In 2019, Doctors Brian Alverson and Ravi D’Cruz were frustrated by the existing method for performing a spinal tap on an infant, which requires physically holding a baby on his or her side in the correct position while a doctor performs the procedure.
Spinal taps are an incredibly useful diagnostic tool, but they present a major challenge for children and infants. According to several studies, the failure rate for the current procedure ranges from 23% to 41%.
They started their Providence-based company, Smoltap, to build technology to hold infants undergoing the procedure in an upright and stable position. Over the last few years, the company has developed, prototyped and finally, in December of 2022, released the product nationally.
Smoltap has now entered the market with multiple children's hospitals purchasing the product. The Providence-based company is currently manufacturing more than 500 devices in Taiwan, with the first shipment of 50 arriving last month which went to distributors fulfilling initial hospital orders and sales demo units.
Additionally, hospital trials are about to commence, according to Alverson, who practices at the Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence. He also said Smoltap’s patent application was recently approved by the USPTO .
“We are scheduled to receive an additional 450 units in January and February 2023,” he said. “We've started to leverage and accelerate an omnichannel marketing strategy as well as local stocking distributor sales and marketing efforts across the US. “
There are more than 6,500 hospitals across the US that provide infant spinal taps. Alverson said the company will be focused on outreach in the coming year.
As part of their Smoltap Inc.’s development, Alverson and D’Cruz teamed up with NEMIC to work on patents, product design and prototyping with Dan Nelsen at Nelsen Design. With NEMIC's help the doctors raised $100K from Brown Innovation Fund and, in April of 2022, the company raised an additional $544,000 in seed capital from MagpieX, Cherrystone, and The Charles Hood Foundation
“Our mission is to reduce the failure rate, stress, and cost associated with existing infant spinal tap procedures,” he said. “Our goal is to make the Smoltap experience/procedure the standard of care.”
