National NSF I-Corps alum Samay wins MedTech Innovator grand prize of $350,000
MedTech Innovator (MTI), an accelerator of medical technology companies, recently announced the Grand Prize winner of MTI Accelerator program at The Medtech Conference on Oct. 16, in Toronto, Canada. Samay, a company developing a novel acoustic resonance patch for COPD diagnosis, management, and intervention, won the grand prize of $350,000 in non-dilutive funding, being the first Latin American company accepted to MTI in its 12-year history.
“We are honored to make history as the first Latin American startup to not only be accepted but win the MedTech Innovator competition in its twelve years of existence,” said Maria Artunduaga, CEO and founder of Samay, in the press release announcing the winner. “During the program, we had access to a top-notch group of sponsor companies and dedicated individual mentors who engaged with us regularly on ideas and concepts from regulatory to technology, distribution, finance, business and beyond. The Grand Prize recognition is not only for Samay but for all the advisors, mentors, minority programs, physicians, engineers and talent in North and South America that believed in us and our vision for a better future for COPD patients everywhere.”
For the competition, four finalists — including Samay (Mountain View, CA and Medellín, Colombia) BrainSpace (Seattle, WA), Flow Medical (Chicago, IL), Juniper Biomedical (Worcester, MA), and NeuroBionics (Cambridge, MA) — pitched value propositions and answered questions from a panel of industry experts. The experts represented companies like Johnson & Johnson Medtech, Zimmer Biomet, Olympus Corporation, and BD. The live conference audience then voted in real-time to select Samay as the winner. The three other competing companies also received $25,000 finalist prizes.
“Congratulations to the entire team at Samay on their well-deserved win of the coveted MedTech Innovator annual Grand Prize, as determined by the real-time vote of hundreds of leaders in the medtech industry. Samay’s truly game-changing technology platform addresses a critical unmet need for accurate remote monitoring of respiratory symptoms to improve the care of nearly one billion people affected globally by COPD, a severely underdiagnosed and deadly disease with a cost burden in the trillions,” said Paul Grand, founder and chief executive officer of MedTech Innovator, in the release. “Samay’s win is even more significant when you look at the incredibly high caliber of all five of this year’s best-in-class finalists. We look forward to seeing these finalists and all of the 2024 MedTech Innovator cohort companies continue to advance their technologies in the pursuit of improving care and outcomes for millions of people around the world.