EAST LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan State University technology spinout company will use $7 million in private funding to develop and market a blood-flow monitoring device for care of high-risk patients.
The Series A funding for Retia Medical comes from a group of investors led by the Pritzker/Vlock family office, whose other holdings include Global Hyatt Corp., TransUnion LLC, Triton Container International Corp. and other properties.
Retia was co-founded by monitor inventor Ramakrishna Mukkamala, MSU associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and company CEO Marc Zemel. It will use the new funding to complete product development, submit regulatory filings for Food and Drug Administration approval and market the monitor. Retia operates from the MSU Technology Innovation Center in East Lansing.
The monitor is designed to provide an alternative to the more invasive pulmonary artery catheter, currently considered the most reliable method for tracking cardiac output or total blood flow. Because organs can die within minutes without oxygen, cardiac output is considered a key metric for monitoring high-risk patients.
"The literature is rife with case studies showing how current, less-invasive technologies fail during when significant changes in cardiac output or blood pressure occur. This is exactly when accurate monitoring is of greatest need," Mukkamala said. "We performed competitive testing during similar hemodynamically unstable conditions and showed dramatic improvements in accuracy with Retia's monitor, which can lead to better clinical decision making."
At least 15 million surgical patients and 3 million intensive care patients worldwide could benefit from such accurate, less-invasive cardiac output monitoring.
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Retia Medical, headquartered in the Technology Innovation Center, East Lansing, Mich., is an early-stage medical device company that develops software and hardware for patient monitoring. Retia’s mission is to improve patient outcomes by enabling accurate detection of changes in cardiovascular status. This technology has broad applications, including the management of the critically ill, heart failure, and hypertension in the hospital or at home.