Two startups fill a gap in medical industry with plastic inventions

Detroit — Find out what you want to do to leave your mark on the world at the youngest age possible. Choose to do something hard and shoot for the moon.

That's the advice Jon Dekar, co-founder and CEO of Desin LLC in Dayton, Ohio, said he'd give to young people thinking about starting their own companies.

Dekar, who spoke via Skype, was a presenter on Youth, Empathy & Startups on Nov. 7 at the 2017 Design in Plastics conference. Fellow inventor and engineer Erin Keaney, the 26-year-old co-founder and chief operating officer of Nonspec Inc., was also part of the discussion.

Both speakers started their respective companies at young ages — Dekar was a freshman at the University of Dayton when he took on the risk of "shooting for the moon," for example — and they both invented plastics products that fill a void in the medical industry.

Keaney's startup company, Nonspec, makes adjustable, injection molded prosthetic limbs for amputees worldwide. The idea for the company first came about in 2013 when co-founder Jonathan Perez de Alderete designed a myoelectric hand for his mechanical engineering capstone project at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and — after extensive research, time, and trial and error — gradually evolved into a lower-cost plastic version consisting of arm and leg options.

The patented prosthetic limbs now feature extendable segments that are configured to adjust the length and thickness for a quicker, easier and more accurate fit — a must-have when you consider the company's target market.

"There are 54 million amputees worldwide, and 35 million of them are in developing countries," Keaney said. "And although most of them have access to a clinic, they don't have access to someone who can fit a prosthetic or have the funds available to afford a prosthetic that works well for them."

On top of this, she added, there are few clinicians in developing countries who are trained to fit amputees.

"The waiting time for patients can be up to two years or more," Keaney said. "And because they're waiting for a device that helps them move around, they often become sedentary and that gives them a very high mortality rate."

Doing some more research — one of the activities these engineers do best — Keaney found there are 3 million new amputees each year, with one in five living in India.

"There are about 1,200 clinics [in India] that have the ability to fit amputees, but only 22 of them really make the decisions for the whole country. It's these facilities that train the clinicians to go out into these other regions," she said.

Nonspec, which now has a team of three engineers in India working as salespeople, has targeted these 22 clinics to get feedback on the prosthetic limbs and spread its products to those who need it most. Sales for the company started last month, and patients in India are already wearing the prosthetic limbs, which can be properly fit in under an hour, Keaney said.

The company, a team of seven, is currently seeking additional funding.

In 2002, Dekar's grandfather was sick with a neuromuscular disease called corticobasal degeneration, which, over time, can progressively affect cognitive and motor skills, among other symptoms.

"I witnessed firsthand how hard it was for him to get to a point where he had to rely on my grandmother to spoon-feed him in front of friends and family," Dekar said. "He just loathed this."

As a volunteer at nursing homes and hospitals, he also witnessed how patients were relying on caregivers to feed them. As a college freshman at the University of Dayton in Ohio, he was exposed to the problem once again after a local woman spoke to Dekar's adviser about having a student build a mechanical device that could allow her 6-year-old daughter to eat with more independence.

"I watched a video of this girl, and it was at that point that it really clicked to me that there were a lot of people who needed this type of assistance," he said.

Dekar found there were approximately 4 million to 5 million people in the United States alone who needed assistance during mealtime.

"For this to be a basic human need — a fundamental freedom and an intimate experience, not to mention one of life's greatest pleasures — it just didn't make sense to me," said Dekar, adding that he became "obsessed and ferociously driven" to do something about it.

In 2006, Dekar designed the first prototype for Obi, an assistive robotic dining companion that allows users to regain some eating independence. In 2010, he founded Desin LLC with his father, Tom, launching the first-generation Obi device in 2016.

"So many assistive technologies are function-first or function-only, and so I was inspired to create an empowered experience that people would really desire to use, not just have to use," he said.

To use Obi, a caregiver preps the food to an appropriate size — somewhere between a pea and a grape, Dekar said — then places the meal within four bowls. If it is someone's first time using Obi, the device can be switched to "teach" mode, where the caregiver directs the arm by hand and moves it up to the user's mouth.

"Let it go, and you're all set," Dekar said. "It will deliver food to that spot every time until you reteach it."

Obi is compatible with a number of accessibility switches to accommodate various disabilities. All of the food contact parts are made from FDA-approved polypropylene. The device, which operates on a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, is also microwave-, dishwasher- and freezer-safe.

The company, which is distributing the product globally with six international distributors and three domestic distributors, has 11 patents for Obi and has been fully funded for three years, he said.

"We want to become a consumer robotics company," said Dekar, adding that the company is now focusing on designing a second-generation Obi. "We want to play in this health care space because health care has gotten so expensive here in the U.S."