Innovators Win Grants to Support Pediatric Medical Device Development

The Pennsylvania Pediatric Medical Device Consortium (PPDC) provides know-how and seed funding to help innovators translate concepts into commercial medical devices for use in children. In the PPDC’s latest round of awards, two companies out of 27 applicants received grants of $50,000 each.

“We are excited to provide these funds to innovators of promising medical devices that will address unmet clinical needs of pediatric patients around the world,” said bioengineer Matthew Maltese, PhD, of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Consortium’s executive director and principal investigator.

Let’s take a look at the two companies who will receive the PPDC’s assistance as they journey into the pediatric medical device market:

Actuated Medical, Bellefonte, Pa.

The Challenge: Physicians performing bone biopsy and bone marrow aspiration procedures on children currently face multiple challenges. This patient population requires deep sedation or anesthesia to tolerate bone access procedures. Children also have small, curved bones, which increase the risk of needle slippage and damage to surrounding tissue. The lack of computed tomography or other image guidance during pediatric bone access increases the difficulty of maintaining the desired needle trajectory, which results in failed access and repeated insertions, as well as increased post-operative pain and risk of infection.

The Proposed Solution: A bone access system proposed by Actuated Medical aims to reduce patient discomfort, improve the success rate for first-attempt samples, reduce clinician fatigue, and shorten procedure times for bone biopsy and bone marrow aspiration procedures. This new device under development will reduce insertion force and needle slippage, allowing for faster and more reliable bone penetration.

ENTvantage Diagnostics, Austin, Texas

The Challenge: Although bacteria cause sinusitis (sinus infections) only about 10 percent of the time, physicians commonly prescribe antibiotics, which are ineffective against non-bacterial bacterial sinusitis. Because diagnostic tools are not currently available for a proper diagnosis, clinicians have to rely on imprecise diagnostic algorithms based solely on patients’ symptoms.

The Proposed Solution: ENTvantage aims to create a more accurate tool to diagnose sinus infections in children. The company is developing a point-of-care assay device to provide rapid results that are simple to interpret with ease of use and minimal staff training. In a manner similar to that of rapid influenza A and B tests commonly used in primary care clinics, this new device is envisioned to reduce unnecessary antibiotic usage.

The PPDC is funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and based at CHOP. The new round of awards is the second by the PPDC, following a group of three $25,000 seed grants announced in February 2015 to innovative firms that applied to the Consortium’s first request for proposals in June 2014. Find out more about funding opportunities and how to apply to this competitive program.