This Providence Medtech Incubator Leads Startups to Success
NEMIC provides the business background, resources, education and networking for creators to jump-start their venture.
Photography courtesy of Practice Marketing Communications.
The country’s $573 billion medical technology sector is poised to boom in Rhode Island, and Providence’s New England Medical Innovation Center is guiding the state’s tech entrepreneurs to join that surge.
A nonprofit incubator and accelerator for startups with a tech idea and a passion to help health care patients, NEMIC provides the business background, resources, education and networking for creators to jump-start their venture, including instruction in commercial viability and fundraising strategy.
Photography courtesy of Practice Marketing Communications.
Its programs include the six-month MedTech Leadership and Accelerator programs, which are free for those who live, work or attend school in the state thanks to a partnership with the R.I. Department of Labor and Training. Last year, it launched its EMPOWER Program, which supports women and minority founders in the health and wellness sector and is supported by RI Commerce.
The cornerstone of the curricula are the industry leaders, CEOs, angel investors, venture capitalists and seasoned entrepreneurs who guide the startup founders through the unknowns in development, building an actual product, and creating successful, investable companies.
NEMIC has nurtured more than 370 startups, says Executive Director Maey Petrie, with forty-nine of its fellows raising more than $105.5 million in funding. These startups include digital health products, apps and devices for health issues like Parkinson’s disease.
Photography courtesy of Practice Marketing Communications.
The programming extends beyond product-based innovations: Its community-based solutions help refugees navigate the health care and insurance systems, mental health and therapeutics and more.
“We’re supporting medical and health tech entrepreneurs get prepared for fundraising, so they can commercialize and make the lives of humans worldwide better, to live healthier, happier, longer lives,” Petrie says. “And that spans from the grassroots level all the way to the technology that’s in hospitals keeping people alive.”
Photography courtesy of Practice Marketing Communications.
While 80 percent of NEMIC’s startups are from the Ocean State, Petrie says they source experts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Northeastern University, which offers a high-value access into the medtech ecosystem.
NEMIC’s latest startups created a prototype breathwork device to reduce anxiety and a solution for tracking dementia symptoms at home to augment a physician’s care.
“We use a gap assessment tool to understand where companies are in space and time, and then we figure out where we need to spend time during our programs. Most of them have a product. It’s probably a prototype, and it probably still needs a lot of work,” Petrie says. “But in medtech specifically, this is an area where we can succeed. There are already so many people working on innovative solutions … and there is endless economic development with these startups.” nemic.org
Photography courtesy of Practice Marketing Communications.
