Michigan Startup Wins Grant to Make Medical Devices for Developing World

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, 80 percent of the world’s medical equipment is designed for only 10 percent of the population. After all, what’s the point of having the latest cutting-edge device if you live in the developing world without a steady source of electricity? However, Grand Rapids, MI-based med tech startup Sisu Global Health is on a mission to help change that statistic.

Sisu has created the Hemafuse, a patent-pending, blood autotransfusion device that looks like a large syringe and is used to collect and retransfuse a patient’s blood during an internal hemorrhage. In sub-Saharan Africa, internal bleeding is often treated with the “kitchen soup ladle method,” which involves salvaging a patient’s blood by using a soup ladle and then spooning the blood through gauze before putting it back in the patient’s body, says Sisu’s chief marketing officer Katherine Kirsch. She (perhaps unnecessarily) points out that it’s a less-than-sanitary process that could lead to complications.

Source: Xconomy (link opens in a new window)

Categories
Health Care
Tags
business development, healthcare technology