Texas Health Catalyst Demo Day 2021 Recap

After a short but inevitable break due to the COVID pandemic, Texas Health Catalyst came back in full force this past December, showcasing innovations from clinicians and faculty members at Dell Medical School and across the University of Texas at Austin campus.

Texas Health Catalyst, part of the CoLab at Dell Med, supports teams with ideas that address unmet needs in medicine, with the goal of helping projects attract resources to bring their innovations to life. Program applicants apply for Phase 1, where award winners showcase their projects in the Texas Health Catalyst Demo Day.

This process is made possible by the support of local partners, such as Winstead PC, an Austin law firm that offered comprehensive consulting to all applicants regardless of how far they got in the application process. Program director Nishi Viswanathan, MBBS, MBA, and Lekha Gopalakrishna, Ph.D., member of Winstead’s Intellectual Property Practice Group, provided feedback to teams.

“I’m glad we received consulting during this early phase of our research, as now we have a lot of ideas of directions to go and ways to refine it that we probably wouldn’t have come up with on our own,” said Emily Porter, Ph.D., assistant professor in UT’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department. “Our advisor, Sam, went above and beyond to connect us with key people and give us incredibly helpful feedback.”

After an in-depth review process by clinical and industry experts, select teams were awarded Phase 1 consulting awards. Each winning team then met with advisors with expertise in specific areas that matched gaps identified during the review process. During these meetings, teams received feedback on the market potential for their solutions, among other topics.

Demo Day Highlights

On Demo Day, several teams were recognized for their work, including teams from the 2020 award cycle. To kick off the event before teams presented their work, attendees heard a keynote address from Gaheng Kong, a managing partner at HealthQuest Capital. Throughout the event, the audience interacted with the presenters through the chat function of Zoom. BioAustin, an organization focused on advancing the life science industry in central Texas, hosted an “Austin life sciences trivia” quiz competition.

Kong also participated in a panel about the future of health innovation that included George Macones, M.D., interim dean of Dell Med, Brian Windsor, M.D., CEO of Lung Therapeutics, Lauren Forshey, president of Revival Capital, and Viswanathan, who moderated the session.

The presentations were broken down into three categories and the audience voted for their favorite pitch after each session. The winners were as follows:

• Diagnostics and Therapeutics: “High-Resolution Imaging for Stroke” with speaker Jared Culpepper
• Devices: “Flexible Drilling Device for Orthopedics & Neurosurgery” with speaker Drew Conyers and CEO Farshid Alambeigi
• Digital Health: “Precision Oncology Matchmaking Tool” with speaker Jeanne Kowalski-Muegge

Despite safety considerations requiring everyone to adapt to a virtual format for the Phase 1 and 2021 showcase, Demo Day went well as anticipated, and it marked a return of the familiar buzz of innovation and entrepreneurship known at Dell Med and UT. With 2021’s Demo Day in the books, Texas Health Catalyst is already looking forward to what innovators have in store for 2022.

To learn more about the tools, processes and innovations shown at Demo Day 2021, explore the full list of presentations below.

2021 Presentations

Therapeutics & Diagnostics

High-Resolution Imaging for Stroke

• Team: Emily Porter, Jared Culpepper, Hannah Lee, Shwetadwip Chowdhury
• Organization(s): Cockrell School of Engineering
• Advisor: Sam Liang, operating partner at Revival Healthcare Capital
• Summary: To combat the devastating impact that strokes have on families across the nation, this team is working to facilitate rapid stroke triage through imaging to determine the stroke’s type, location and size.

Discovery Platform for Biological Therapeutics

• Team: Elizabeth Gardner, Jule Goike, Jimmy Gollihar, Andrew Horton, Dan Boutz, Kamyab Javanmardi
• Organization(s): College of Natural Sciences
• Advisor: J. Anthony Ware, former senior vice president of clinical product development at Eli Lilly
• Summary: This team has developed a rapid response antibody platform. In the case of future pandemics, their technology can be used to design antibodies with fewer resources. The platform can also be used by biotech companies during the drug discovery process for other applications, including cancer therapeutics.

