The Forge and The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation Partner to Empower Medical Startups with $2,500 Awards

The Forge, McMaster University’s Startup Incubator, has announced a partnership with The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation to support innovative student-led startups from McMaster University.

This year, the focus is on medical startups, with Respyra Technologies and Medium AI each receiving $2,500 to advance their work in healthcare innovation.

The Forge is an entrepreneurial hub backed by McMaster University, catering to startups in the Hamilton, Greater Toronto, and Niagara Regions. By offering a comprehensive range of programs, resources, and 1-on-1 support through personalized mentorship, The Forge has supported over 300 startups since 2015 to transform their ideas into successful and scalable business ventures. Every entrepreneur receives the tailored advice and resources they need to thrive.

In addition to the support from The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation, Respyra Technologies and Medium AI are participants in Startup Survivor with The Forge. Startup Survivor is a 4-month Accelerator and Pitch Competition awarding $80,000 to McMaster University students and alumni to help transform their businesses.

As a result of the funding provided by The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation and other partners, this total increased to $95,000 for 2024.

Mariya Leslie, Manager of Student Entrepreneurship for The Forge, says that the new partnership with The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation is a win-win for everyone.

“The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation is a powerful and unique partnership on many levels,” says Leslie. “This is their first year donating to student entrepreneurs and this is a partnership we want to nurture and grow for the long-term. The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation’s support for hospitals is incredible and now their support for our student-led startups will have a positive impact for our healthcare system.” Sam and Roma Mercanti, through their Foundation, have long been committed to supporting innovation across sectors and are currently focused on innovative medical solutions. This year’s recipients of their funding reflect a commitment to medical innovations aimed at improving patient care and streamlining healthcare processes.

One of the selected startups is Respyra Technologies, a medical device company specializing in innovative solutions for airway management. Many intubations are unsuccessful on the first attempt, leading to increased adverse events and costing valuable time for clinicians.

Respyra is addressing this critical issue with the development of an intubation aid designed to enable smooth intubation of difficult airways on the first attempt. Respyra Technologies fills a market gap for low-cost, high-efficacy devices in the airway management space.

Hunter Csetri with Respyra Technologies sees the $2,500 helping with the next steps in their development toward a scalable business model for their game-changing technology.

“The biggest things for us right now are putting money into product development and continuing to look at new designs and new iterations. “The second thing is paying a lawyer to conduct a patent search, and then actually filing a provisional patent,” said Csetri.

Respyra Technologies is one of many McMaster student-founded startups emerging through The Forge’s Startup Survivor program. Through funding and networking opportunities, access to resources, and mentorship, The  Forge helps accelerate the development of these startups from inception to launch through to scalable and sustainable growth. Participants engage in business and technical challenges focused on customer discovery, business modeling, rapid prototyping, go-to-market strategy, and pitching to investors.

“If you told me in first year that I’d be going through The Forge with a business idea, I would have laughed at you,” said Csetri. Csetri is now preparing for the Startup Survivor Pitch Competition through The Forge to further accelerate Respyra Technologies’s trajectory and growth.

The second McMaster student start-up recipient, Medium AI, is making strides in the automation and streamlining of medical documentation. Kino Song and his team at Medium AI have developed a multilingual medical scribe system that automates the time-consuming process of medical documentation, allowing healthcare providers to spend more time with their patients. Partnering with The Forge has helped Medium AI prepare a minimum viable product (MVP) to further bolster their efforts in the upcoming Startup Survivor Pitch Competition.

“We already have a feasible MVP to showcase our product abilities. We are early in the actual development stage, so it will become very costly. The most expensive part in the future will be collecting enough data sets with our partnership with a hospital in both China and North America and the training and the fine-tuning,” Song said.

The $2,500 will be used to further develop their iOS version, which will launch this year. The use of Medium AI can help save healthcare providers 50% of their time spent over an 8-hour period of usage, along with a 17-25x ROI capable of saving $2,500 per physician. Medium AI’s system also takes a stringent approach to privacy and security, providing an on-premises solution that ensures the highest level of compliance with medical data protection regulations.

By combining The Forge’s resources and mentorship with the financial support provided by The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation, this initiative aims to help startups like Respyra Technologies and Medium AI achieve their goals and make a significant impact in the healthcare industry.

For Respyra Technologies and Medium AI, this partnership represents a significant milestone in their journey toward scalable success. As these companies continue to develop their products and bring them to market, the support from The Forge and The Sam and Roma Mercanti Foundation will continue to foster growth and promote the positive changes they aim to bring to the healthcare industry.

Respyra and Medium AI are both moving on to the Startup Survivor Pitch Competition taking place November 20. The competition is open to the public with free tickets now live. As surviving members of the competition, the top 5 McMaster student startups will be pitching for a $15,000 grand prize. $30K will be awarded in total at the event to help scale these innovation startups to the next level.

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