Advanced Cooling Therapy a winner in Accelerate Michigan Competition

November was a very good month for Advanced Cooling Therapy.

The Kalamazoo-based medical device company received a $150,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health.

The company also won $25,000 in the medical devices sector of the Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition for its development of devices to solve problems health­care providers face in con­troll­ing patients' tem­per­a­tures. To qualify for the Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition prize monies, businesses must make a commitment to locate and grow in Michigan.

Advanced Cool­ing Ther­apy also became a partner in Novenber with Michigan Medical Device Accelerator, a virtual incubator in Southwest Michigan that assists companies as they move through developing an idea into a medical product and bringing it to market. WMU Business Technology and Research Park, Southwest Michigan Innovation Center, Southwest Michigan First, and Southwest Michigan First Life Science Fund all are partners in the Michigan Medical Device Accelerator.

The company has developed patent-pending biomedical devices that induce mild therapeutic hypothermia, help maintain normal body temperatures and reduce fever in patients after cardiac arrest, during surgery, and in an intensive care unit.

The company says its devices are easier to use than existing methods, have been shown to double patients' survival, and cost less than half the cost of competitors. Unlike other temperature controlling technologies that go either on the surface or through the vein, ACT's system goes through the esophagus.

The U.S. mar­ket for tem­per­a­ture man­age­ment is made up of 5,000 hos­pi­tals treat­ing up to 1 mil­lion car­diac arrest patients, 3 mil­lion ICU patients, and 10 mil­lion surgery patients annu­ally, the company says. It estimates that is a $1 bil­lion annual mar­ket, grow­ing at more than 15 percent per year.

Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave
Source: Advanced Cooling Therapy
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