Pre-concentrator for Volatile Biomarkers

• Team: Tanya Hutter, Aminur Chodwury, Tse-Ang Lee
• Organization(s): Cockrell School of Engineering
• Advisor: Shelley Hossenlopp, founder at POCA International LLC
• Summary: This team is working to produce a sensitive, convenient and affordable portable concentrator to diagnose cancer through volatile organic markers that can be found in the breath of individuals with post-surgical complications, cancer and other conditions.

Wearable EEG Electrode System

• Team: Huiliang Wang, Ming-Chieh Ding
• Organization(s): Cockrell School of Engineering, Dell Medical School
• Advisor: Anthony Williams, Partner at HealthQuest Capital
• Summary: This team is devising an easily applied, durable and automated EEG Electrode system to monitor subarachnoid hemorrhages. In the future, they plan for this technology to be applied to monitor seizures.

Enhancement Microscopy SW to Identify Tumor-free Margins

• Team: Tim Yeh, Yuan-I (Nina) Chen, Yin-Jui (Derek) Chang
• Organization(s): Cockrell School of Engineering
• Advisor: Stanley Schwartz, senior advisor at Nikon Instruments Inc.
• Summary: To combat long wait times, random noise and high-data requirements for the traditional pathology methods, this team is applying their technology flimGANE to determine tumor-free margins.

Medical Devices

Solution for Stethoscope Disinfection – Skope

• Team: Dan Stromberg, Keith Rubin, Ken Solovay
• Organization(s): Dell Medical School, Skope
• Advisor: David Blossom, medical device executive and now CEO, Skope
• Summary: Skope is under development to inhibit the transmission of acquired infections in hospitals through stethoscopes, which harbor bacteria and viruses. The device is convenient, employs an EPA-approved disinfectant and holds multiple issued patents.

Flexible Drilling Device for Orthopedics & Neurosurgery

• Team: Farshid Alambeigi, Jordan Amadio, Susheela Sharma, Jacob Clemmons, Drew Conyers
• Organization(s): Cockrell School of Engineering, Dell Medical School
• Advisor: Pete Aman, CEO of INSURGICAL Powered Instruments
• Summary: To fit the human body’s natural curves, this team is working to produce a handheld, steerable drill that allows for curved trajectories. This can be valuable in numerous operations such as spinal surgeries, ACL reconstruction and pelvic fixation.

Transcatheter Repair Device for Tricuspid Valve Regurgitation

• Team: Manuel Rausch
• Organization(s): Cockrell School of Engineering
• Advisor: Adam Berman, CEO at Alleviant Medical
• Summary: Leakage of the tricuspid valve has a markedly deleterious impact on the survival rates of patients. This team is developing prototypes to model the cinching of the valve through transcatheter surgical technology to prevent regurgitation.

Guided Needle for Lumbar Puncture

• Team: Don Williams
• Organization(s): Dell Medical School
• Advisor: Anthony Rodriguez, director of marketing at Laminate Medical Technologies
• Summary: An astounding one-third of pediatric lumbar punctures fail due to the outdated devices and guesswork required for the procedure. This team is developing a smart needle to guide spinal tap procedures in children.

Diagnostics Tech for Polyps & Colorectal Cancer

• Team: Farshid Alambeigi, Nethra Venkatayogi, Amoagh Gopinath, Dr. Naruhiko Ikoma
• Organization(s): Cockrell School of Engineering
• Advisor: Russell Brown, CEO of SCIE Solutions LLC
• Summary: Many colorectal polyps are missed during screening due to their sessile nature. To combat this, this team is creating a 4D imaging system embedded with tactile sensors to ease the discovery of polyps.

Synthetic Training Phantom for Maternal-Fetal Medicine

• Team: Naazneen Ibtehaj, Celeste Sheppard, Orhun Davarci, Aleah Eskins
• Organization(s): Cockrell School of Engineering, Dell Medical School
• Advisor: Doug Stoakley, COO of ClearCam
• Summary: This team is creating a clinically relevant and modifiable simulator to provide learning opportunities for ultrasound-guided procedures to maternal-fetal fellows, who typically have to perform their first attempt at a medical procedure on a pregnant mother.

