Revolutionary syringe technology one step closer to market
May 3, 2022
Founder gearing up for Series A funding round
Cardiovascular disease kills 17M people a year, making it the leading cause of mortality across the globe.
As many as half of these deaths are caused by heart attacks — but emergency healthcare providers will soon have a new tool in their belt to save these patients, thanks to Mick Hopkins and the MedTech Launch Fund.
Hopkins is a 20-year+ emergency room nurse turned founder of True Concepts Medical Technologies, where he has invented a series of dual-syringe technologies designed to address problems he repeatedly encountered in that emergency room.
SAFE Syringe™ is the first of his syringes to be prototyped, thanks to support from the MedTech Launch Fund.
True Concepts Medical Technologies new SAFE and D’VIA syringes will change the way life-saving medicine is delivered.
Treating cardiac arrest
Currently, certain cardiac conditions require medication followed rapidly by a 20 ml normal saline flush to ensure that the medication reaches the heart immediately. The current setup to administer these medications can take longer than the 4-6 minutes, is prone to error in administration, and 90 percent of clinicians fail to flush enough saline through after the medication.
SAFE Syringe looks to change all that — its advanced 2-in-1 dual chamber design enables pre-loaded medications followed by a 20 ml flush to be delivered in one step, ensuring the correct right amounts of medication are delivered rapidly to the heart.
“I see this revolutionizing the way code medications are given,” said Jordan Bonomo, MD, Director of Critical Care in Emergency Medicine, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
The device was prototyped over the last 12 months with support from the MedTech Launch Fund, launched in fall 2020 to accelerate the development of medical technology by funding alpha prototype development. The fund is managed by Launch Dayton partners Parallax Advanced Research and Entrepreneurs’ Center and financially supported by Ohio Third Frontier and the Economic Development Administration’s i6 program.
Hopkins was one of the first founders accepted into the MedTech Launch Fund portfolio.
“It’s been a tremendous experience, to see your idea come all the way through to fruition and actually have a working prototype,” Hopkins said. “It was a catalyst to take everything to the next level, build out the business, and really prepare us for an exciting 2022 and 2023.”
So what’s next?
SAFE Syringe isn’t the only syringe technology Hopkins and his company are developing. A second device, D’VIA™ , aims to eliminate the $8.3B hospitals lose annually treating false-positive diagnoses for sepsis.
These false-positives occur when blood culture specimens — the gold standard to diagnosis sepsis — are contaminated during collection. Every year, there are an estimated 40M blood cultures collected in U.S. hospitals. Eight percent of these draws are positive for sepsis, 40% of those positive tests are false-positives, causing unnecessary prescription of antibiotics, increased hospitals stays and financial burden to patients, providers and payers.
D’VIA will utilize a 4-in-1 dual-chamber design to isolate the first 3ml of blood likely to contain contaminates. This blood is repurposed for other testing, so it is not wasted. The remaining chambers ensures that a full 20ml of “clean” blood is collected, then accurately dispenses the appropriate amount of blood into each blood culture bottle.
“I’m confident that the D’VIA dual chamber blood collection system has the potential to positively impact the care of septic and suspected sepsis patients across the entire population,” said Kettering Health Medical Director Dr. Michale Lakes.
D’VIA will likely be the first device to get to market. But the company holds 30+ US and international patents in 11 countries on its syringe designs, so it certainly won’t be the last.
Hopkins and his team are gearing up for a $15M Series A funding raise to finish development and rapidly pursue regulatory clearance for its innovative technologies.
“It has been amazing over the last couple of years — the quality of the innovation and sophistication of the inventors and researchers is definitely increasing and inspiring,” said Dan Sands, tech scout and advisor to the MedTech Launch Fund. “I think the impact of the fund and the Dayton Entrepreneurs’ Center bringing together resources to help mentor and coach these early companies is making a significant impact.”
To learn more about True Concepts Medical Technologies, follow the company on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/true-concepts-medical-technologies-llc/.
