Archive for Medical

EchoMark and EchoSure

David Narrow has created substantial waves as an entrepreneur in the field of healthcare. At the mere age of 25, he is the CEO of Sonavex and creator of EchoMark and EchoSure.

David’s career with Sonavex began when he noticed that doctors would often have trouble locating previous surgical sites on patients. Locating these surgical sites is crucial for doctors if they are performing a follow-up procedure on a site. Usually the sites would be marked with implants that could be viewed later with an ultrasound. However, the implants that were currently being used were often difficult to accurately pinpoint in the ultrasounds. David realized that the healthcare industry needed a better implant that could be more easily seen and located with an ultrasound. So he started Sonavex and designed EchoMark.

EchoMark is a surgical implant made from a polymer material that is harmless to the human body. At the end of surgery, a doctor can insert EchoMark into the surgical site to mark it for later procedures. EchoMark’s unique shape causes the sound waves of an ultrasound to bounce off of it at multiple angles, enabling doctors and nurses to distinguish its location more quickly and accurately than previous surgical markers. If a second surgery in the area is not needed, EchoMark dissolves within 18-24 months after insertion, without needing to be removed. David’s product aptly filled an important need in healthcare, but it wasn’t long before he found a new need to tackle.

Another problem that medical professionals face is the occurrence of blood clots in patients who have undergone any surgical procedure in which veins or arteries are reconnected. Over 550,000 patients per year experience this type of surgery, which always involves the risk of blood clots. If a clot occurs and is not diagnosed and treated quickly, the patient may experience serious harm and have to undergo even more extensive surgeries. In response to this problem, David designed EchoSure, an ultrasound system that monitors patients’ newly connected blood vessels for clots. The system automatically alerts medical personnel of flow loss in a vessel. EchoSure’s intuitive interface allows medical professionals to use it without needing any training in ultrasound. As such, EchoSure acts as an early warning system against blood clots, allowing for rapid diagnosis and treatment before they can cause substantial damage.

David Narrow’s creativity and innovation to solve problems in healthcare have benefited numerous patients and have paved the way for even more valuable technology.

Nanoly and Enplug – Culture in Business

Nanxi Liu grew up in a situation not typically considered conducive to innovation. After spending most of the first five years of her life without her parents in China, she could move to the United States and reunite with them. When it was time for her to go to college, she got into UC Berkeley and payed her way through doing odd jobs. After meeting a talented biochemist at a bar, she started Nanoly Bioscience, a company with a patented polymer for preserving vaccines without refrigeration.

Nanoly is built around the idea that many people cannot get vaccines because of environmental factors causing the proteins that make the vaccine work to become inactive. The polymer they developed is a sort of protective shell that functionally replaces a refrigerator. For this work, Nanoly earned many awards for social technological change, including Intel’s Top Social Innovation, Dell’s Global Social Innovation Challenge Award, and a Tech Award in 2014 for Young Innovators.

Social and technological change marry perfectly in this startup. While innovation is often thought of in the terms of apps or software, bringing about powerful social change is just as revolutionary. While the technology used is advanced and definitely a breakthrough, without a use that people care about, in this case a social use, it is simply another type of plastic. Because of this merging, Nanoly was able to make the world better.

Building upon this success, Liu more recently started Enplug, a technology/software business with a product that harnesses digital screens to allows users to link, control, manipulate, and post to any digital screen instantly. Plugging into any HD screen, the technology allows the user to display social media, presentations, news, or virtually anything. They also developed a software development kit, which allows experienced users to create their own apps to link to the technology.

The most innovative aspect of Enplug is the culture of the business. Over ten of the roughly 40 employees share a single house. This not only fosters a strong bond of cooperation in the employees, it also serves to bring innovation into everyday life and everyday life into the business world. Of course, it also saves money. This choice to treat a business almost as family is a demonstration of the innovative thinking that Liu brings to her businesses. Whether Nanoly or Enplug, Liu has a capacity for being intentional in the way a business is being run, instead of simply inventing a breakthrough product.

Feeling lost? This young entrepreneur found a solution!

Four years ago, the then 19 year old Benjamin Marasco received some of the worst news possible… “You have Cancer.”

Being diagnosed and fighting cancer is hard enough of a battle leaving you to feel lost in life… but when Ben went to various hospitals to receive treatment, he time and time again would get lost on his way to appointments. This consistent confusion made him feel unseen, unimportant and just another number… not to mention being regularly late to his appointments. But Ben asked himself if their might be a different way to go about navigating hospitals. A way to get to appointments on time, take the stress out of navigating hospitals and focus on the patients and their families. This is why Ben founded Pathpoint Health…

Pathpoint is an app recently launched at Washington Hospital available on the Apple Store and Google Play. It allows users to input their destination in the hospital and gives them step by step guided instructions to get to their destinations on time! Using IPS (Indoor Positioning System) to guide users, Pathpoint solves the traditional problems of hospital visits while providing a new experience to patients. The startup projects to expand to providing its services to multiple other hospitals in the near future.

