
Performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation CPR is tiring.
After a few minutes, the effectiveness of CPR typically drops substantially because even trained professionals don’t have the muscular endurance to generate adequate force for more than a minute or two of intense chest compressions.
That’s the problem for which Columbus, Ohio-based Deca-Medics Inc. exists to solve.
The company developed a CPR device it calls the LifeBelt, which is engineered to reduce the amount of force required to perform chest compressions by half, and promises to help users more accurately gauge the depth of those compressions.
“It’s just taking the basic concept of doing chest compressions and making it easier for the individual who’s providing it, which should lead to better outcomes,” said CEO Thom Lach.
It’s been a long, hard slog for the company, which was founded in 1994 and raised $2.5 million, including a grant from the Cleveland Clinic-led Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center, yet still doesn’t have a product on the market. Credit Lach for persistence when many less-hardy entrepreneurs would’ve given up.
Lach’s endurance likely stems from his father Ralph, a cardiologist who in 1980 applied for a patent on a device that used a band to help perform CPR and long dreamed of getting such a device to market. Deca-Medics has six patents on its device.
Now, Lach is looking for $500,000 more to sustain the company during the often-bumpy process of obtaining regulatory approval to sell the device from the Food & Drug Administration.
“Trying to raise money without an approved product is an uphill battle, but this is something I believe in,” he said.
Those fundraising efforts may have received an unexpected boost from the American Heart Association last week. The association released new CPR guidelines that place greater emphasis on chest compressions. The new guidelines were inspired in part by recent research that indicates a compression-only approach is as good or better than compression plus mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
From Lach’s perspective, the new guidelines can be viewed only as a positive for Deca-Medics.
“The new guidelines translate into faster, deeper compressions, both of which increase the fatigue, and subsequently the quality of each compression…. [That] almost dictates the need for some form of assist device to offset the increased physical demands,” he said.
Lach isn’t the only one who’s had the idea for a device that makes compressions easier. Several companies, including device giant Medtronic Inc., (NYSE:MDT) have introduced automated electronic compression systems. That may have scared off some potential Deca-Medics investors.
However, Lach says the competitors’ automated devices are more clunky and expensive than Deca-Medics’ manual LifeBelt — and they require batteries.
As usual, the market will decide which is better.