Start-Up Previews, March 2012
Executive Summary
This Month's Profile Group, Surgical Incision Closure Start-Ups, features profiles of EndoEvolution, ZipLine Medical and ZSX Medical. Plus these Start-Ups Across Health Care: Foundation Medicine, PMD Healthcare, VasoStitch and Virttu Biologics.
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PMD Healthcare Inc.
The current tool by which patients with lungs diseases (like asthma and COPD) measure their own lung function at home, the peak expiratory flow meter, is not sufficiently informative enough to guide decision-making. PMD Healthcare aims to help respiratory patients care for their disease better. The company has developed a spirometer for home use, Spiro PD, that works on the same principles as the well-accepted office-based and hospital spirometers, but is easy to use and affordable.
EndoEvolution LLC
Despite great strides in minimally invasive surgery over the years, suturing continues to vex surgeons. That’s understandable, given the amount of hand-eye coordination required: surgeons hold two long instruments and watch a video screen from across the room while performing very intricate motions with their hands and fingers. EndoEvolution LLC has developed an automated suturing system that mimics the way surgeons manually suture. The Endo360° uses a traditional curved needle instead of a straight needle, and it drives the needle in the exact manner a surgeon would when suturing by hand: grabbing a needle from its tail, pushing the point of the needle through the tissue and picking up the point.
ZSX Medical LLC
Internal surgical closure following hysterectomies and C-sections is time-consuming, and it is associated with a number of costly complications, including infection and gynecologic adhesions. Reducing complications for patients and the resulting cost burden to health care systems worldwide are the goals of ZSX Medical LLC, which has developed a laparoscopic, bioabsorbable internal surgical closure system designed to be a superior alternative to standard suturing and stapling technologies used in hysterectomies, C-sections and other OB/GYN surgeries.