Revolutionizing the pacemaker

“It was obvious that this will be a revolutionary product and will make a major change in the current pacemaker market.” — Islam Mosa

Islam is the founder of VoltXon Inc., a startup that is working on replacing the current pacemaker technology. This was never Islam’s plan, but while working on his Ph.D., in chemistry, he got results that lead him on the path of being a founder.

What is VoltXon exactly doing?

VoltXon is a spin-off of the University of Connecticut, where I did my Ph.D. on power sources for implantable biomedical devices. The product is a pacemaker, which is basically a device that monitors and regulates the patient’s heartbeat. The problem is the battery, which lasts only 5–7 years on average. This means that patients need to go through surgery to replace the battery, which is a risk of infection, includes high costs, and of course the pain that comes with surgery. Our solution is a new pacemaker, which is powered by the patient’s body energy. We replaced the battery with a device that is able to harvest the energy from the body and store it, and therefore being able to power the pacemaker for a patient’s lifetime. Basically, it is a one-time installment of the device, which means that only one surgery is necessary.

How did you come up with this idea?

Actually, it came by incidence, I didn’t plan to work on this field at all. I was working on making a biosensor, a device that can sense certain biomolecules in the human body. While working on it, I realized that it doesn’t work as a sensor at all. The results were disappointing and I was really frustrated. When I presented the results to my advisor and collaborators, we discovered that the material is actually excellent but for a completely different application. We observed that the material we made somehow can store a lot of energy. As the material was biocompatible, it was unusual to be made for energy storage. We immediately started prototyping a full device out of it and it was really outstanding. The result was an energy storage device, which is very robust, made out of safe biocompatible materials, and can be charged 120 times faster than batteries. We realized that this can actually solve a problem in the biomedical device market, which is until now based on lithium-ion batteries that have a short lifetime and contain toxic electrode materials.

What we wanted, was to couple the device with an energy harvester, so we can take the energy from the body and store it to power a pacemaker. I was basically jumping from biosensors to energy harvesting and energy storage which are completely different fields. To our surprise, with some fine-tuning to the materials and device design, we constructed a new type of energy harvester that collects energy very efficiently. From a light heartbeat, we could harvest almost 110 volts, which is a huge voltage and way more than needed to power a pacemaker — which needs only 4 volts. So, we had a very efficient energy harvester and energy storage device, very thin and made out of biocompatible materials. When coupling our energy storage and harvesting devices with pacemaker electronics, it was obvious that this will become a revolutionary product that will make a major change in the current pacemaker market. That’s why we started VoltXon.

With a lifetime value product, how does your business model look like?

This was definitely one of our challenges when defining the business model. One reason why the big players on the market don’t favor our solution is because of that — they like to replace the device every 5–7 years, as it brings more revenue. Even though our solution is better, it’s not good for the business model. Therefore, we are coming up with a new business model for the pacemaker industry. We are planning to charge the patients every 5–7 years just a small amount of money — a fraction of what the patient currently needs to pay. It will be a fee to monitor and evaluate the pacemaker and provide the service to the patient, to ensure that everything is working well. But it would be, most likely, only 10% of the cost of replacement surgery of current pacemakers. This would allow us as a company to grow and have revenue.

What are the next steps?

When you come up with a huge change for a medical device and how it works, you need to validate each step, before you can use it for patients. It usually takes 5–8 years, depending on the progress, before it can go to the market. The process includes studies, testing it on animals, and later implementing it into patients and monitoring it before getting FDA approval. We currently tested our device on live cells and tissues and we are preparing for our in vivo trial on animals.

As the pacemaker is a long-term product, we are using the same core technology of our patent-pending energy storage and harvester devices for a short-term product. We are currently working on it and plan to bring it to the market within the next few months. This product could bring additional revenue streams to the company and solve problems in other industries.

What was your best moment as a founder until now?

I think one of the best moments was when we received our first grant. It takes time to write grant proposals to fund the next milestones and the acceptance rate was just around 17%, so I was told not to have high expectations. Therefore, it was excellent news to get the first two grant proposals funded. we got great feedback from people in business and research that shared our enthusiasm for the product. They assured us that our product is a paradigm shift to this industry and that we are doing the right things and taking the necessary steps. This was a really happy moment, it definitely confirmed that we are on the right track.

What was your biggest learning?

One of my biggest learnings was that the perspective of a researcher is completely different from a business person. I was excited to start the company and to have my name next to the title CEO. But I realized that not every researcher should be the CEO, it’s a whole different thing to do research work in the lab and to lead a business. That’s why I asked Mark Smith, a successful serial entrepreneur, to be the CEO of the company. It was definitely the right thing to do, I would give this advice to any other researcher: if you are a researcher and good at your field, don’t feel obligated to be the CEO of the company. You can drive the R&D and push the technology forward and leave the business to a person who is more experienced than you. After some time, you will learn a lot about business, and one day you could be an outstanding CEO yourself.

What is your advice for (future) founders?

You know people pursue different things in life and everyone has a different goal that drives them — could be happiness, money, success, excellence, fame, or prestige. I feel like, although we need all these things to some extent, the real thing is to pursue is impact. I personally think that this is what founders and changemakers should be looking for. When pursuing impact, it is no longer about yourself, it is about empowering others and changing people’s lives for the better. That’s why I think the pursuit of impact is the highest goal. When you reach this goal, everything else will come into place, happiness, money, prestige, and so on — they are just by-products of what we do. That’s what we have in our minds at VoltXon each and every day.

Recommendations

Books:
The Lean Startup (Eric Ries)
Start With Why (Simon Sinek)
4-hour workweek (Timothy Ferriss)

Series:
Shark Tank (ABC)