Medical Technology

Over 1 million people in the United States every year receive surgical treatment for meniscus injuries due to their painful and debilitating symptoms. Most meniscus tears are treated with a meniscectomy (removal of the damaged tissue) since the meniscus has extremely limited healing capabilities. The removal of tissue increases the forces exerted on the knee joint cartilage, which can create recurring pain, mechanical impairment/immobility, and degenerative changes much earlier than if the meniscus was intact and protecting the cartilage.

Parasight System Inc. aims to address the inefficiencies and inaccuracies in traditional veterinary diagnostic methods. Current approaches to fecal exams, heartworm detection, and Lyme disease testing often rely on manual processes that are time-consuming, prone to error, and dependent on subjective interpretation. This can lead to missed diagnoses or delayed treatments, ultimately affecting the health and well-being of animals. Parasight System's solution leverages advanced AI technology and antigen-based fluorescence detection to automate and enhance diagnostic accuracy.

DASI Simulations is tackling a critical problem in heart valve procedures, particularly TAVR: the challenge of imperfect interaction between the implantable device and the patient's unique anatomy.     

Here's a breakdown of the problem they address:  

One-Size-Fits-All Approach: Traditional methods of planning these complex procedures often rely on manual measurements from CT scans and don't fully account for the patient's anatomy. This can lead to complications such as: 

Current drug discovery is inefficient, slow, and costly; only a transformative approach to de-risk and economize discovery will deliver novel cancer therapeutics to suffering patients. To this end, Empath Biosciences has developed a process which will lead to a three-fold increase in optimized leads, each with >50% improvement in the probability of technical and regulatory success (PTRS) over standard small-molecule based discovery.

Currently hemophilia A patients must either infuse Factor VIII (FVIII) clotting factor 2-3 times per week or take weekly injections.  30% of hemophilia A patients develop inhibitors (neutralizing antibodies) to their missing clotting factor. FVIII gene therapies that were in development or Roctavian, which was recently approved are not durable, meaning they fail to deliver the promised single infusion treatment for hemophilia.  Worse still, patients with inhibitors were ineligible for these gene therapies.

Steam sterilizers take hours to sterilize, damage expensive assets over multiple cycles and can be a source for recontamination. Also, they require de-ionized water and significant amounts of electricity to operate and have become an increasing economic burden on oral and medical care.

As a spinoff from UT Austin, ARTS Surgical Inc. is pioneering a new era in orthopedic and neurosurgical procedures with our state-of-the-art steerable drilling robotic system. Our mission is to revolutionize minimally invasive surgeries by enhancing precision, safety, and efficiency in diagnosing and treating conditions involving complex hard tissue anatomies. A key limitation of current surgical tools lies in their rigidity, which restricts access to straight-line trajectories and prevents clinicians from reaching deep, intricate anatomical regions.

Augment Health is developing a noninvasive bladder monitor and AI algorithm for 7M patients with bladder dysfunction following neurologic disease or injury, a $10.2B market. The technology shifts in-clinic diagnostics, which today face a 44% inconclusive test rate, to the home while also eliminating reversed bladder filling and rectal catheterization through proprietary data analysis.