Entrepreneurs like Ben demonstrate key characteristics that make them successful. Determination and Drive are essential as seen with his successful rise against cancer and graduating with the award of Senior Man of the Year from Grove City College just this past spring as well as in his business venture. Other important skills include communication, teamwork and innovation. His promising company is one that inspires me to create a business founded on one of my passions to help others, as I hope it does for you too. Ben is innovating the healthcare field with a new way we interact with hospitals, a new way to give direction to those who are feeling lost in mind, body and soul. A new vision for hospitals everywhere..





Jolt — A New and Innovative Concussion Prevention

Ben Harvatine, a wrestler and a junior MIT, had no idea that he had just suffered a concussion during one fateful practice. Unfortunately, neither did the MIT training staff. Ben continued to practice and compete, trying to push through what he thought was general fatigue or dehydration. When his dizziness persisted, he sought further treatment and was diagnosed with a concussion. This late diagnosis put his wrestling career on hold for a time and precipitated multiple hospitalizations. If Ben could have been diagnosed earlier, his injuries would likely have been much less severe.

While recuperating, Ben began to brainstorm ideas for how this type of situation could be prevented in the future. He and a friend, Seth Berg, eventually designed Jolt, a sensor that could be clipped on to virtually any type of sports headgear (helmet, hat, headband, etc.). Jolt would monitor head trauma during any physical activity and vibrate to alert the wearer of significant injuries. It would also send data and alerts via Bluetooth to an app on a smartphone, tablet, or other device. Jolt has a range of over 200 yards and a battery life of up to two months. Additionally, the app can monitor an unlimited number of sensors at once; and, another huge feature is that a Jolt sensor only costs $99.

This would allow sports players, coaches, or parents to monitor the head impacts sustained by the players. With the information Jolt provides, coaches, parents, trainers, etc. can know when their players suffer serious hits and decide whether the players should keep playing or stop. Jolt would act as an important prevention system to catch concussions before they worsen from further trauma.

In true entrepreneurial fashion, Ben Harvatine and Seth Berg found a need from personal experience and then brainstormed to solve that need. Now, their inventiveness is aiding players and coaches in the fight against concussions. Jolt is keeping players playing and protecting them in the process.


Jolt website —

Fever Smart – Colin Hill, Aaron Goldstein

In 2012, Colin Hill was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma right as he was about to start college at the University of Pennsylvania. Hill had to undergo extensive chemotherapy treatments, leaving him susceptible to life threatening infections, and a constant need to monitor his temperature to detect these infections as soon as possible. He would check his temperature consistently throughout the day, but at night, this became difficult. One night before he went to bed he had a normal temperature reading, but hours later he woke up with a dangerously high fever and was sent to the emergency room to treat the infection that he did not detect during the night.

He and other U Penn students, William Duckworth, Aaron Goldstein, and Becca Goldstein, began thinking of a solution to this problem. They developed Fever Smart, a smart device that constantly monitors the wearer’s body temperature, sends alerts to a smartphone/tablet/etc. via Bluetooth, as well as uploads the data to the cloud for access anywhere in the world. The device is only 32 mm long and is worn comfortably under the armpit. Although the hospital applications of Fever Smart are wide ranging, Fever Smart is marketed toward parents who want a way to effectively monitor their child’s temperature all throughout the night or when they are not present. Within months, they had a working prototype as well as FDA approval on the device. After an Indiegogo campaign for manufacturing funds raised 75% of its $40,000 goal in the first 24 hours, and then exceeded their goal with $65,000 raised, they launched Fever Smart in January of 2015.

Colin Hill and his group of entrepreneurs identified a significant problem through his own medical experiences, and the insight that those experiences gave them allowed them to formulate an innovative solution. None of the students had any medical background, and yet created a product that was a winner of Entrepreneur Magazine 2014, and can be utilized in the entirety of the medical field to improve healthcare. Fever Smart is just another example of a good idea coming from your personal experiences.


Unlimited Tomorrow – Easton LaChapelle

Easton LaChapelle was just 14 when he made his first robotic hand. It was made from Legos and fishing wire and put together in his bedroom. His creation took home third place at the 2011 Colorado state science fair, but an encounter at that fair sparked an idea for Easton. He met a 7 year old girl with a prosthetic limb. He said, “[It had] one motion — open, close — and one sensor, and just this alone was $80,000.” This pricetag shocked Easton, and he vowed to invent a prosthetic for under $1,000. And he did just that.

