Actuated Medical makes strides in medical innovations

Editor’s note: The following is part of the Business Matters special section.

When it comes to innovations in medicine, most will likely look toward Penn State and Mount Nittany Medical Center.

But some may turn their attention to just outside Bellefonte.

Actuated Medical, located in the Penn Eagle Industrial Park, has been producing patented medical devices for nine years now, President and CEO Maureen Mulvihill said. With two clinical products under its belt and more to come, the company can only look up from here.

“I was sitting in a doctor’s office one day who was talking about how a patient had a blood clot and said, ‘I need someone to solve these clinical problems,’ ” Mulvihill said. “I decided to incorporate Actuated Medical as an agile small business that could solve clinical needs.”

The simple goal, she said, is to improve patient outcomes.

Mulvihill, who has a background in material science from Penn State, said she was approached in 2007 by Arrow International executive Paul Frankhouser, who told her there was a clinical need to clear clogged feeding tubes. Research into the problem lead to a National Science Foundation small business innovation research grant.

The grant led to TubeClear, an in-patient tube clearing system. Devised and manufactured at the Bellefonte location, the device uses “proprietary mechanical motion” to clear a feeding or decompression tube in less than three minutes.

“That’s what the company was founded on,” she said, “very electronically controlled motion. We’re controlling it to improve the procedure.”

A clearing strip is fed into the tube, and motion caused by the device leads the tip to move back and forth, she said, clearing the obstruction.

“It’s a very simple device,” Mulvihill said.

The first patient tube clear was performed on a 27-year-old soldier at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center, she said, an event she described as “very emotional.”

A second SBIR grant led to the development of the GentleSharp, she said, which touts itself as “a more humane blood sampling system.”

Still in pre-clinical studies, the device allows for greater sampling success while minimizing animal distress, according to the Actuated Medical website. A needle vibrating in a controlled fashion means less stress for the animals tested, she said.

Actuated Medical has expanded over the years as well, Mulvihill said, graduating from a 2,000-square-foot space to 9,000 square feet over the years. The additional space allows for practically all business to take place on site — from accounting and marketing to design, manufacturing and testing.

The company holds 14 patents, she said, as 21 employees make up the Actuated workforce. The company is also working on at least six new devices.

One device would use the vibrating needle technology to allow for easier bone marrow biopsies, she said. Instead of painful pressure pushing straight down to access the marrow at several points, the needle would be able to enter at an angle and access multiple points in a single test.

Products span the country, from California and Utah to Ohio and a recent competitive grant from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to examine bone access devices for pediatric patients.

“It’s pretty awesome for a small Pennsylvania company to be doing business with the No. 2 children’s hospital in the country,” Mulvihill said.

This story was originally published February 10, 2016 at 11:54 AM with the headline "Actuated Medical makes strides in medical innovations."