The Marines have a famous motto that states “no man left behind.” ClearCount Medical Solutions, a five year old Pittsburgh startup that recently secured $3.4 million in funding, is trying to help hospitals adopt a similar mantra: no sponge left behind.
“Retained foreign objects” is the term for items such as surgical sponges and instruments accidentally left inside a patient following a surgical procedure. This is clearly a problem, as a study published in 2003 by The New England Journal of Medicine found that approximately 4,000 sponges are accidentally left inside patients every year. In the majority of cases, the cause is a counting error by medical staff.
To help make this problem go away, ClearCount has created the SmartSponge System, which uses a RFID (radio frequency identification) chip embedded in the sponges so that they can be tracked in two ways: counted before they are used and then accounted for at the surgery’s close. The company is garnering a lot of positive buzz, including an article in Time magazine in June.
At first glance, you would think hospitals would balk at the need to pay for such a system, figuring they could just try to implement a more failsafe manual counting system. But, there’s a lot at stake here. For starters, malpractice litigation never seems to do anything but increase, so implementing technology like this seems like a reliable way to reduce lawsuits related to sponges left behind. Then there’s the recent announcement by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid that it will no longer cover the costs of 27 “Never events.” “Never events” are preventable injuries and infections that occur during hospital stays and, you guessed it, accidentally leaving a sponge behind after surgery is one of them. The average Medicare payment for admissions in which an object is left behind after surgery is over $63,000, so in addition to the obvious quality-of-care issue, it would seem financially prudent for hospitals to take a close look at ClearCount, one of only two companies currently providing RF-detectable surgical sponge technology.
With the recent funding and a solid product that appears to address a real market need, the future looks bright for ClearCount and, of course, for surgical patients.
With a name like The Resumator there is no need for a catchy title. An AlphaLab graduate, The Resumator is a company and product. The Resumator aims to make the hiring process simple, efficient and cheap. Currently aimed squarely at small and medium sized companies, The Resumator has gained traction with startups in Pittsburgh and Silicon Valley.
The premise is simple, just like the product. Resumator works to gather, categorize and gather statistics on any number of different areas for recruiters and “HR” folk. Unlike other products in the market, The Resumator does not offer a turn-key solution, rather, they create a product that is usable for someone expecting a decent number of applicants. It’s great for a growing and popular start up.
Locally it is used by MobileFusion (also an AlphaLab grad) as well as the better known Silicon Valley start up, Dropbox (the terrific online back-up and storage app). After being launched in January 2009, The Resumator was profiled by all of the big technology blogs including Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and CNet.
The Resumator delivers the power of a much larger HR management system for a comparatively infinitesimal price – ReadWriteWeb
This Pittsburgh start-up is another that isn’t about robotics or biotech. It’s solid business-to-business app that nicely meets it’s customers needs. The online “cloud” or SaaS (Software as a Service) apps are nothing new – small business get great advantages from using them. Popularized by 37Signals’ collaboration tool Basecamp, small business now have a suite of products from many innovative companies to meet their needs. Less Accounting, MailChimp, FreshBooks and others round out a number of apps that aim to support the small businesses by offering the traditional business needs in the cloud. The Resumator holds it’s own and so long as they keep innovating and producing a great product they will be another Pittsburgh success story.
Congratulations to ModCloth founders Susan Gregg & Eric Koger, they are number 2 and 3 on this year’s Inc. 30 Under 30 list. While not a company one would expect out of Pittsburgh given the recent fascination with “eds and meds” in the news, ModCloth goes against the grain selling retro-inspired and true vintage clothing.
Started out of a dorm room at Carnegie Mellon (like many other Pittsburgh start-ups), ModCloth has grown to almost 100 employees and 2009 projected revenues of $15 million. They hit an accord with shoppers offering an easy way to avoid the hit-or-miss vintage shops such as Hey, Betty on Ellsworth in Shadyside.
The trend toward vintage clothing is becoming more popular everyday especially as the popularity of Mad Men increases. To meet the needs of their customers, ModCloth hires women in their 20s, their exact target demographic. So far, its paid off.
The duo of Susan and Eric works well – Eric runs the site while Susan manages the merchandise. A match made in heaven. Going forward they plan to offer a new experience to shoppers – that of an online “rack.” While I don’t know specifies, I see this being similar to Pittsburgh’s other big retailer American Eagle. Their Martin+Osa brand uses a flash based site to offer shoppers the opportunity to see a number of different outfits and comb through many possibilities.
Startup Pittsburgh congrats Susan & Eric on their accomplishment – well deserved!
Pittsburgh Startup Avere Systems recently raked in 15 million dollars of first round funding to launch their network-attached storage (NAS) technology. There plan is to announce their new product in October.
If you are hoping I know what this new NAS is, or how it’s different from the competition you’re out of luck. Like most startups there keeping the details hush-hush, but I can tell you what little I do know.
NAS is nothing new and it’s even starting to make its way in to the home. Acer and HP both have consumer model NAS on the market.
Avers Systems seems to be focusing on business applications for NAS technology. Since it’s something businesses can’t live without it a market with high demand. Another factor that might help them is, with shrinking budgets businesses will be looking at other options for the storage needs.
They believe they will have the advantage since they can make them run faster at a cheaper price than anyone else on the market. I am not sure how they plan to do that but I am going to take their word for it.
If they can really master the art of creating a top performing product at a cheaper price they could have something big on their hands. Household consumers are just now starting to see the value of NAS; this could be a market Avere might want to keep an eye on.
Alpha Lab would is now accepting applications for the Winter/Spring cycle. I recently did a post about this cycles companies and I plan to harass them for interviews ASAP. But this post is not about them, it’s about everyone reading this that is sitting on the next big idea.
If you think your idea has what it takes to be an Alpha Lab graduate, then head to their website and start the review process. It’s really painless. Last cycle, I put myself thought it so see what it was like.
All you really need to do is outline your idea, if you have a full business plan that’s great but you don’t really need it. The Alpha Labs application asks you all the right questions so it kind of develops one for you on the fly. Then you wait a few weeks/months and then they let you know if you make it to the next step.
I think everyone that has an idea, no matter how big or small, should at least apply. The application deadline is October 20th and the program begins on January 5th.
If you want to learn more about the program, a good time to do that is at Open Coffee Club. The next one is on October 1st starting at 9 am at Alpha Lab. If you’re on Facebook you can check out the group and event page there.
I make it a point to try and go to every Open Coffee Club so I hope to see you there.
