Insu Health Design

Our patent-pending technology allows us to precisely control the temperature of the device content, providing accurate temperature maintenance that eliminates the risk of freezing or overheating. It lives on your counter supporting months of medication plugged into the wall. But it’s ready to unplug and go if the need arises since the battery can keep the medication cold for days before being recharged through your car, your wall, or even a small solar panel. No matter when or where, our user’s vital medicine will be readily available, and better protected than in any market option.

This first product can have a significant impact on the lives of temperature-sensitive medication users across the globe, nevertheless, our technology has multiple potential applications in the temperature-regulated storage and cold chain transportation space such as the transportation of vaccines, organs, blood, and chemicals.

The biopharma industry loses $35 billion annually as a result of failures in temperature-controlled logistics, according to IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. A common temperature-controlled environment to store medication is the domestic refrigerator, but its temperature fluctuations have been shown to cause temperature-sensitive medications (Insulin, Humira, Neupogen, etc.) to gradually lose their potency or completely spoil. This leads to a potential increase in prescription refills both to replace spoiled medication as well as due to patients using more medication than prescribed to achieve the same therapeutic outcomes. The risk of spoilage and degradation is intensified for patients living in areas with unstable power grids, especially those prone to natural disasters. Millions of patients in the US lack peace of mind, as their life-critical medicine is at risk in times of travel, power outage, natural disaster, and even during everyday storage.

Insu PortableTM is the only portable personal-use precise temperature control system that preserves medications at their required temperature range to prevent spoilage, overheating, freezing, and loss of potency. It sits on the counter, plugged into the wall with enough capacity to protect months of medication. It can be unplugged and still perform for days with its battery, with the potential for weeks on end. To recharge, the device can be plugged into the wall, the car, or even a small solar panel with USB-C. It has the capacity to become the new default storage appliance for medicines, with the potential to expand into military, agriculture, biocomponents, and cold chain transportation applications.

People that regularly take temperature-sensitive medications are often preoccupied with keeping their medicine at the appropriate range to prevent it from spoiling. However, temperature fluctuations in domestic refrigerators, natural disasters, or an unreliable power infrastructure adds to the burden of keeping their medication safe in order for it to provide the therapeutic outcomes it's intended for. 

Most patients currently keep their medicine in their home refrigerators, try to keep tabs on whether the medication is safe to use or not, and often have to discard their medicine when it freezes or spoils. Meanwhile, other portable options such as ice packs and portable coolers on the market don't have a long-lasting battery life or precise temperature control. 

As a team, we first took notice of this issue during the aftermath of Hurricane María in 2017, where over 900 diabetics lost their lives due to issues stemming from lack of electricity, including insulin storage. After conducting research interviews with patients, community leaders, physicians, health clinics, and FEMA representatives, we identified this was one of the main issues Puerto Ricans struggled with after the hurricane. 

We then researched current temperature storage and (both on and off-grid) cooling options and found there was no current solution in the market that guaranteed precise temperature control as well as long-lasting battery life with multiple charging alternatives for personal medication storage. 

When designing our technology, customer feedback was and remains to be the most important aspect of our development. We want to make sure our device fully meets the user's needs, and therefore, we will continue having their assessment as one of our most crucial tools for product development. 

Our solution allows medication users to protect themselves and their loved ones through the behavioral nudge of having a standard storing location for their medicine that will enable its safety in times of travel, power outages, natural disaster, and everyday home-usage. Moreover, our solution prevents the spread of misinformation that the common refrigerator where food is kept, is the best place for storing medicines. Research has shown that temperature fluctuations in common refrigerators can cause temperature-sensitive medicines degradation and spoilage.

We have built a fully functional, battery-powered prototype and an appearance model. Extensive thermodynamic and heat transfer calculations have been run, with physical testing of the coolers, battery, and pump. We’ve compared and tested our prototype against current market offerings of portable medicine coolers, as well as the domestic refrigerator. These tests have shown that our prototype not only cools to the required temperature range more quickly than the competitors, but it was the only device to precisely maintain this temperature, with most competitors not getting cold enough, and in the case of the refrigerator, large fluctuations in temperature had the vials seeing freezing temperatures as well as temperatures far above the recommended range. 

We will run a performance test with new prototypes, and a user testing program in Puerto Rico this fall for validation and redesign and we plan to launch our product in 2022.  

