Augment Medical, was among four local startups awarded ~$20,000 each in commercialization awards from Carolina KickStart, a service of the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS). Carolina KickStart awards are designated for UNC start-up companies in the life science, biomedical, and pharmaceutical fields. The awards are aimed to assist companies with technology validation, product, and business development. Augment Medical is a spinout company from NCSU/UNC’s Biomedical Engineering department. The team is developing PatientLink, a wireless platform to improve the care of disabled patients in the hospital setting. Augment Medical is currently part of the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network (BEN) and is a National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Alliance (NCIIA) E-Team Stage 2 company. Augment is led by Tim Martin, MS; Richard Daniels; Daniel Bieber and Andrew DiMeo, PhD. In a note thanking his team, Tim Martin, CEO and cofounder stated, “The grant funding will be used to secure the intellectual property for the PatientLink system. In addition, we will be taking our current wireless prototype and developing a market ready platform for business development efforts”. More details are available in the WRAL feature found at: http://wraltechwire.com/four-unc-startups-land-80k-in-carolina-kickstart-awards/12925755/
KickStart Commercialization Awards promote life-science entrepreneurship on the UNC-CH campus by supporting the commercialization of biomedical innovations. The awards help promote the technical development of a biomedical innovation — generating preliminary data for an SBIR grant or developing the business case for the innovation. Over the past 4 years, $800,000 in awards has been provided to 22 UNC startups resulting in $10M of additional outside funding.