An idea that started with a sketch on a napkin is headed into the marketplace, offering hospitals a new way to move patients and reduce the risk for nurses and other caregivers.
Backed by a $3.3 million recent capital raise, Grand Rapids-based The Patient Co. expects to begin fulfilling orders for the SimPull device in early 2024. The company already has commitments from three health systems in the Midwest to buy 59 units and targets the sale of 200 units in the first year.
“It’s been a long road, but (we’re) hopeful for 2024 and beyond. I think once we get some product out there in the field, the whole world is going to change for us,” said CEO Andrew Heuerman, who co-founded The Patient Co. with business partner Ryan Peters more than four years ago. “It’ll be a good time moving into this commercial phase.”
Using technology licensed from Corewell Health that originated from a clinician’s idea, The Patient Co. developed SimPull as a way to prevent muscle strains or back injuries for nurses and caregivers. Instead of taking several people to move a patient manually from a bed to a gurney, the SimPull device allows a single caregiver to do it.
Keep up with all things West Michigan business. Sign up for our free newsletters today.
The device gently slides a patient laterally from a hospital bed onto a gurney for transport for a surgical procedure or diagnostic test.
The Patient Co. closed in September on the $3.3 million Series A capital round and equity offering that included 19 investors, according to a filing at the time to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company is now focused on transitioning from product development and feasibility to SimPull’s commercial launch and sales.
“Getting it out there and starting to make some money, as opposed to just proving that it’s working, is kind of how the raise has been geared around,” Heuerman said.
The company previously raised $1 million in a 2022 bridge financing round led by the Mayo Clinic.
Heuerman, who previously worked at Corewell Health’s innovation unit, and Peters launched The Patient Co. in August 2019 and became involved in the Michigan State University Research Foundation’s programs for startups that include Red Cedar Ventures and Spartan Innovations.
The MSU Student Venture Capital Fund, facilitated by Red Cedar Ventures, provided an early investment in the company, which in 2020 went through the Spartan Innovations’ Conquer Accelerator business accelerator program. That same year, The Patient Co. also secured an investment from Michigan Rise and a follow-on investment from Red Cedar Ventures, both of which are investment arms of the MSU Research Foundation.
In bringing SimPull to market, The Patient Co. looks to alleviate a persistent problem at hospitals from back strains and other injuries nurses and caregivers can suffer when moving immobile patients.
Matt Okoneski, a senior venture associate with Red Cedar Ventures and Michigan Rise, credits The Patient Co. with developing a solution to a long-standing problem in health care.
“Medicine is full of these problems that don’t get solved because the economics don’t align or the switching cost is too high,” Okoneski said. “Any good engineer can you design a slightly better way to connect a device to a patient or reengineer a patient device interface or something like that, but it’s very, very rare to see that actually translated out into new products that are successful.”
The Patient Co. secured U.S. Food and Drug Administration listing for SimPull earlier this year after trials conducted at Corewell Health and Lansing-based Sparrow Health, which merged into University of Michigan Health on April 1. The company is doing a third trial with the Mayo Clinic that began earlier this month, Heuerman said.
In the trial in a long-term care setting at Sparrow Health that involved 100 lateral patient transfers using SimPull, “100 out of 100 worked great, no problems,” Heuerman said.
Patient transfers using SimPull also took far less time — two and a half minutes, compared to 15 to 25 minutes for a manual transfer because of the need to gather the needed staff. That reduced time for a patient transfer represents a selling point as hospitals are coping with an acute nursing and staffing shortage.
The Patient Co. can use results of the studies to show prospective clients that SimPull works and is coming out on the market, “and then use that as a general foundation to actually go out and reach out and do open solicitation within those markets.”
“It gives us a really firm foundation to do that from,” he said. “It’s so gratifying to actually be impacting patients, seeing that data come through on these studies and the device is working well.”
More from Crain’s Grand Rapids Business:
Brewery seizing pickleball trend with indoor court at Kentwood taproom
Stryker expects to step up M&A in 2024
Renderings show new glimpse of Grand Rapids soccer stadium