Mass Innovation Nights 115: 5th Annual Women Founders Event

Mass Innovation Nights 115

October 15, 2018

Mass Innovation Nights is a monthly startup showcase that features Massachusetts startup companies. This month’s Mass Innovation Nights was hosted by Boston Scientific and Brownmed and held at District Hall in the seaport district. Appropriately occurring during WE BOS Week, the theme for the evening was Women Founders.

Mass Innovation Nights 115: District Hall in Boston, MA

Mass Innovation Nights begins with an hour to network, grab food from the buffet, and visit with exhibiting startups at their display tables, providing attendees with an opportunity to converse with the companies in attendance while snacking on food provided by the event sponsor. Then the presentations begin, featuring the evening’s host, the “Expert Corner” experts, and the four exhibitors who win a pre-event vote on the Mass Innovation Nights website. At this event, in addition to sponsors and experts from Boston Scientific, Brownmed, and Hidden Gems, a representative from the mayor’s office spoke, as the event helped kick off WE BOS week, celebrating women founders in Boston.

Presenters as a result of the pre-event voting were Folia Health, IV SafeT, Aavia, and Astarte Medical Partners. Awards are also given based on at-event voting (during the networking hour) by attendees. At-event winners were Aavia, Folia, Allergy Amulet, and PionEar Technologies.

As usual, when I attend one of the startup showcase events, I’ll provide a quick overview of the featured companies based on information available through Mass Innovation Nights (website and handouts), the four presentations, and my conversations with some of the company representatives at the event. My observations will generally be very cursory. If you’re interested in additional detail about some of this month’s showcasing companies, you can follow the links I provide for more information.

Allergy Amulet is a device (that can be worn; hence: “amulet”) that can be use to test food for allergens at the point-of-consumption, within seconds.

Astarte Medical Partners has established a patient safety and compliance software solution, NICUtrition, via software and predictive analytics, that is designed to be used by hospitals to improve safety when feeding preterm infants. The company’s goal is to assemble information and provide solutions to promote gut health through a child’s first 1,000 days.

Mightywell‘s Might MedPlanner is a small, easy-to-carry-along case that discreetly organizes your medical supplies. This is the most recent product from Mightywell, as it continues to extend its line of medical products. Mightywell’s first product, the PICC Perfect PICC line cover, was showcased at MIN 81 nearly three years ago.

CareZooming connects healthcare professionals to allow them to share knowledge, allowing new clinician discoveries and best practices to be duplicated elsewhere throughout the medical community.

Fluid-Screen‘s bacterial sorter uses system-on-a-chip technology to help identify bacteria within 30 minutes. Per my discussion at Fluid-Screen’s booth, a couple early uses for this technology would be in the pharmaceutical world to detect contaminants in food and drinking water supplies.

Folia Health has an app allows families to track health observations in three minutes per day. It can then be used as a resource for the community of families who need that information. Folia Health’s initial area of focus is cystic fibrosis.

IV SafeT is an improved IV with an improved luer lock. If you’re in this field, please click through to look at the details yourself, but the website does note that this works especially well for preemies and infants because of its reduced size. (IV SafeT’s presentation did a great job of explaining the significant improvement, but I’m afraid I won’t do it justice via text.)

DocFlight is a company that connects Chinese patients with custom, personalized treatment from American doctors, including nutrition plans, telemedicine, a personalized drug prescriptions.

PionEar Technologies‘ tympanostomy tube is designed to reduce the risk of unnecessary surgeries and repeated ear infections in children.

Aavia is a pocket-size smart device and accompanying app to help ensure birth control pills are taken “on time, every time,” as the company’s slogan says. The device automatically detects which pills have been taken (or not) from the typical blister pack and connects via Bluetooth to a phone app.

The WatchRx Smartwatch for Seniors helps seniors manage their prescriptions, while also giving caregivers and healthcare providers access to this information. I first encountered WatchRx at a Boston New Technology showcase in May 2017.

Also at the event was Microscopic Art, a company that sells (“cells”?) cool science-themed décor, apparel, and accessories.

Conclusion

As always, I’ve done my best to accurately portray the exhibiting companies and their products based upon the pre-event materials and the conversations I had with attendees. You can find company information also by following this link and then clicking on the “Vote Here” tab of the MIN 115 web page. I’ve also included hotlinks to the each of the exhibiting companies’ websites so you can get information beyond my brief introductions.

It was, as always, a pleasure to see some of the emerging companies on the Boston area’s startup scene. I’m already looking forward to next month’s event.