GPX Medical – new SmiLe company

Medtech company GPX Medical has been admitted to SmiLe Incubator and will receive support commercializing its instrument for continuous monitoring of lung function in premature infants. The company has also recently been selected to participate in the ten-week “PwC Scale – Life Science program” as one of six European companies.

 

The business concept of the company is to improve care of premature infants using its medical device NEOLA, which stands for neonatal lung analyzer. The device uses non-invasive optical technology that dispenses with the need for invasive procedures. Probes are placed on the infant’s chest and the instrument continuously monitors the lungs and alerts if the child develops a condition such as a collapsed lung.

 

Today's neonatal care uses routine chest x-rays. Each year, 15 million babies, one in ten, are born at least one month early. The lungs are the last organ to develop, which is why premature babies often need respiratory support and pulmonary monitoring.

 

 

“We are at SmiLe to receive support building a successful medtech company. Our device is a groundbreaking innovation that is needed in the care of highly vulnerable premature infants. Now the plan is for us to receive support to enter an international market. SmiLe provides proven results for companies that have already completed the incubator program and we look forward to being part of Lund’s life science environment where SmiLe is a successful center. Coming from a technology-focused sphere, we also need to become involved with clinical and regulatory affairs experts, as well as with other thriving life science companies,” says Hanna Sjöström, CEO of GPX Medical.

 

GPX Medical has a product prototype that Skåne University Hospital in Lund has approved for clinical use for study purposes. The company works closely with clinicians and researchers at Lund University and has done studies on healthy newborn babies in Lund with good results. Part of the company’s work moving forward is to develop a product that qualifies for CE marking and FDA approval, in order to launch sales in Europe and the US in about four years.

 

“We are pleased to welcome GPX Medical to SmiLe. It will be exciting to support such a technologically advanced company, which focuses on such an important niche. We are also looking forward to working closely with the company in its internationalization process, an area on which we place great focus,”  says Ebba Fåhraeus, CEO of SmiLe Incubator.

 

GPX Medical has five employees and is based in southern Lund. Their technology builds on laser-based spectroscopy, which measures the characteristic absorption of weak infrared light by oxygen and water vapor. They will work at SmiLe’s facilities a couple of times a week to take advantage of networking opportunities with business developers and the other startup companies.

 

The PwC Scale – Life Sciences program helps scale up life science companies by preparing them for larger capitalization and providing opportunities to meet investors from PwC's network. The program is based in Brussels, Belgium.

---

---