7 health tech startups flock to Houston for TMC bootcamp

ready to accelerate

Texas Medical Center Innovation announced the seven health tech startups that joined the 2022 accelerator bootcamp. Photo courtesy of TMC

The Texas Medical Center's innovation arm welcomed seven companies to its 2022 health tech accelerator program bootcamp.

TMC Innovation Accelerator for HealthTech is aimed at supporting early-stage life science startups through fundraising, connecting with mentors and potential customers, and more.

“Healthtech startups who connect with our network will emerge more prepared to access their customers and grow into their markets," says Emily Reiser, associate director of TMC Innovation, in a news release. "Our advisors, members, and partners unlock insights for these entrepreneurs about how to more effectively build a strategic plan for improved market access and adoption. Bootcamp ignites these connections, providing immediate value to entrepreneurs and enabling our team to define a long term plan for continued collaboration."

If selected following the bootcamp, founders will spend six months at TMCi with strategic mentorship, clinical validation, and other customized milestone development from the organization.

“Bootcamp is an intensive period of discovery and mutual selection," says Devin Dunn, head of the Accelerator for HealthTech, in the release. "Founders get a chance better understand everything that TMCi brings to bear and our team has the opportunity to select those growing companies that will add significant value to our community.”

The bootcamp focused on several innovation areas — including surgical devices, access to care, robotics, and hospital efficiency. The participating companies include:

  • CardMedic, headquartered in Oxford, United Kingdom, aims to improve communication between staff and patients across any barrier-language, deafness, cognitive impairment or disability-with an A to Z library of pre-written scripts replicating common clinical conversations.
  • Chicago-baseed CareAdvisors is connecting health plans, hospitals, and community-based organizations to streamline high risk case management and quickly close the loop on care.
  • Endolumik, founded in Morgantown, West Virginia, has developed a fluorescence-guided device that uses near-infrared light to enhance visualization for safer, faster, and more consistent bariatric surgery.
  • Orcha, based in Daresbury, United Kingdom, rigorously reviews apps to help systems, clinicians, patients, or consumers find their way to the best health-related apps.
  • Austin-based Roboligent has created a rehabilitation robot, the Optimo Regen, that provides evidence-based therapeutic interventions for upper and lower limbs.
  • Boston-founded ScienceIO's platform transforms unstructured text into structured records in real-time. The company's core product is a HIPAA-compliant API for real-time text processing and analytics.
  • Semantic Health, founded in Toronto, Canada, uses artificial intelligence to complete secondary reviews of all coded and claims data to optimize revenue cycle management.
The application for future cohorts and more information about the program are available online. The 2022 cohort will join the ranks of TMCi's community of 305 life science startups and 221 TMC Innovation Accelerator companies and will receive access to the center's dozens of member organizations.

"Having a product that the market truly needs is critical but not enough," says Bongsu Kim, founder and CEO of Roboligent, in the release. "Especially for the medical device market, I realize that introducing a new product is a thorough and collaborative effort from a variety of stakeholders and experts. Without knowing the mechanism and the right connection, it seems almost impossible to get into the market. The TMC Innovation Accelerator is the perfect place to make it happen."

Mara McFadden (left), CEO of Endolumik, took home the top prize at the Ignite Fire Pitch Competition. Photo courtesy of Ignite

Houston organization doles out over $775,000 in prizes to women-led health tech startups

and the winner is

After virtual and postponed events, Ignite Healthcare Network finally got to honor its 2021 cohort and name the annual winners.

The Fifth Annual Fire Pitch Competition was slated to take place last November, but was postponed to January. Affected by the Delta and then Omicron variants of COVID-19, the event finally got to return to in-person networking and pitches on Thursday, March 3.

"The opportunity to bring people together is a really different level of engagement and energy," Ayse McCracken, founder and board chair of Ignite, says ahead of the awards event. "We love seeing the energy that's being generated in Houston around innovation — and particularly health care innovation."

Seven companies pitched and three were awarded monetary prizes. Morgantown, West Virginia-based Endolumik, which has developed a patent-pending fluorescence-guided device to improve visualization and safety of robotic and laparoscopic bariatric operations, took home the top prize, which included a total of $500,000 in investment prizes from the Texas Medical Center Venture Fund and Wavemaker Three-Sixty Health.

Second place was awarded to Rx Bandz of Locust Valley, New York. The company created the MiniJect, the world’s smallest military-grade auto-injector designed to deliver a wide range of injectable medication, and was awarded $250,000 from the Texas Halo Fund and $25,000 from The Southwest National Pediatric Device Innovation Consortium.

San Antonio-based Hera Biotech took third place and was awarded a pilot program prize with Banner Health. Hera has developed the first non-surgical, tissue-based test capable of diagnosing endometriosis.