Easton developed a prototype using 3D printing that costs just $350 to produce, and made the designs for it open source. He wants to work toward changing the world but recognized that one person alone can’t do that – it takes multiple people to make a difference, and by making his designs open source and letting other people benefit from his ideas, he’s expanding his reach and impacting more lives than he ever could have done on his own. He said, “Our hope is that all developments made from this project can go back into improving the lives of everyone who inspired our work.”

Check out his robotics start-up and watch this video for more about his story:

Another Drop Out Success

Another drop out become successful entrepreneur. Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of her sophomore year at Stanford to pursue her entrepreneurial dream. She dropped out as a chemical engineering major to create a blood diagnosing startup. The problem of correctly diagnosing was the problem that Elizabeth noticed. Too many people were either having to wait hours for expensive testing to get done at hospitals or they were incorrectly diagnosing themselves online. The company, Theranos, created a mini blood testing lab that is the size of a microwave. It is portable and does a majority of the tests that usually takes a large lab to do, with only small samples of blood. This method gets results faster and at a fraction of the price. With this, the company even innovated the finger prick device into something that requires less blood and gives a more accurate result. not only this, but all the devices are being produced in the USA to create American jobs.

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If you have ever watched an Episode of Grey’s Anatomy, there will usually be someone complaining about labs taking too long or patients freaking out about the cost of taking too many tests. This product innovates the entire lab process into one device. It is like a computer that blood is an input, and it condenses all the tests into one place. My opinion is that they are focused on creating a cheaper method, so why aren’t the producing in the cheapest way possible, overseas? What are your thoughts on this?

Daniel Fine

With many entrepreneurs arising it is getting harder to differentiate. Many of them seem to be pushing the technology side of things with social media and new apps. Some however want to take a different approach. Daniel Fine is a millennial entrepreneur who was named one of the World’s Top Five Entrepreneurs, and one of TIME Magazine’s Top 25 International Leaders of Tomorrow. This man has also done amazing things in the medical realm. He has also won two volunteer-service awards from George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

His little brother was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and this influenced him to help all who are in need who have type 1 diabetes.  This led him to create an app that is to launch soon. The app is called Dosed. This app tracks your insulin dosage, and is all done very easily. The app has a “6th Grade Proficiency.”

He also brought Glass-U to the world. This is a folding sunglasses company that is licensed to hundreds of universities and to almost every fraternity and sorority in the United States.

Daniel Fine has brought some cool and helpful stuff to this world and will continue to do so.

SIRUM – “the for unused drugs”

Every year in the United States, $5 billion (yes, billion with a ‘b’!) of unused and unexpired prescription drugs are destroyed.  At the same time, 50 million Americans don’t refill their prescriptions because of the cost.  A group of Stanford graduates wanted to find a way to easily connect the surplus and the need.  In 2009, Kiah Williams, Adam Kircher, and George Wang created SIRUM (Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine), a non-profit dedicated to deliver unused medicine to people in need.

SIRUM works in 4 easy steps.  SIRUM first gets companies and hospitals to stop destroying unused medicine.  This is fairly easy because the companies often have to spend a large amount of money to have the drugs destroyed.  Instead, donating the drugs is free and less of a hassle.  The company or hospital then enters the surplus via SIRUM’s technology.  The company packs up the unused medicine and adds a pre-paid shipping label.  SIRUM picks up the package the next day and distributes it to those in need.  The company or hospital is then able to track the package door-to-door.

This entire transaction is a win-win for everyone involved!  It is much easier and cheaper for hospitals or companies to donate the surplus medicine than to destroy it.  And people who need affordable or free medication can easily get it.  Like cofounder Kiah Williams said, SIRUM is “like the for unused drugs”.  SIRUM was able to meet the needs of two different groups, with no downside to either group.  To learn more about SIRUM, click here.


Theranos is a company started by Stanford drop out Elizabeth Holmes. The company has created a product that allows for a painless blood draw. The product is being introduced in drug stores like Walgreens. Predictions are being made that this will alter the healthcare industry as a whole as this new way to draw and test blood will most likely become mainstream, and standard in the near future.

Elizabeth Holmes is 31 years old and is worth roughly 4.7 billion as of July 2015. She currently is on the board of Fellows for Harvard Medical school. Her impact has been great, as less blood is needed to run a sample, thus requiring only a finger prick. She is a great example of someone who saw an issue that no one was solving and took initiative to figure it out. Technology has allowed her to create her fortune.