7 Companies Engineering The Growth of Medtech in Baltimore
From designing and prototyping to compliant, full-scale sales, these firms have the power to make Charm City a leading hub for MedTech development and manufacturing.
By Sam Hopkins | August 22, 2023
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Earlier this year we wrote about Why Baltimore Has Emerged as the Next Great City for MedTech, and then in March, the city welcomed 90 companies and many hundreds of people from across the country (and even the world) who came to Baltimore to pitch at the MedTech Innovator (MTI) and BioTools Innovator (BTI) roadshows.
Many of Maryland’s emerging medtechs are also attracting investment and support from TEDCO, which provides funding, resources, and connections to early-stage technology companies. TEDCO infused over $1M in funding to five promising medtech startups in Q4 of last year alone.
All of this activity is further solidifying Charm City’s place as a competitive MedTech hub. This growth hasn’t happened overnight, and it’s taken a full ecosystem approach to engineer this industry in Baltimore.
The success of Baltimore’s medical technology scene is being engineered by the companies and service vendors whose decades of experience help startups to solve problems with an iterative, precision approach that taps the best technologists and engineering talent available in the greater Maryland region.
Here are seven companies that are helping to engineer the growth of MedTech in Baltimore.
The LaunchPort, a MedTech manufacturing accelerator in Baltimore Peninsula’s City Garage facility, is part of a growing consortium of individuals and organizations who are instrumental in building a vibrant regional life science manufacturing industry. They are focused on hand-in-hand cooperation that leads to the retention of scaled-up products by helping to keep as much of their supply chain as possible staying in the local area.
Forest Hill-based RPM Tech, led by President and Founder Cyrus Etemad-Moghadam, does engineering and product design for an array of technologies, from sensor systems to chipboards. Founded in 2006, the company also has a design facility in New York and has been the go-to partner for prototyping and design services to the medtech ecosystem. Etemad-Moghadam is also a Reviewer for TEDCO’s MII Fund and can be found speaking and advising early-stage companies all across Maryland.
Once these companies need additional growth funding, Maryland-focused venture capital firm Ecphora Capital, led by Deborah Hemingway, PhD, is helping to navigate early funding stages that support transitional activities, tapping local incentives like local tax credits and a seasoned network of investors who have taken products to market–after all, the best money comes along with sage advice. Hemingway is an experienced founder, board member, advisor, and investor who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table that guides their investment strategy and their portfolio support.
Hemingway hosts a quarterly Entrepreneur Seminar Series at City Garage, with support from Launchport and BioBuzz, to provide the additional support that helps early founders navigate the startup and investment process.
Other key players providing support to emerging medtech companies include:
Baltimore’s TechSlice runs an accelerator program that lends engineering expertise and curates funding connections to emerging companies, promising to build a long-term vision for each startup. TechSlice works in cybersecurity and education technology (edtech) as well and touts the global clinical leadership of such institutions as NIH, the FDA, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Maryland Medical System in proclaiming Maryland as a mecca of technological opportunities.
Potomac Photonics is a digital and microfabrication company based in the BWtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park in Baltimore County. The company takes on a range of highly sensitive microelectronics, sensor, and semiconductor projects that allow clients to engage in rapid prototyping to match emerging products to customer needs along the way to full scale.
Noble Life Sciences, located in greater Baltimore, has been providing preclinical contract research (CRO) services to a range of companies developing medical products, cardiovascular devices, trauma, orthopedics, wound, healing, and drug delivery since 2010. Led by Srujana Cherukuri, and founded by several Maryland serial life science entrepreneurs, Noble has become a CRO partner of choice for both medtech and biologics companies.
Finally, ACS Industrial Services in Baltimore County is the leading expert for industrial electronic and automation equipment and component repair. From your lab instrumentation and automation equipment to your industrial production systems, ACS has 20 years of experience in solving problems and repairing your systems economically, even for the most complex equipment.
It’s because of the expertise of these firms, MedTech startups are able to succeed here in Baltimore. Several of the companies that benefit from firms like these and the supportive local ecosystem include Galen Robotics, which is working to expand access to surgery through assistive technology, has built on Johns Hopkins research, and engaged companies in the region to advance its ergonomically-designed and ultra-stable line of surgical tools.
CraniUS is another emerging company bolstered by what it can get done near its Baltimore County HQ. CraniUS markets what it bills as the world’s first smart, refillable, and fully implantable medical device for direct medicine delivery into the brain. Exorenal, a LaunchPort company, is developing novel technologies and products for artificial organs, including xKidney – a portable hemodialysis device.
For an example of building towards a hand-off point, consider Breethe, innovator of a wearable artificial lung system based on University of Maryland-Baltimore transplant surgery technology, which was acquired in 2020 by Massachusetts-based Abiomed. The Breethe team and its facilities, absorbed into Abiomed, remained in the Baltimore region after the acquisition.
No niche ecosystem can thrive without a strong base of subject matter experts, vendors, and support services that help startup companies to navigate the early days of product development and growth. Fortunately, in Baltimore, there is a tremendous support system for the MedTech industry, which is why you are seeing tremendous growth in this market with many new companies emerging, as well as many mature companies continuing to advance their product portfolio.
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Sam Hopkins has spent the past decade in the Baltimore area life-science and healthcare ecosystem, including roles at Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, the U.S. Army, and early-stage companies. He spent the previous decade as a journalist, which saw him cover everything from clean energy conferences in Morocco, to Soviet-era Estonian rock’n’roll, to trailblazing CEOs in Timonium. Sam is an avid athlete and coach, and he lives with his wife and two sons in Baltimore’s Oakenshawe neighborhood. You can often find him around town spinning records as DJ Balagan, or performing in musical groups Sink and South of Boundary.
