The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill held its annual Emerging Company Showcase this week, an event that gives companies spun out of the university the chance to strut their stuff in an eight minute presentation before an audience of researchers, entrepreneurs and potential investors or partners.
Augment Medical: Augment Medical aims to improve the ability of disabled patients to use the nurse call system. The Joint Commission, a hospital certification and accreditation body, has called for the hospitals to make the nurse call system accessible to all patients regardless of cognitive or physical ability by the third quarter of 2012. On Augment’s system, raising an eyebrow is all it takes to activate a facial sensor that triggers a call to the nurse. Future versions will have eye-tracking capabilities that bring the calling function to a tablet computer. The company was founded by graduate students in the joint departments of biomedical engineering at North Carolina State University and UNC. “We want to be the standard of care for The Joint Commission,” said Timothy Martin, Augment’s president and co-founder. The company last year was awarded a $7,000 grant from NC TraCS. The company is looking to raise $750,000 from investors or strategic partners.
GeneCentric Diagnostics: Taking a personalized medicine approach to cancer treatment, GeneCentric is developing new diagnostics to match a drug to individual patients in order to maximize the efficacy of cancer treatments and reduce adverse events. GeneCentric’s initial focus is nonsmall cell lung cancer, or NSCLC. The company’s diagnostic tests for the subtype of NSCLC, which is important because some currently approved drugs as well as drugs still in development work differently depending on the subtype. “We wouldn’t know which drug would work if we didn’t have the right diagnostic,” said Myla Lai-Goldman, CEO and co-founder. The company is based on research from Dr. Neil Hayes and Chuck Perou of UNC.GeneCentric raised $250,000 from Hatteras Venture Partners last year.
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