Over the summer, Dori Jones, ‘07, pitched her medical device company AcQumen Medical at StartUp Lehigh Valley, an entrepreneurship competition.
The panel of three judges named AcQumen this year’s winner, awarding the company $20,000 for its research in heart tracking technology. The medical device company is working to develop a noninvasive heart tracker for infants, according to its website.
StartUp Lehigh Valley, according to its website, is an entrepreneur pitch competition that distributes more than $26,000 in prizes to new companies in fields such as healthcare technology, artificial intelligence and clean energy.
Each of this year’s six contestants in the competition had three minutes to pitch their product, followed by seven minutes of Q&A.
Emma Fleck, a judge and professor of entrepreneurship at Susquehanna University, said the panel’s diverse expertise helped them evaluate the companies from multiple perspectives.
“Between the three of us and our different expertise, we really were able to challenge the businesses from different perspectives, from their financial models, to their target audiences, to their different industries,” Fleck said.
She said AcQumen Medical won the competition because of Jones’ expertise and the field’s genuine need for the product.
Jones, the co-founder and CEO of AcQumen Medical, earned her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. She said her Lehigh education prepared her to work in an interdisciplinary field and become an entrepreneur.
“I love how Lehigh offers so much more of a cohesive education and a lot of different disciplines,” Jones said. “That experience allowed me to wear a lot of different hats throughout my career.”
After founding AcQumen Medical, Jones went on to create the UltraTrac, the company’s featured product, which is a heart monitoring system powered by ultrasound technology that can measure multiple parameters, according to the company’s website.
Jones said the device is the first to combine ultrasound and impedance technology to provide accurate, real-time measurements of the cardiovascular system for babies, including cardiac output, blood pressure and heart rate. These measurements can be crucial to the health of babies in the intensive care unit.
“(Cardiac output) is typically really difficult to get,” she said. “It usually means an invasive catheter in the child’s neck or groin. Instead, the UltraTrac uses small sensors on the neck and chest.”
Jones said her personal experience with pediatric care when her son was in the neonatal intensive care unit inspired her to start AcQumen Medical.
“Seeing those gaps firsthand and experiencing it from the parent side really kind of solidified my need to find a solution for these patients,” Jones said.
One of the judges this year, Stephen Tang, ’88, said that type of emotional connection and passion is crucial to propel entrepreneurs.
“(Jones) had a good sense from an intellectual perspective, but also from an emotional, personal and narrative perspective as well,” Tang said.
Jones said the competition money will help AcQumen Medical advance algorithms for the UltraTrac to further integrate ultrasound and impedance technologies. She said she eventually hopes the product will help bridge gaps in local, community-based hospitals.
She said she sees the UltraTrac as a tool that can address barriers in rural areas and neonatal intensive care units where they may not have access to new technologies because it requires less resources than devices typically available at large academic centers. Jones also said the UltraTrac is more portable, accessible and non-invasive than the alternatives.
Tang said startup companies such as AcQumen, along with local universities, can bring more jobs and revenue to the Bethlehem and Lehigh Valley areas.
“(AcQumen Medical) knew where there was a gap in the market and were very easily able to articulate what that gap looked like,” Fleck said. “We could absolutely see how something like this could be saving lives. This type of product could have a major impact on our nation.”
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