Ignite taps into Houston health care institutions to provide opportunities for its cohort of companies. According to a news release, this year’s partner organizations included Houston Methodist, Memorial Hermann Health System, Texas Children’s Hospital, Texas Children’s Pediatrics, The Menninger Clinic, Banner Health, Kindred Healthcare, Aetna, Commonwealth Care Alliance, BLUE KC, Hospital for Special Surgery, Summit Health, TMC Ventures, Texas Heart Institute, Golden Seeds, Portfolia, The Artemis Fund, Wavemaker 360 Health, Prosalus Capital Partners, 7Wire Ventures, Texas Halo Fund, Unity Point Ventures and others.

The judges who evaluated the competition’s panel of companies included:

  • Jay Goss, MBA General Partner, Wavemaker Three-Sixty Health
  • Amanda Hammel, Chief Information Officer, Memorial Hermann Health System
  • Karen Hill, MD, MBA, SVP and Chief Medical Officer, Texas Children’s Health Plan
  • Tom Luby, PhD, Director, Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute
  • Fiona Mack, PhD, Head of JLABS @TMC
  • Roberta Schwartz, PhD, EVP and Chief Innovation Officer, Houston Methodist Hospital
  • Andrew Truscott, Global Health Technology Lead, Accenture
Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston ranked among top 10 destinations for movers in 2024, report says

On the Move

Houston remains popular as one of the top 10 metropolitan areas for people on the move in 2024, according to U-Haul's Top U.S. Growth Metros and Cities report.

Houston ranked No. 9 in 2024, which is a big jump for the metro after the suburb of Conroe ranked No. 16 in 2023.

The two Texas metros that outranked Houston were Austin (No. 5) and Dallas-Fort Worth, which climbed through the ranks to take the No. 1 spot this year after previously ranking No. 9 in 2023.

College Station, the popular college town, is another Texas perennial: It's No. 6 for the second consecutive year on an accompanying U-Haul list of top growth cities (distinguished as being located outside the top metros).

Alas, Texas was unseated as the top state for movers, according to U-Haul's Top Growth States Report. The Lone Star State landed in the No. 2 spot, pushed aside by South Carolina, which topped the list for the first time.

"Migration to the Southeast and Southwest continues as families gauge their cost of living, job opportunities, quality of life and other factors that go into relocating to a new state," said John "J.T." Taylor, U-Haul International president. "Out-migration remains prevalent for a number of markets across the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast — and particularly California."

The annual migration report is based on how many one-way transactions were made by DIY movers using a U-Haul truck, trailer, or U-Box moving container across the U.S. and Canada.

While U-Haul's numbers don't directly correlate to population or economic growth, it is an interesting look at the performance of the top American cities and states that are attracting newcomers.

The full list of top 10 growth metros for 2024 are:

  • No. 1 – Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas
  • No. 2 – Charlotte, North Carolina
  • No. 3 – Phoenix, Arizona
  • No. 4 – Lakeland, Florida
  • No. 5 – Austin, Texas
  • No. 6 – Nashville, Tennessee
  • No. 7 – Raleigh, North Carolina
  • No. 8 – Palm Bay, Florida
  • No. 9 – Houston, Texas
  • No. 10 – Greenville, South Carolina
---

This story originally appeared on our sister site, CultureMap.com.

Being prepared: Has the Texas grid been adequately winterized?

Being Prepared

Houstonians may feel anxious as the city and state experience freezing temperatures this winter. Every year since 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, Texans wonder whether the grid will keep them safe in the face of another. The record-breaking cold temperatures of Uri exposed a crucial vulnerability in the state’s power and water infrastructure.

According to ERCOT’s 6-day supply and demand forecast from January 3, 2025, it expected plenty of generation capacity to meet the needs of Texans during the most recent period of colder weather. So why did the grid fail so spectacularly in 2021?

  1. Demand for electricity surged as millions of people tried to heat their homes.
  2. ERCOT was simply not prepared despite previous winter storms of similar intensity to offer lessons in similarities.
  3. The state was highly dependent on un-winterized natural gas power plants for electricity.
  4. The Texas grid is isolated from other states.
  5. Failures of communication and coordination between ERCOT, state officials, utility companies, gas suppliers, electricity providers, and power plants contributed to the devastating outages.

The domino effect resulted in power outages for millions of Texans, the deaths of hundreds of Texans, billions of dollars in damages, with some households going nearly a week without heat, power, and water. This catastrophe highlighted the need for swift and sweeping upgrades and protections against future extreme weather events.

Texas State Legislature Responds

Texas lawmakers proactively introduced and passed legislation aimed at upgrading the state’s power infrastructure and preventing repeated failures within weeks of the storm. Senate Bill 3 (SB3) measures included:

  • Requirements to weatherize gas supply chain and pipeline facilities that sell electric energy within ERCOT.
  • The ability to impose penalties of up to $1 million for violation of these requirements.
  • Requirement for ERCOT to procure new power sources to ensure grid reliability during extreme heat and extreme cold.
  • Designation of specific natural gas facilities that are critical for power delivery during energy emergencies.
  • Development of an alert system that is to be activated when supply may not be able to meet demand.
  • Requirement for the Public Utility Commission of Texas, or PUCT, to establish an emergency wholesale electricity pricing program.

