Resource

UH Ventures Secures $800,000 in Grant Money to Further Innovations Born at UH

resource icon

UH Ventures takes it to the next level.

The submission of ideas from UH caregivers is proving to be extremely successful, and UH Ventures is demonstrating its prowess in taking these ideas to the next stage by way of protecting the intellectual property rights, conducting market analysis, creating business plans and building product proof-of-concept prototypes.

The State of Ohio recently recognized this expertise by awarding $500,000 to UH Ventures to support the development of new UH ideas, and $300,000 to two companies that emanated from UH caregivers, which are listed below:

  • RightFlow Medical ($150K) – developing and commercializing FORGE, a novel minimally invasive glaucoma stent invented by Faruk H Orge, MD, Pediatric Ophthalmologist, UH Cleveland Medical Center and UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital. FORGE is a unique, multi-bypass drainage implantable device for the treatment of mild to moderate glaucoma patients that have failed to respond to medication. The unique design of the device could potentially offer the benefits of pressure reduction through a single device implant, improving outcomes at a lower cost, and an opportunity for improved safety.
  • Hemaptics ($150K) – creating and commercializing a blood transfusion management system, HemaLogiX™, which assesses the appropriateness of transfusions by applying an evidence based algorithm to patient-specific variables ensuring blood is clinically indicated, saving costs and eliminating unnecessary harm to patients. This system leverages a technology invented by James Hill, MD, a critical care and anesthesiology specialist at UH and System Medical Director for Transfusion Services and Blood Management; Jennifer Dawson, Senior Operations Engineer; and Craig Schwabl, UH Director, Applications Emerging Technologies.

The state’s organization dedicated to accelerating the creation and growth of investable and scalable technologies and tech-enabled companies, Ohio Third Frontier (OTF), provided the award money to help each of the companies take their ideas to market. This involves refining the product for commercialization and beta testing, which paves the way for selling to other health systems.

The $500,000 that Ohio Third Frontier awarded to UH Ventures helps facilitate growth of UH’s Technology Validation & Startup Fund, which is a program that UH has leveraged for several years now to advance early stage ideas that show potential for blossoming into new companies like Hemaptics and RightFlow Medical. UH Ventures has matched OTF’s award with another $500,000 for a total of $1 million it can now deploy against 7-10 projects. This funding can be used to conduct market and regulatory analysis, as well as to build and test product prototypes that will establish proof-of-concept and hopefully ultimately result in launching new companies for commercialization.

“The truly exciting part is that we have started doing venture formation — leveraging our UH intellectual assets for generating the ideas, and then maturing them, de-risking them, and utilizing UH Ventures’ management expertise to accelerate commercialization, and co-create companies for taking the ideas to market” explained Neil Wyant, Managing Director at UH Ventures.  “We are now in a position to bring these innovations outside our organization for the benefit of others. The biggest lesson learned is that no idea is too small. Inventors don’t have to worry about all the details, as that’s where the UH Ventures team comes in. We hope this recent success will inspire others to send us their ideas so together we can transform healthcare.”

If you have an idea for a product development or process improvement, you may submit it here.

More information about UH’s TVSF program is available here.