Novel Neonatal Feeding Tube

• Team: Alan Groves, Christopher Rylander, Allissa Morris, Angie Englert
• Organization(s): Dell Medical School, Cockrell School of Engineering
• Advisors: Shashi Marulappa, CEO and regulatory affairs consultant at Innovastics, LLC & Christine Luk, Associate Principal at Fannin Innovation Studio
• Summary: Prematurely delivered babies require many supports to grow stronger very quickly. Assistance is commonly administered through CPAP machines and single lumen feeding tubes. This team has proposed a multilumen, multifunction feeding tube to allow for both feeding and venting through one device.

Digital Health

Smartphone Imaging Repository for Clinical Trial Management

• Team: Truman J. Milling Jr., Adrienne Dula, Clay Johnston, Steve Warach
• Organization(s): Dell Medical School
• Advisor: Bob Teague, chief medical officer, Green Room Technologies
• Summary: This team is creating a comprehensive record of patient encounters at various medical centers to provide a complete dataset from study subjects for clinical trial management.

Digital Support Tool with Real-time Guidance

• Team: Thomas Caven, Gavin Gillas, Rick McDonald, Aaron Laviana, John Giannopoulas
• Organization(s): Dell Medical School
• Advisors: Greg Matthews, founder and principal at HealthQuant and Drew Miller, Sr. director of customer experience at OJO Labs
• Summary: Relying on memory when making medical decisions or carrying out medical tasks can be difficult and dangerous. This team is creating an app based on complex algorithms to facilitate physician decision-making in the moment.

Voice Biomarkers for Diagnosis of COVID & Other Conditions

• Team: Jun Wang, Rosemary A. Lester-Smith, Edison Thomas
• Organization(s): Moody College of Communications, Cockrell School of Engineering
• Advisor: Elizabeth Jennings, principal at Venture Atlas Labs
• Summary: Long COVID-19 can be present when patients display symptoms over six weeks after infection. This team is using AI to analyze functional data collected on patients daily, assisting physicians in treating long COVID cases.

Digitizing Curbside Consultations

• Team: Amy Papermaster, Aaron Papermaster
• Organization(s): Dell Medical School, Highnote
• Advisor: Adam Turinas, CEO healthlaunchpad
• Summary: This team is creating an application to build a platform for health care professionals to answer questions and start conversations with their patients virtually to make sure everyone’s questions get answered.

Solution to Enable Personalized Neoadjuvant Therapy

• Team: Thomas Yankeelov
• Organization(s): Dell Medical School
• Advisor: Ruben Rathnasingham, assistant dean for health product innovation, Dell Medical School
• Summary: In clinics today, responses are assessed, not predicted, which means treatments are trial and error. This team has developed mathematical models to use patient information to create patient-specific predictions for treatment.

Allergy Symptoms and Outcomes Tracker

• Team: Karen Stierman, Thomas Sullivan, Andrew Janiten, Jay Parsons
• Organization(s): Allergy Intelligence
• Advisor: Bob Teague, Chief Medical Officer, Green Room Technologies
• Summary: This team is creating an application and portal to better the experiences of people living with allergies. Patients log symptoms and treatments to visualize their allergy index and receive communications from their doctors.

Solution to Enhance Engagement in Telepsychology

• Team: Jasper Smits, Michael Otto
• Organization(s): College of Liberal Arts
• Advisor: Ray Goforth, senior vice president of marketing at Integrated Behavioral Health
• Summary: This team is optimizing treatment and engagement in telepsychology by employing their E36 feedback system, which provides a map of the therapy skills and needs they have worked through and need to work through in the future.

Precision Oncology Matchmaking Tool

• Team: Jeanne Kowalski-Muegge, Qi Xu
• Organization(s): Dell Medical School
• Advisor: Gregory Stein, CEO of Curtana Pharmaceuticals
• Summary: This team is developing a computational platform to decode invisible cancer genomes alongside typical molecular tumor testing reports. The team is bringing data from other cases to the table to curate novel treatment options.