When Warmilu CEO and founder Grace Hsia found that infants in resource-scarce settings die from preventable hypothermia, she knew she had to do something. She was a senior engineering student in a design capstone course at the University of Michigan at the time, and this alarming statistic completely sideswiped her.
“That was shocking to me," she said. "I remember getting chills thinking, ‘what if I had been born in a different country?’”
Hsia explained that WHO recommendations and guidelines on newborn health management state that postnatal care should include keeping the newborns warm — even to the point of delaying the first bath for at least six hours.
“Doctors and nurses have instant access to warmth that is safe and controlled."
In developing countries, however, the access to electricity and even traditional incubators is not as reliable, especially when in prehospital or intra-hospital transport, or when the mother is suffering from post-birth complications. As such, the risk of infant hypothermia is high.
This is the problem Hsia and her woman-owned/woman-led and minority-owned/minority-led company, Warmilu, wanted to fix.
The organization produces non-electric warming technology company, with its flagship product dubbed the 'InstaWarmer.' The website describes it as "an instant, electricity-free, reusable and durable heat pack that generates safely regulated warmth in seconds.” The pack has a range of compositions and temperatures, and its tech is U.S. patented and FDA cleared for use on adult and infant patients.
The pack, which is developed and manufactured in the company's home state of Michigan, is reusable, so users can boil over 100 times in order to recharge it for the next use.
The first Warmilu fabric product to enclose the InstaWarmer was the “Warmilu IncuBlanket.” The IncuBlanket has a soft fabric that serves as a wipeable and washable infant warming blanket to improve reprocessing in between patients, enabling clinicians such as those at St. Francis Nsambya Hospital in Uganda to warm two 15 infants per hour for five to eight hours.
“Doctors and nurses have instant access to warmth that is safe and controlled,” Hsia said.
Though Warmilu started with the intent of keeping infants warm, its product line has expanded — especially since the InstaWarmer pack can be used in a variety of Warmilu products. It now includes offerings like midwife warming solutions, stadium (Game Day) warming, outdoor seating tools and pain management.
The company's Cincinnati connection? The Hillman Accelerator, which Hsia said the company entered at the perfect time.
“They helped us worked out our pricing strategy and understanding our costs,” she said.
Hillman also helped with the business model and the growth of Warmilu, as well as made some important connections, such as those at P&G. Hsia noted that the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the Queen City has been crucial to the growth of the company.
She laid out the numbers. Last year, the company was in two hospitals and three countries, Kenya, India and Israel. This year, its closing in on the $1 million in funding mark, with $100,000 in revenue. Warmilu is now serving eleven hospitals and six distributors in eight different countries, including the U.S., Uganda, Kenya, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Israel and Tanzania.
And Hsia said they're not stopping there. She'll be presenting the company at TEDxDetroit on Sept. 26, and working on its expansion plan. In fact, Warmilu is looking to grow to one to five more hospitals and find more medical device distributors to work with to spread the warmth and save lives.
