Medical Device Startups Making A Name For Themselves
December 6, 2014
By Andrew Hoglund

From receiving large amounts of funds to gaining FDA clearance, it was an exciting week for new developing companies.

DBV Technologies, located in Bagneux, France, has become very popular in the last year. They are creating a patch that will treat peanut allergies, which is great news for my colleague Aneel who suffers from nut allergies. Named the Viaskin patch, it helps lower the risk of an allergic reaction to an accidental exposure of peanuts. The company went public back in 2012 and its stock has nearly quadrupled just this year, with a market value reaching almost $1 billion.

Stimwave Technologies, a small startup in Miami Beach, FL, received FDA 510(k) clearance for its Freedom Spinal Cord Stimulation System. It is a small, injectable neuromodulation device that treats chronic back pain. It is small enough to fit inside a needle and can be inserted without surgery. It is anchored to the body so that it does not move and delivers small electrical pulses to the surrounding nerves to remap pain signals in the brain. It will be commercially available in the U.S. starting in January, 2015.

Direct Flow Medical has received $32 million in financing to support its transcatheter heart valve technology. The Santa Rosa, CA company is creating a small valve made of bovine tissue that is inserted into the patient via catheter instead of the traditional open-heart surgery procedure that typically uses a metal stent. An earlier trial of the device showed a 97% survival rate within a 30-day monitoring period. The money will go directly towards completing its U.S. trials and to help the company’s growth overseas.

It is incredible to see these small startups with such revolutionizing ideas. It will be interesting to see how successful they will become in 2015.