Preclinical startup LifeServe Innovations has pivoted and switched the target market of its airway access devices to bedside critical care users.
Previously, the young company had planned to target emergency users, such as EMTs and battlefield medics, for its tracheostomy devices that drew their design inspiration from the way a snake bites its prey.
Now, LifeServe is aiming its device at helping anesthesiologists in critical care bedside situations perform tracheotomies, surgical procedures in which a hole is created in a patient’s windpipe through the neck. (The procedure is called a tracheotomy, the hole is a tracheostomy.)
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
The reason for the change is simple: It represents a larger target market, according to 23-year-old Chief Science Officer Rick Arlow, who’s enrolled in an M.D./Ph.D. program at Case Western Reserve University.
Arlow maintains that LifeServe’s devices can help doctors perform bedside airway-access procedures more quickly, easily and safely than tracheotomy kits on the market now. And certainly performing the procedure at the bedside of a patient who’s experiencing obstructed breathing is quicker and cheaper than a surgeon doing it in an operating room.
LifeServe has raised about $100,000 through grants thus far, and is in talks on an investment round of $400,000 to $500,000, Arlow said. The money would be used to fund the process of obtaining U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance to commercialize the devices.
Even with FDA clearance, the company will still need to show its devices provide clinical value, so getting buy-in from doctors will be critical for LifeServe. The company has yet to test the device on live humans, having only so far tried it on cadavers.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Arlow, a former volunteer emergency medical technician, still hopes at some point to sell LifeServe’s devices to emergency and military users, but that market is no longer priority No. 1 for the company.
