Monday, April 29, 2013

PECA Labs: Saving Lives Using Cutting-Edge Pedriatic Cardiology

Helping thousands of young children who need heart surgery

Doug Bernstein (right) with PecaLabs team members Jamie Quinterno and Arush Kalra, MD

Young Doug Bernstein shouldn’t be alive. And he wouldn’t be but for exceptional medical care when he was born. Doug was born with a congenital defect that gave him a 2 percent chance for survival. Resolving congenital conditions like his has remained ever-present for Doug, who is now a 22-year old Carnegie Mellon biomedical (and mechanical) engineering graduate laboring to solve clinical problems with his startup Peca Labs (for pediatric cardiology).

Like another young entrepreneur I featured in a previous article (“Teaching Entrepreneurship in Engineering”), Doug is part of a new breed of young entrepreneurs in healthcare. They are solving some thorny problems with novel solutions because they don’t know that they shouldn’t, that the path to success is fraught with peril, that solutions have been tried – and failed. These young entrepreneurs are not the products of cynical experience, and they have a long path ahead to success. But they also have the energy and the runway to get there – with the right support and help.

These young folks are part of a breed of innovators that we, as a nation, must support and encourage. They are the product of engineering and other technical programs at our great research universities, and they are choosing the road less traveled. It is up to us to guide them along that path, to help them improve healthcare options, and to use innovation and entrepreneurship to make our nation more competitive – for the betterment of the human condition...Read More»

By: Babs Carryer, Stanford Epicenter