Texas Weatherization by Natural Gas Plants

In a Railroad Commission of Texas document published May 2024 and geared to gas supply chain and pipeline facilities, dozens of solutions were outlined with weatherization best practices and approaches in an effort to prevent another climate-affected crisis from severe winter weather.

Some solutions included:

  • Installation of insulation on critical components of a facility.
  • Construction of permanent or temporary windbreaks, housing, or barriers around critical equipment to reduce the impact of windchill.
  • Guidelines for the removal of ice and snow from critical equipment.
  • Instructions for the use of temporary heat systems on localized freezing problems like heating blankets, catalytic heaters, or fuel line heaters.

According to Daniel Cohan, professor of environmental engineering at Rice University, power plants across Texas have installed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weatherization upgrades to their facilities. In ERCOT’s January 2022 winterization report, it stated that 321 out of 324 electricity generation units and transmission facilities fully passed the new regulations.

Is the Texas Grid Adequately Winterized?

Utilities, power generators, ERCOT, and the PUCT have all made changes to their operations and facilities since 2021 to be better prepared for extreme winter weather. Are these changes enough? Has the Texas grid officially been winterized?

This season, as winter weather tests Texans, residents may potentially experience localized outages. When tree branches cannot support the weight of the ice, they can snap and knock out power lines to neighborhoods across the state. In the instance of a downed power line, we must rely on regional utilities to act quickly to restore power.

The specific legislation enacted by the Texas state government in response to the 2021 disaster addressed to the relevant parties ensures that they have done their part to winterize the Texas grid.

---

Sam Luna is director at BKV Energy, where he oversees brand and go-to-market strategy, customer experience, marketing execution, and more.

3 Houston innovators to know right now

who's who

Editor's note: InnovationMap regularly introduces its readers to a handful of Houston innovators recently making headlines with news of innovative technology, investment activity, and more. Our first January batch includes three innovators across social impact, health care, and more.

Phillip Yates, CEO of Equiliberty

Phillip Yates joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to share why 2025 is the year of launch for Equiliberty. Photo courtesy of Equiliberty

For Phillip Yates, this year will be the year of launch. The attorney-turned-entrepreneur has been working on his fintech platform, Equiliberty, for years now, but come the first half of 2025, it's go time.

"We're going to release our technology in Q2 of this year, and we're looking to commercialize it by the end of this year," Yates says on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

The platform connects users with resources to build wealth. Yates, along with his co-founders, Rachel Howard and Cody Bailey, created the company with the mindset that people with lower financial means can take control of their own financial success — in a way that doesn't take away from anyone else. Continue reading.

Meagan Pitcher, co-founder and CEO of Bairitone Health

Meagan Pitcher, co-founder and CEO of Bairitone Health, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo courtesy of Bairitone

There's a slew of treatment options for people living with sleep apnea. But, the bigger problem, as Meagan Pitcher realized during her time at the Texas Medical Center's Biodesign program, is that there's no easy way to reliably diagnose and determine a treatment plan for patients.

"We saw all of the companies trying to solve the problem of making the airway collapse less or make the air way wider — it might be surgery, might be medication, or nerve stimulation," Pitcher says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "One of the things we found was that it was really hard to match a patient with sleep apnea with a good treatment for them. One of the reasons is it's hard to get an understanding of where the individual's site of collapse is as sleep medicine is currently practiced."

As Pitcher went through the TMC Biodesign program, she teamed up with her co-founders — CTO Onur Kilicand and CMO Britt Cross — to find a solution, and together they developed Bairitone Health. The company's technology provides at-home medical imaging using sonar sensing. The non-invasive device has the potential to replace the current standard of care, which is a surgical procedure. Continue reading.

Moody Heard, CEO of BuildForce

Houston-based Buildforce is developing a technology to better connect contractors and the trade professionals they employ. Photo courtesy of Buildforce

Houston-based Buildforce announced it has acquired Ladder, which is a Y Combinator-backed, technology-enabled construction labor marketplace.

The acquisition is part of Buildforce’s expansion plans into the southeastern U.S. and during a time of increased demand for skilled construction talent. Buildforce will work to leverage the Ladder customer base of over 200 customers across six states, as well as its extensive electrician network of over 10,000 pre-screened electricians, which is the largest in the Southeast.

“There are two major problems plaguing the construction labor market,” Moody Heard, co-founder and CEO of Buildforce, says in a news release. “One, the project-based nature of construction work means tradesmen are constantly ‘working themselves out of a job’, meaning high employee turnover. And two, the industry is experiencing a secular decline in the supply of tradesmen relative to surging demand.” Continue reading.

View All Listings