Four years after its founding, RoddyMedical Inc. in Wauwatosa officially launched its first product: An armband designed to prevent medical tubes from being pulled out of hospital patients' arms.
There are 11 hospitals nationwide — including three in Wisconsin — that are currently evaluating the product, which is called the SecureMove-TLC, RoddyMedical chief operating officer Pat Deno said. Hospitals interested in buying the patent-pending, FDA-registered device will issue purchase orders directly to RoddyMedical, she said.
RoddyMedical is currently pre-revenue but projects it will hit $2.8 million in gross sales in 2022, with plans to continue growing from there, Deno said. It also has plans to launch pediatric and bariatric versions of its product, she added.
The startup's sales strategy includes connecting with nurse leaders at some of the largest critical care conferences in the country, including the annual meeting of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses earlier this month in Houston, which led to more than 200 sales leads across the country, Deno said. The startup is also seeking original equipment manufacturers, she added.
Lindsey Roddy, a nurse in the Milwaukee area, started RoddyMedical in 2018 after almost losing a patient when his life support line got caught and pulled out of his neck as he was getting out of bed for therapy after surgery.
Last summer, RoddyMedical raised $600,000 to fund the product's launch. The launch was slowed because hospitals have put new product reviews on hold due to Covid-19 and supply chain issues, Deno said. RoddyMedical itself hasn't had issues securing materials, she added.
RoddyMedical currently is raising another $600,000 to fund the market launch, manufacturing scale-up and inventory, Deno said.
The SecureMove-TLC device can withstand more than 80 pounds of pull force, compared with the less than 10 pounds of force it takes to pull out some unsecured medical tubes. Patients in an acute care setting can often have 5 to 15 lines, Roddy said in a statement earlier this month.
“Therapy begins just hours after an open-heart surgery, but is often inhibited by the number of tubes, lines and cords attached to a patient in the ICU,” Roddy said. “Currently, nurses are creating solutions with tape and other items that are not effective at preventing line pulling and dislodgements.”
Roddy, the CEO of RoddyMedical, is pursuing her doctorate in nursing science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received early support from the UWM Research Foundation, including help with filing for the patent and access to prototyping services at the UWM Prototyping Center, according to UWM. The center's director Kyle Jansson subsequently became RoddyMedical's director of engineering.
