Med-tech companies eager to help each other

Connectivity, collaboration and opportunity: These are the watchwords of industry leaders from the Rhode Island medical-technology community who are organizing a new statewide cluster.
The group’s goal is to create an industry-led organization that can build out a strong, Rhode Island-based, med-tech ecosystem. Among the categories envisioned for the med-tech group’s members are biotech, pharmaceuticals, devices, diagnostics, algorithms and related technologies.
Known informally as the Rhode Island Med Group, the group held its second meeting on Jan. 17 at Ximedica in Providence, attracting a diverse crowd of more than 40 entrepreneurs, CEOs, venture capitalists, researchers, editors and lawyers.
The event was hosted by Stephen Lane, chairman, chief venture officer and co-founder of Ximedica, a firm that helps medical device and health care companies develop new products from research to final manufacturing.
At the conclusion of more than two hours of discussion, Lane said the session was very productive. “We accomplished a lot,” he said. “I’m eager to read the written statements on purpose and mission [offered by the participants] about what this group can achieve, to further help to define who we are and where we’re going.” Nothing, Lane added, “is set in concrete; we’re all in the business of discovery.”
The industry-led group is seeking to create a support structure that can help any company grow, according to Lane. The group plans to investigate how similar clusters in other states, such as the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council, have organized.
The Rhode Island Foundation has offered to support the group’s formation by providing funding for an executive director to help facilitate cohesion and momentum, with an initial $50,000 pledged.
Among the ideas discussed in the breakout group on “connectivity” was development of a website as the quickest way to foster collaboration, according to David Philip Goldsmith, co-founder of Aspiera Medical in Woonsocket, who reported back to the larger group. In addition, Goldsmith continued, because the group as a whole was about “the development and discovery and manufacturing and distribution of medical products,” outreach to doctors and nurses who feel affinity to these efforts, because they are entrepreneurial, made sense. In the breakout group on “entrepreneurship,” Lane characterized the discussion as “feisty,” focused on creating an organization that “we can have ownership of, where we connect the dots, stressing the importance of space and place, enabling access to capital, and fostering growth, creating wins.”
For Andrew P. Mallon, CEO of Calista Therapeutics, a startup developing inhaled peptide therapeutics to treat cystic fibrosis, the greatest value of the new group is that it creates an industry network of knowledgeable entrepreneurs. “For me, the biggest advantage is the networking. You get to speak with people who know what they are talking about,” Mallon said. There are too many people in Rhode Island, he continued, “who are like little islands unto themselves, they don’t know what’s going on.”
Mallon sees the new cluster group as a different way of doing business, creating the environment where companies can grow. All of the science doesn’t have to be home-grown in Rhode Island, according to Mallon. “You can go to places and buy the science and bring it to Rhode Island,” he said.
Denice Spero, co-director of the Institute for Immunology and Informatics iCubed, who is working to develop a parallel industry group, the Rhode Island BioScience Leaders, said she was enthused by the group’s conversations and the industry-focused approach.
“It’s very exciting,” Spero said, amid the buzz of ongoing conversation at the gathering. “There are lots of great ideas about entrepreneurship [that emerged tonight]. I think that Rhode Island has a lot of room for industry-led initiatives.” •

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