Houston is synonymous with oil and gas, but the inaugural class of the Texas Medical Center's TMCx accelerator attests to the city's med tech ambitions. Essentially, all of the 22 startups are in the device or health IT arena. There isn't a pure-play drug developer in the mix.
In another sign of the changing economy, the 100,000-square-foot facility is a former Nabisco cookie factory. The incubator touts its facility as a one-stop shop, complete with 10 conference rooms, kitchens, and yes, foosball and pingpong tables.
A Johnson & Johnson wet lab incubator, part of its new JLabs initiative, is on the way, as is a prototyping shop.
The Texas Medical Center consists of 21 hospitals that treat 7.2 million patients per year.
Some of the incubator's companies include:
- Adient Medical, a developer of a bioabsorbable vascular filter to treat blood clots in the lungs, pulmonary embolism.
- Gauss Surgical, maker of the iPad-based, FDA-cleared Triton Fluid Management System for real-time estimation of surgical blood loss on surgical sponges.
- SemanticMD, developer of a HIPAA-compliant platform for searching and analyzing medical images.
Those are just three of the incubator's startups. Support from the incubator should help them overcome a tough VC environment for med tech startups.
- see the entire list of companies via Xconomy
- here's the incubator homepage