Four Wisconsin-based health technology and innovative health care companies took home a total of $30,000 in prizes Tuesday night at the Healthcare Innovation Pitch Competition at Wantable Cafe, which was part of Milwaukee Tech Week.
Debtle Co., a Sheboygan-based startup building a debt settlement platform for medical bills, took home the top prize in the health tech category, winning $10,000. Badger Dental Products LLC, a Madison-registered company that's addressing emergency dental trauma, won first place in the health care category, also winning $10,000.
Click through the slideshow above for scenes from the event.
Co-founded by Stephanie Hoskins, Debtle also won the Summerfest Tech Pitch Competition last month. Badger Dental Products was co-founded by David Poetker of the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Milwaukee-based scientific research marketplace Otto Sciences and Milwaukee anti-aging skincare product developer Amruth Group LLC each won a $5,000 second-place prize in the health tech and health care categories, respectively. Otto Sciences co-founder and CEO Harsimran Kalsi was one of the 2021 winners of Wisconsin Inno Under 25. Michael Reilly is the CEO and co-founder of Amruth Group.
Funding for the prize money came from a National Institutes of Health grant to the Medical College of Wisconsin for the Clinical and Translational Science Institute of Southeast Wisconsin. Part of that money is allocated to an initiative between local academic research institutions aimed at supporting regional health innovators. That effort, known as Accelerating Medical Product Development using Networked Resources (AMPD NR) was one of the event organizers.
The two first-place winners also earned a one-year membership to Matter, a global health care startup incubator based in Chicago, and associate membership in local angel group Milwaukee Venture Partners.
"I think more important than $10,000 or $5,000 is, all of the judges are investors," said Daniel Sem, the leader of AMPD NR and the CEO of local nonprofit Bridge to Cures, another one of the event's organizers. "More important is that these entrepreneurs had face time with these investors."
A total of 11 startups across two categories — health technology and health care — pitched their companies to the judges, which included Richelle Martin of the Winnow Fund, Matthew Friedel and Karen Plunkett of Milwaukee Venture Partners, Mike Maschek of Inception Health, Paul Weiss of Venture Investors, Steve Visuri of Golden Angels Investors and Kelsey Moody of Ichor Life Sciences Inc.
The other companies that pitched were:
Health care innovation:
- Estrigenix Therapeutics, led by William Donaldson;
- Function Therapeutics, led by Chris Dockendorf;
- PersoDx Inc., led by Joe McGraw;
- Vivid Microscopy, led by Jayson Kurfis;
Health technology:
- Food Fixr, led by Grace Hameister;
- AppEase, led by Nicole Tilot;
- Summary Medical, led by Clint Laskowski.
