Emerging technologies in healthcare, part 4: MedTech Innovator

MedTech Innovator is an accelerator that works with large companies to invest in, support and scale healthcare technology companies. Its partners include Johnson & Johnson, the American Heart Association, and others. MedTech has graduated more than 700 companies with 93% of them still in business. 

Paul Grand, CEO of MedTech Innovator, spoke with MobiHealthNews about how the accelerator identifies key risks in a company’s commercialization journey and provides expert support to help startups navigate the market.

MobiHealthNews: What is MedTech Innovator, and how does it help emerging technology companies?

Paul Grand: MedTech Innovator is an accelerator. We like to call ourselves the graduate school of accelerators, meaning we are not a place where people show up and say, “Hey, I have an idea to start a company.” That’s not for us. We are looking for companies that have at least prototypes of their technology already that are working, and they have some evidence that those things actually are going to work.

It might be benchtop, it might be a cadaver, it could be human data, it could be animal data, whatever. There is some evidence, some early evidence, that what they are doing is going to work.

They actually have a full-time team of at least one person, if not a much larger team, and they have some funding because we are looking for companies that are on the journey. 

Now, all too often, I think the world kind of forgets about startups once they graduate, let’s say, from a university or an accelerator, like, okay, they’re on their own. Now, that’s not the case. What we focus on are those companies that are now on the path. They have some resources, and we want to make sure those companies succeed. So, that is our focus.

Think of it like a diagnostic. We look at a company, and we say, from where they are today until they are on the market and maybe even acquired at the exit, what are all the mistakes or all the risk points that they have ahead of them? And we analyze every single one of those, and then we assign experts to that company to make sure they are doing the right thing. So, that is what we do at MedTech Innovator, and it is a huge amount of work. It is tailored to each company, and the results speak for themselves.

MHN: Are you more critical about backing emerging technology-based companies than other companies offering more common or well-established tech?

Grand: Occasionally we, and when I say we, it is not just the MedTech Innovator team; we have over 500 people who are involved in evaluating the companies as part of the selection process, and then every one of the companies, as a final step, also has to have one of the large strategic companies in the MedTech industry, companies like Johnson & Johnson or Edwards Lifesciences, Dexcom, Gore, Olympus, Zimmer Biomet, Nipro, all these companies who are specialists in particular areas and who have within their organization KOLs and other people who really know that space is going to vet these companies. 

A really critical thing when you think about emerging technologies is that there may be a new mechanism of action. Think about all the things in brain computing interfaces. The BCI space is really exciting, and there is still a lot that has not been proven there.  We will sit around the room with these experts, and they will be like, “Look, we got to take a flyer on this one.” There is not going to be evidence that this thing really works for seven years. [We won’t know if] this actually solves a problem, but if it does, it is going to be a game changer.

When you hear these people who are, like, senior vice president of the MedTech division of one of these large companies saying, “Hey, this could be a game changer for all of us,” that’s a huge thing. 

I think all of us recognize that there is never a perfect company where you go, like, they totally eliminated all risk and everything is perfect; they still have risk in them. But the emerging tech, especially, is a space where I think all of us are willing to step back a little bit and go, “Well, this is what this is all about, making transformational advances,” which is what you see with emerging tech versus incremental advances.

MHN: It is high risk/high reward.

Grand: Exactly.

MHN: What advice do you have for companies in the emerging technology space when approaching an accelerator?

Grand: Maybe building a little bit on what I was saying, like, really study the need. Where is there a need? People make the mistake of saying, well, what’s the fastest path to market? What’s the easiest regulatory approval? If it’s an FDA-regulated technology, for example, what’s the fastest path? Let’s do that, and then we’ll prove it, and then we’ll go to where the opportunity really is. Don’t do that is one of my biggest pieces of advice because fast to market still costs a lot of money.

Fast to market still might be three years or five years or seven, and when you get to market, if nobody cares about what it is that you are doing, you are not going to unlock that next round of funding because people are like, “Hey, you just spent $50 million getting to a market that nobody cares about.” 

So, I would say go for the big opportunity – this is where this technology really can make a difference. Let’s develop it properly. Let’s raise the proper amount of capital to do the right evidence generation strategies to get this thing approved for the big opportunity. That is what investors want. That is what the market needs. We don’t need a product developed for something that is not going to make a big impact.

