DHN Solutions, mōmi take home top prizes at Winston Start’s Investor Forum pitch competition

Dr. David Miller says it would take 11 to 18 hours per day for the average family physician to deliver the preventive care recommended by national guidelines.

“Doctors are overwhelmed and, as a result, their patients are missing out on life-saving care,” he said.

Typically, health systems assign nurses and nursing assistants to call patients one-by-one to determine if a preventive service is needed. So, Miller, a general internist and professor at Wake Forest’s medical school, founded Digital Health Navigation Solutions to automate this process.

DHN Solutions took home the top prize of $5,000 last week at the fourth annual Winston Starts Investor Forum pitch competition.

Eleven companies, all a part of Winston Starts’ programming, competed for $8,000. See a list of all the presenting startups below.

“This year’s competition was our most successful yet. We have over 200 registrants and 11 companies from a wide range of industries, business models and stages of maturity competing to win prize money and generate interest from investors across the state and Southeast,” said Stan Parker, president of Winston Starts.

Winston Starts is one of the top innovation advocacy organizations and incubator spaces in the Triad, with 34,000 square feet in the 500 W. Fifth building, 35 current companies and 28 alumni companies.

Investor Forum winners aim to revolutionize digital health and ‘mom’ technology

In his pitch, Miller described how DHN Solutions’ software, mPATH, takes the same list of patients provided by the health system and will automatically send text messages and patient portal messages. Using algorithmic questions, mPATH will provide a personalize risk assessment and educate a patient on the importance of the service with a custom-developed animated video.

So far, mPATH can be used for lung cancer and colon cancer screenings.

“We generate an extra six and a half million in yearly revenue for the average-sized health system, and that assumes we only see 25% of the benefit that we see in our clinical trials,” Miller said.

Miller has used over $6 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to develop mPATH. He said that the platform is currently in use across two-thirds of North Carolina as part of NIH-funded trials, with over 60,000 patients having used mPATH. The company has just signed its first commercial, non-NIH-funded contract.

DHN Solutions is currently raising $750,000 to hire its first sales staff and scale its technology to hand more customers and patients, Miller said.

The Winston-Salem startup received a local investment, for an undisclosed amount, from the Winston-Salem Partners Roundtable (WSPR) Fund last year.

Momtech place second

Taking home $3,000, the second-place winner at the Investor Forum was mōmi, also known as Momtech.

“Moms hate their breast pumps and babies struggle with bottles,” said Hal Eason, CEO of Momtech.

So, the Charlotte-based startup has designed two products that are based on nature as the gold standard of design, Eason said. For example, the mōmi pump replicates the biomechanical function of a baby’s mouth, instead of operating as a vacuum cleaner as most modern pumps do. The mōmi bottle is designed with the same biomechanics in mind.

“The mōmi nipple has a soft, solid silicone tip with a narrow milk duct running down the central core,” Eason said. “This is what enables our patented compression shut-off, letting the baby regulate the flow of the milk by compression with the tongue, the same way the baby has learned to do with natural nursing.”

In the company’s field testing, 80% of users said they prefer the mōmi pump. And, mōmi has found that babies who struggle to take a normal bottle prefer the mōmi bottle as well. Eason added that mōmi has seen demand from lactation consultants, which he thinks is the opportune go-to-market strategy.

“Natural is the most common claim among baby bottle companies, ut the way they define natural is that it looks like the breast,” Eason said. “Our messaging is that we work like the breast.”

For its unique designs, mōmi holds 9 U.S. patents.

The bottle launched pre-orders last November and mōmi is ramping up its marketing efforts; the pump is on track to hit the market at the end of 2024. Eason said the company currently has a $600,000 annualized revenue run rate.

Mōmi also recently launched a $3 million fundraising round.

Winston Starts Investor Forum presenting companies