unexplainable sudden infant death syndrome is a constant fear.
“We believe there’s uncaptured information around your child and the behavior of your child that can be used to a parent’s advantage,” company CEO Ben Cooper told the SXSW judges. “We see [SmartOne] as being able to unlock all of this data and information and being able to correlate that with different events.”
SmartOne will be able to look at data over time and offer predictive metrics. For instance, a text message from the device’s app might predict 45 minutes of additional sleep time if the child is fed in the next 15 minutes. The device will be sold direct to consumer—it’s not on the market yet—and will cost approximately $149.
At the end of 2014, Kinsa Inc. closed $9.6 million in Series A financing on the heels of a new program called Fluency, which allows Kinsa to track the spread of illness in schools and other close-knit communities. Kinsa makes a smart thermometer that pairs with an app to constantly monitor temperature as well as encourage continuous use via animations and other tools.
“What’s really special about Kinsa and the thermometer in general is that it is the first device, the first piece of hardware, that actually verifies that you’re sick,” said founder and CEO Inder Singh. “It’s the most ubiquitous medical device in the world, and we’re simply piggybacking off of, and improving, regular behavior.”
The company is based in New York, N.Y.