MedTech Innovator is an accelerator that works with large companies to invest in, support and scale healthcare technology companies. Its partners include Johnson & Johnson, the American Heart Association, and others. MedTech has graduated more than 700 companies with 93% of them still in business. 

Paul Grand, CEO of MedTech Innovator, spoke with MobiHealthNews about how the accelerator identifies key risks in a company’s commercialization journey and provides expert support to help startups navigate the market.

MobiHealthNews: What is MedTech Innovator, and how does it help emerging technology companies?

Paul Grand: MedTech Innovator is an accelerator. We like to call ourselves the graduate school of accelerators, meaning we are not a place where people show up and say, “Hey, I have an idea to start a company.” That’s not for us. We are looking for companies that have at least prototypes of their technology already that are working, and they have some evidence that those things actually are going to work.

It might be benchtop, it might be a cadaver, it could be human data, it could be animal data, whatever. There is some evidence, some early evidence, that what they are doing is going to work.

They actually have a full-time team of at least one person, if not a much larger team, and they have some funding because we are looking for companies that are on the journey. 

Now, all too often, I think the world kind of forgets about startups once they graduate, let’s say, from a university or an accelerator, like, okay, they’re on their own. Now, that’s not the case. What we focus on are those companies that are now on the path. They have some resources, and we want to make sure those companies succeed. So, that is our focus.

Think of it like a diagnostic. We look at a company, and we say, from where they are today until they are on the market and maybe even acquired at the exit, what are all the mistakes or all the risk points that they have ahead of them? And we analyze every single one of those, and then we assign experts to that company to make sure they are doing the right thing. So, that is what we do at MedTech Innovator, and it is a huge amount of work. It is tailored to each company, and the results speak for themselves.

MHN: Are you more critical about backing emerging technology-based companies than other companies offering more common or well-established tech?

Grand: Occasionally we, and when I say we, it is not just the MedTech Innovator team; we have over 500 people who are involved in evaluating the companies as part of the selection process, and then every one of the companies, as a final step, also has to have one of the large strategic companies in the MedTech industry, companies like Johnson & Johnson or Edwards Lifesciences, Dexcom, Gore, Olympus, Zimmer Biomet, Nipro, all these companies who are specialists in particular areas and who have within their organization KOLs and other people who really know that space is going to vet these companies. 

A really critical thing when you think about emerging technologies is that there may be a new mechanism of action. Think about all the things in brain computing interfaces. The BCI space is really exciting, and there is still a lot that has not been proven there.  We will sit around the room with these experts, and they will be like, “Look, we got to take a flyer on this one.” There is not going to be evidence that this thing really works for seven years. [We won’t know if] this actually solves a problem, but if it does, it is going to be a game changer.

When you hear these people who are, like, senior vice president of the MedTech division of one of these large companies saying, “Hey, this could be a game changer for all of us,” that’s a huge thing. 

I think all of us recognize that there is never a perfect company where you go, like, they totally eliminated all risk and everything is perfect; they still have risk in them. But the emerging tech, especially, is a space where I think all of us are willing to step back a little bit and go, “Well, this is what this is all about, making transformational advances,” which is what you see with emerging tech versus incremental advances.

MHN: It is high risk/high reward.

Grand: Exactly.

MHN: What advice do you have for companies in the emerging technology space when approaching an accelerator?

Grand: Maybe building a little bit on what I was saying, like, really study the need. Where is there a need? People make the mistake of saying, well, what’s the fastest path to market? What’s the easiest regulatory approval? If it’s an FDA-regulated technology, for example, what’s the fastest path? Let’s do that, and then we’ll prove it, and then we’ll go to where the opportunity really is. Don’t do that is one of my biggest pieces of advice because fast to market still costs a lot of money.

Fast to market still might be three years or five years or seven, and when you get to market, if nobody cares about what it is that you are doing, you are not going to unlock that next round of funding because people are like, “Hey, you just spent $50 million getting to a market that nobody cares about.” 

So, I would say go for the big opportunity – this is where this technology really can make a difference. Let’s develop it properly. Let’s raise the proper amount of capital to do the right evidence generation strategies to get this thing approved for the big opportunity. That is what investors want. That is what the market needs. We don’t need a product developed for something that is not going to make a big impact.