The winner of this year’s Pressure Chamber contest, Child Health Imprints, is seeking to establish its neonatal care platform in the United States after finding success in Asia.
The company beat out four other finalists this week during the pitch competition hosted by the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce as part of Forward Fest in Madison. Child Health Imprints was selected based on a combination of judge scores and audience votes.
In an interview yesterday, co-founder and CEO Harpreet Singh said winning the contest will help raise awareness about the importance of improving the quality of care for babies born prematurely.
“It has been great … the amount of messages, calls and congrats you get from your community,” he told WisBusiness.com. “Suddenly people are realizing what you are doing.”
The company’s platform, called iNICU, includes a physical device as well as companion software that aims to support clinical decision making in neonatal intensive care units, which provide medical support for newborn babies.
Singh explained standard monitoring technologies produce large amounts of data on infants’ brain, heart, lungs and more, and providers need to interact with multiple interfaces to track it all. He said Child Health Imprints helps by integrating that information, and supports quality improvement efforts by identifying trends and areas of potential improvement.
Since launching in 2018, the company has raised about $5.8 million in funding, some of which was used to build the product and deploy it at 30 facilities in Asia. Child Health Imprints is now working with six clients in the U.S. and Canada — including UW Health — to validate platform results at study sites.
“Hopefully with all the validation completed, they will become the next set of commercial sites for us,” Singh said.
As the winner of the Pressure Chamber competition, Child Health Imprints received the chamber’s “golden suitcase” award and secured a spot on its upcoming trip to Silicon Valley, which includes meetings with multiple investment firms.
Singh said company leaders have already identified several California investors that have previously invested in other companies with a similar focus.
“The money we have raised focuses on the Midwest, our expansion plans in terms of deploying it in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, but this solution is needed across the country,” he said, adding investor pitches to come will highlight that need in larger states such as Texas, Florida and California.
The company has a presence at Forward BIOLABS in Madison.
See more on the company: https://childhealthimprints.com/
–By Alex Moe
