Huge potential for small gadget
Mobile laser-therapy device called PentaVO tracks an athlete’s recovery from injuries
KITCHENER — Alexa Roeper has big hopes for the small device she called PentaVO.
Roeper, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Penta Medical, holds the laser-therapy device that helps athletes recover from injuries as she talks about the startup’s progress during the past two years.
She recently returned from Y Combinator, a high-profile California accelerator. At the start of that three-month program in early June all of the startups in the cohort received US$150,000 Now, Roeper is currently in the final stages of negotiating a US$1million investment.
Not bad for a startup that nearly ran out of funds last winter.
Roeper holds up the latest version of the device, which pumps out nearly twice as much infrared light as the earlier version, and is linked to a back-end system that collects the data — pain levels, range of motion for injured areas and how often the device is being used. That data is collected automatically to help surgeons and physiotherapists track an athlete’s recovery from a soft-tissue injury.
“So, your doctors or physiotherapists will always have the most up-to-date info on how you are doing,” said Roeper.
Data collection was added to the latest version of the device. For the first year, the data and the device are included in the US$2,000 price. After that, the athlete, the team or the doctor must pay for that information.
“If you are just making a device it is really easy for someone, no matter how well you make it or how novel the hardware, eventually someone will knock it off to find a way to build it,” said Roeper.
The PentaVO is held in place by Velcro straps. The infrared lights increase blood circulation to the injured tendons or muscles, which promotes healing, and helps reduce swelling.
“Athletics is a huge market — we could definitely become profitable in the athletics market,” said Roeper. “But I think our rapid growth will come more from going into doctors and physiotherapy clinics.”
After approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S., Penta Medical sold about 100 of the devices to Michigan State University, the New York Mets, Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles Angels and orthopedic surgeons and physiotherapists who specialize in sports injuries.
While PentaVO is manufactured in Burlington by Urtech, it is not sold here because Health Canada has not yet approved it.
In December 2016, Roeper, who was studying science at the University of Waterloo, and her cofounder Daniel Choi, an engineering grad, won the Velocity Fund Finals pitch competition. With their $35,000 in winnings and a spot in the Velocity Garage in the Tannery, the two worked up several different versions of their mobile laser-therapy device.
The startup now has six employees and plans to focus on growing sales.
“Because of the risk with commodity hardware where it can be knocked off, I think we would continue to sell through physiotherapists and orthopedic surgeons who give it out directly to their patients rather than sell direct to consumers,” said Roeper.
It is a portable laser-therapy device built to clinical standards. It is made of moulded silicone, so it is waterproof and can be easily disinfected. Medical professionals who treat injured athletes know right away what Roeper is talking about.
“But if you go to a consumer they don’t know what laser therapy is, and they definitely don’t know what a high-quality versus low-quality device is,” said Roeper. “So, I think there is too much education required to ever effectively sell to them.”