News Releases

 Tufts Medical Center and E-TROLZ Launch New Start-Up

MindChild Medical, Inc. to develop non-invasive fetal heart monitor

BOSTON (June 1, 2009) - Tufts Medical Center has entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with MindChild Medical, Inc., a recently launched start up, for the development of a new non-invasive device for the monitoring of fetal heart rate. The royalty-bearing license entitles MindChild to certain intellectual property relating to the development of an external device to monitor the fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) signal, a critical window into the health of a fetus.

Adam Wolfberg, MD, a Tufts Medical Center Fellow, in collaboration with Gari Clifford, PhD, of MIT and Jay Ward of E-TROLZ, a North Andover-based medical device platform company, began developing this first-of-its-kind technology in 2007. The trio aimed to create a device that was non-invasive for the mother and user-friendly for medical staff – addressing a critical need in the marketplace.

The device, a belt embedded with sensitive electrodes, externally monitors fetal ECG when placed around the mother’s abdomen. The innovative technology also carefully distinguishes the ECG of the fetus from that of the mother, achieving a degree of accuracy on par with standard invasive technology such as a fetal scalp electrode. Significant advances in the analysis of the fetal ECG wave form are allowing the discovery of patterns linked to infection, and potentially, the diagnosis of pathological conditions without procedures invasive to a fetus.

Clifford stated that “non-invasive fetal ECG is extremely difficult to extract from all the background noise, particularly the mother's ECG, which tends to dominate the entire recording. To date there has been no reliable method of fetal extraction which preserves subtle features in the fetus's ECG.” He also stated that “our results demonstrate that we can actually extract fetal ECG and preserve the clinically relevant parts of the signal.”

In 2008, MindChild Medical, Inc. was launched to further develop the device and technology. MindChild, conceived by Tufts Medical Center, MIT and E-TROLZ, is led by Jim Robertson, a veteran of the medical device industry. The company launched with the support of E-TROLZ and is currently pursuing outside investment.

“I am excited about the Tufts Medical Center collaboration which validates the E-TROLZ business model of commercializing emerging medical device applications more rapidly into the market” said Ward, Executive Vice President at E-TROLZ.

Tufts Medical Center, through The Office for Technology Licensing and Industry Collaboration at Tufts University, led the licensing agreement negotiations with MindChild on behalf of MIT and E-TROLZ. Negotiations, which began in June 2008, were completed in March 2009 when an exclusive licensing agreement was inked. In addition to intellectual property with regard to the fetal heart monitoring device, MindChild is also entitled to separate intellectual property assets from E-TROLZ and MIT – an IP asset shared by MIT and the Institut Nationale Polytechnique Grenoble and University Joseph Fourier in France. All facets of the agreement were negotiated by Tufts Medical Center.  

About Tufts Medical Center

Tufts Medical Center is an exceptional, not-for-profit, 451-bed academic medical center that is home to both a full-service hospital for adults and Floating Hospital for Children. Conveniently located in downtown Boston, the Medical Center is the principal teaching hospital for Tufts University School of Medicine. Floating Hospital for Children is the full-service children's hospital of Tufts Medical Center and the principal pediatric teaching hospital of Tufts University School of Medicine. For more information, please visit www.tuftsmedicalcenter.org. 

About E-TROLZ

E-TROLZ is a global technology leader providing highly integrated real-time measurement and control products for electrophysiological medical devices. Leveraging its proprietary Dual Partition Tri-Core Architecture™, E-TROLZ’s products optimize signal acquisition and data management interoperability in a small portable form factor. E-TROLZ’s highly integrated products enable dramatic savings for customers in project development cost, time to market, and total cost of ownership. E-TROLZ is the ideal partner for researchers and companies who focus resources on algorithm development for the detection of neurological, cardiac, and respiratory disorders. More information about E-TROLZ is available at www.e-trolz.com.