Our device's innovation lies within its cooling and insulation system, it utilizes the insulating properties of vacuum flasks with the portability of thermoelectric coolers while minimizing the drawbacks of heat backflow when powered off. By utilizing a vacuum flask, the amount of heat transferred to the cooled volume is drastically reduced, our system experiences roughly 1/6th of the heat transfer compared to the competition. Lower temperatures for extended periods are achieved because there is less convective heat transfer between the contents and the ambient temperatures, allowing a longer medication safe state after the battery dies. This is a large improvement over current market designs, and the system still holds many opportunities to be enhanced.

Currently Serve: 0 people (We are a pre-revenue stage small business, we are expecting to start serving people before the end of this year.) 

One Year Expected Reach: 4,500 people based on a 978,000 potential beachhead start market.

Five Years Expected Reach: 200,000 people based on a 6.8M potential market.

Time, money, and scope are the top constraints that we have measurable indicators on. Since we are currently developing, testing, and improving functional prototypes, it's important to have a quick iteration cycle. A Gant chart with visual indicators of lead times for the research process and components outsourcing allows us to address the time constraint and make an informed business decision. On the other hand, cash flow allows our operation and research to continue; we measure and keep track of our spending and adjust the budget accordingly. Future relocation of resources is backed up by lessons learned. In terms of the scope, we quantitatively measure the performance of our components to make sure they align with our quality and users' requirements. This is a specification list where technical parameters are evaluated for each component and mitigation strategies such as new materials or micro re-design are deployed if necessary.

The team has 3 Full-Time Employees & 1 Part-Time Employee.

Also, an Advisory board comprised of: 

2 Scientific Advisors & 2 Business Advisors

Our management team is comprised of STEM and Business backgrounds with previous industry experience. 

Mason Lucich -  BSE in Mechanical Engineering, MS in Industrial Design 

Invented the underlying technology behind Insu Portable and leads product and technology development with over 10 years of engineering and industrial design experience, including designing systems and products for large and small companies, as well as designing for mass manufacturing. 

Doris Candelaria -  BA in Communications & Entrepreneurship Studies  

Leads commercialization and fundraising efforts, with nearly 200K in non-dilutive funding raised within the last two years. 

Luis Blanco – BSE in Chemical Engineering 

Background includes a scientific publication in physical chemistry, and business analytics training from Harvard Business School. He has worked in Engineering, Supply Chain, and Project Management roles with several Fortune 500 companies in the medical device, consumer products, and consulting industry. His leadership skills, technical expertise, and professional ethics; enable efficient collaboration with our diverse team to deliver high-quality performance. 

The team is located in Texas and Puerto Rico, two territories where natural disaster frequency and the diabetic population are very high. We have an intern and an advisory board member that are diabetic. We have experienced firsthand through family, friends, and public interviews the challenges of keeping a life-dependent medication safe at all times and without relying on the power grid. The need to solve this guides our innovation to help the over 6 million temperature-sensitive medication users in only these two territories.

Our leadership team is comprised of White, Hispanic, and Latin men and women from STEM and Non-STEM backgrounds. We value diversity, equity, and inclusion since the different perspectives fuel our innovation. Acquiring more individuals with different cultural and technical experiences will allow our company to consider a wider vision and future impact. Our goal is that any decision taken by the leadership team needs to first be reasoned and validated by every member, so the result is a combination of discussions that considered multiple views. 

We are looking to expand our network and acquire key mentors and partnerships with the potential to join our board of directors to catalyze the process of expanding the business and its impact. 

Board development with experts in legal or regulatory matters will bring great value to our company when seeking reimbursement strategies with health insurance providers, durable medical equipment, specialty pharma, and similar distribution channels where we can perform B2B. Also, as our technology can be used in other applications within the cold chain transportation segment such as vaccines, blood, and organ transportation, partners in software and hardware design will be of great value to inform new product development. 

We prefer to talk with organizations and individuals interested in this space and evaluate if we are a good fit based on the vision before extending a partnership invitation.

Our solution address the health and well-being of people in the US that use refrigerated medication. We will increase the opportunity of well-being and provide peace of mind under harsh environmental conditions and in daily usage. We will use the prize to further de-risk the technology by creating 50 functional prototypes that will inform a final manufacturing and scalable design while expanding the pipeline of potential in other cold chain transportation applications.

Our product will impact the refrigerated supply chain of medicines & vaccines. This patent-pending technology enables the content to be refrigerated at low temperatures for days without relying on the power grid. Meaning, community health workers will no longer have to worry about medication loss or safety in power outages situations or in communities where lack of power is common.