CARLSBAD – A North County startup hopes to bring a respiratory monitoring device to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration early next year for approval, fulfilling a need for a way to detect respiratory incidents in their early stages.
Amptron Medical CEO Nirav Patel said the device his company is developing could get treatment faster for people with respiratory conditions and even prevent hospitalization for people who use the device at home.
CEO
Amptron Medical
The pursuit could be lucrative for the small startup. Patel said the total remote monitoring market is valued at $40 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 19%.
The respiratory monitoring market alone is valued at $10 billion, which Patel said is the total addressable market for his company.
“It’s a huge market,” Patel said. “Obviously, we’re going to phase it, so we’re going to plan to get to go first, to test the product concept.”
The company has raised about $500,000 in a pre-seed round and has some funds from a company in India, Patel said.
Organic Growth
The roots of the company and its technology came when Patel was a UCLA student studying for his MBA in finance and entrepreneurship at the Anderson School of Management.
Patel had already spent about 20 years in the medical device space, mostly in the respiratory area.
“That basically triggered a thought, and then UCLA was the perfect platform for us to get in touch with the best clinicians in the country and ask them the right questions under the business school umbrella, and then also refine the business model,” he said.
“Initially, we started off with a mission that was much simpler, of improving access to care, where people don’t have specialized clinicians taking care of patients,” he said.
And then the pandemic struck. While interviewing clinicians at the time, Patel discovered a gap in care of respiratory patients. Had remote monitoring existed at the time, clinicians would have been able to monitor patients without being close to them, and much of the burden on the clinical community could have been lifted, he said.
The concept became his capstone project, where students use skills from their MBA studies to a real-world, practical application.
In the spring of 2020, Patel earned the Entrepreneurial Excellence Capstone Award, selected by the Business Creation Option Awards Committee at the UCLA Anderson School of Management Business.
Also in 2020, he was awarded a $25,000 grant from the UCLA Price Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and presented with the Muse Innovation Award from the Venture UCLA Anderson Accelerator.
The following year, Patel signed a strategic partnership with the Indian-based company Max Ventilator, and in 2022 he was accepted into the inaugural cohort of the UCLA Health TechQuity Accelerator to further develop his company.
Early Detection, Faster Treatment
Patel said he could not yet share photos of the device under development but did say it is close to being finalized and testing to bring it to the FDA should begin by the end of this year.
Describing the device as a data-driven solution that manages and monitors patients remotely, Patel said it is for use either in a hospital for patients already experiencing a respiratory incident and for people at home who have a respiratory condition but do not require hospitalization.
“In regard to hospital-use care, it gives the clinicians the right tool to make sure patients are not taken off therapy too soon,” he said.
As an example, a patient hospitalized for pneumonia or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease exacerbation may be put on a ventilator, and the Amptron platform fits directly into the ventilator.
If the patient improves and is taken off the ventilator and treated with oxygen, the platform continues to monitor the patient’s respiratory condition, ensuring the person is not sent home too early.
Once home, the device can continue to monitor the patient’s condition to detect early symptoms of a respiratory incident.
“If there’s an event of exacerbation, the clinician gets notified,” Patel said. The clinician then can prescribe treatment such as oxygen or steroid inhalers, possibly a full five days earlier than they would have received treatment if the conditions worsened and the patients were hospitalized, he said.
The early detection also benefits hospitals because they could face a penalty for re-admitting a patient with COPD exacerbation within 30 days of the person’s hospitalization, Patel said.
Amptron Medical
FOUNDED: 2021
CEO: Nirav Patel
HEADQUARTERS: Carlsbad
BUSINESS: Respiratory monitoring device
FUNDING: $500,000 (pre-seed)
EMPLOYEES: 3 full-time, 2 part-time.
WEBSITE: https://www.amptronmedical.com/
NOTABLE: As a business student at UCLA, Amptron Medical CEO Nirav Patel was awarded the 2020 Entrepreneurial Excellence Capstone Award from the Anderson School of Management Business and the Muse Innovation Award with a $25,000 grant from the UCLA Price Center for Entrepreneurship
& Innovation.
