While many college students hope to find a job with any company upon graduation these days, a second-year Case Western Reserve University medical student already has raised $100,000 for his own medical device startup.
Rick Arlow and partner Zachary Bloom, a recent Lehigh University graduate in healthcare economics, started LifeServe Innovations to capitalize on a market opportunity Arlow found while talking to paramedics and emergency physicians about the challenges they face on their jobs.
Arlow, a 23-year-old former volunteer emergency medical technician, discovered that many medical workers aren’t happy with the tools available to them for emergency airway access procedures. In cases of severe trauma when a paramedic can’t access an airway by conventional means, the only choice is to cut open a patient’s throat and insert an air tube to deliver life-saving oxygen.
Arlow and Brown started LifeServe with the aim of giving emergency workers better tools to do that. During the product development process, LifeServe was inspired by the way snakes bite their prey, designing its devices to mimic snakes’ fangs. The result was two devices that still are in preclinical testing — the Cobra Tracheostomy and the Viper Cric — each designed to perform a different airway-access procedure.
Though LifeServe still is squarely in its early stages, and its devices are being tested on only cadavers, the company has made impressive progress. In May, it was awarded $25,000 in grant money and services after winning an entrepreneurship award from LaunchTown, an Akron-based program that recognizes students who come up with strong ideas for businesses.
That triumph brought LifeServe to the attention of BioEnterprise, a Cleveland nonprofit that helps local healthcare companies with business development. For the last few months, BioEnterprise has helped LifeServe identify potential sources of grants and conduct market research, said Chris Sklarin, a director of business development for the organization. So far, Sklarin likes what he’s seen of LifeServe and Arlow, calling him “an interesting and thoughtful person,” though stressing the company is still in its very early stages.
LifeServe hasn’t done enough research to determine whether its potential market is large enough to support a company, or if its products would more appropriately be sold into a larger company’s portfolio, according to Sklarin. But there is a market need for the airway access devices the company is pursuing, he said.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The devices are likely to be of interest to the military if LifeServe can prove they’re better than what’s currently on the market.
In the meantime, Arlow plans to continue gathering preclinical data, seeking sources of investment and finding partners to help test the device when (and if) it’s cleared for use in humans. And, there’s that little matter of completing med school, too.
