Episode 266 | Laura Corcoran, CEO & Founder of Dignity Care | Innovating Compassionate Solutions for Pregnancy Loss

Speaker A: Medical innovation starts with medical discussion.

Speaker B: Talking about the future. What comes Next with Project MedTech?

Speaker C: Hello everybody, I'm Lindsay Deneen, Director of Marketing engagement at Project MedTech, and welcome to another episode of the Project MedTech podcast. If we can help you in any way, or you would like to suggest a future guest, you can email us@infoorojectmedtech ah.com if conversations like this are helpful. That's exactly why we bring people together at our signature events, the Midwest Showcase, the Startup Symposium, and Coming to America. For more on our events that include networking, education and pitch competitions for startups, check them out@www.projectmedtech.com. we even have sponsorship options. If your company is also dedicated to accelerating medical technology to impact patient lives, reach out today to get involved. The Project MenTech podcast is proudly sponsored by Ward Law. WardLaw Office, LLC is a boutique law firm specializing in the practice of patent and trademark law. They are committed to providing inventors, entrepreneurs and businesses of all types with personal and professional services and are flexible to meet your unique needs. It is their goal to both educate on how to secure valuable patent and trademark protection and to provide high quality services at rates affordable to independent inventors, startups and small businesses alike. Without further ado, let's dive in.

Speaker A: Awesome. Okay, Laura, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you very much for having me. Happy to be here.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So thanks for, um, uh, staying up later and working later to accommodate my time, uh, with you being in the uk. But, uh, let's do an introduction into, uh, who you are, uh, your background in life sciences and kind of lead up to what you're currently doing now.

Speaker B: Yeah. So my name's Laura Corcoran, and, uh, I'm the CEO and founder of a company called Dignity Care. And we provide practical support to women experiencing miscarriage or pregnancy loss. Um, from my own experience, m, I began this journey, um, into the pregnancy loss world and I ultimately invented something called the, um, miscarriage Collection Cradle. So just to go into a little bit about what started everything, um, you can see if you're watching the video that I have, I have a three and a half year old daughter. She's the artist, um, behind me, really into Spider Man. Um, but on top of that, I've also had six losses, six early pregnancy losses, and it was my third loss that started me on this journey. So I have a complicated medical history. Um, I'm permanently on strong blood thinners and when I experience pregnancy loss, there's additional complications around bleeding, potential for hemorrhage, things like that. Um, and when someone experiences pregnancy loss, you get three choices. The first one is whether you want to have natural progression. You go home, wait for the body to do its thing and resolve the process naturally. Um, the second option is to have medication to start the process. And you can either go home and manage that or have that in hospital. And, um, the third option is surgical management. Um, you can have surgery and manage the process that way. I'm terrified of needles. So surgery was not an option for me that I wanted to pursue. And because of my complicated medical history, I wanted to be in a safe environment. I wanted to be looked after and know that there were people on hand. If things went wrong, I could be taken care of. And, um, to be honest, I was quite terrified of the experience as well, about what was going to happen. So when I went in for the scan and I heard those horrible words, you know, I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat. And I found out my baby had died, I chose the option of having medical management in hospital. And unfortunately, the midwife who was helping me, um, she said, I'm really sorry, but there's no room. You're going to have to come back in two weeks. And at the time I was like, okay, and went home. And it didn't really hit me until we got home that how am I going to get through these two weeks? You know, I'm carrying around this very loved, wanted life that's no longer living. I felt like a mortuary. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, I couldn't shower because I had a tiny little bump. Um, so I just, I just tried to keep busy. I tidied my attic, I tidied my garage. The whole house was spotless. I just had to try and keep myself busy. But those two weeks were absolutely awful. And then when I was at home waiting, I started to bleed and I was panicking. So I called back up to the early pregnancy unit. I said, you know, things have started. Can I come in now, please? And the lady on the phone said, I'm really sorry, but there's no room. Um, you're going to have to manage at home by yourself. And I was absolutely petrified. Despite having gone through this twice before, I really didn't feel like I was prepared to handle this by myself. And what happens when you're facing, um, the practical side of it is generally you're on the toilet. And the thought of my baby ending up in the toilet was quite unbearable. So there was this emotional weight of having a dignified end to this Very much loved and wanted life. But there was also this practical side where at, uh, third miscarriages in the uk, that's the point at which you're eligible for cytogenetic testing on the nhs. So to try and get some answers, investigations to stop this from happening again. So not only did I want to save my baby, but it was an opportunity to stop this happening again. So there was so much weight put on this very terrifying moment. And me and my husband were both engineers. We went into problem solving mode. We were thinking, what can I do? Do I just get in the bath? Do I get a bucket? Um, how am I going to solve this? And we were rummaging through the kitchen cupboards, found a kitchen sieve and we thought, this is probably our best option. And I had the kitchen sieve. I went back to the toilet, trying to hold it in place while you're contracting, you're cramping. I was in floods of tears. My husband really didn't know what to do to support me. Trying to hold it in place to catch my baby. And then what else happens during that moment is you're contracting and your bowels are opening. So when you get anything in the kitchen sieve, trying to identify baby is really, really challenging one, because, I mean, the size at that early gestation is quite difficult to identify. But I had no idea what I was looking at. I didn't know what was tissue, what I could flush, what I could keep. And that decision on whether to keep or flush was really, really hard to do in such an emotional time. And I had two containers by the toilet. There were Chinese takeout containers and I had one where I kept what I thought was baby, and I had to sort of pick them up and pop them in the container or empty the sieve. And it, it would make this, like, clop sound, which always stayed with me. Um, and then I had this backup container where I was like, I don't feel comfortable flushing this yet, because what if I've got it wrong? What if I accidentally flush my baby down the toilet? And it was just this awful, awful, absolutely barbaric experience and given absolutely nothing in that moment, I felt completely abandoned. During one of my most vulnerable times, it felt like I didn't matter and it felt like my baby didn't matter and my baby did matter to me. You know, I appreciate I was early on in my pregnancy, but for me, when I see those two blue lines on a pregnancy test, the first thing I look up is due date. You know, I think, oh, they'll be here before Christmas. They can have Christmas here with us. You know, they're going to be in the same school year as my friend's kids. And you start building up this picture of a, uh, potential life. And it's grief for that potential life that really hits. And that's a very personal grief because you don't really share it with anyone else. You're the only people who probably know at this point. Um, no one remembers the dates. There's no funeral, there's no marking of any ceremony or things like that. So it's quite a personal grief. And when the process had finished, I called up the hospital, I said, you know, I've got everything, I think I've got everything. Can I bring them in? Where do I take them? And they said, no, you can't bring them in now. It's Friday. Um, you're going to have to wait until opening hours on Monday. Um, keep them in the fridge. So I had to keep my baby in the fridge in a see through Chinese takeout container over the weekend until I could take them in on Monday. And even when I got through the weekend here in the fridge, open and close all throughout the weekend and be reminded of it, and it got to Monday, I was like, I've got to take my baby to a hospital and how can I do that in the see through container? And I searched through. I think this is quite a universal thing where everyone's got the bag of plastic grocery bags, know, in the cupboard. It was just, they just kept it off the drawer or something. And I was searching through, through this, this drawer and I found a bag with like a little cartoon fish on it, thinking that that makes it a little bit nicer. I'll take, I'll take them in, in this plastic grocery bag with a cartoon fish on it. But it didn't really make it any more dignified. Like the whole experience was just utterly terrifying. Um, and just destroying it was, it was a really horrible time. And after that I thought, you know, I've got through it, that the physical process has resolved. It's time to now confront the emotional aspect, you know, and process that grief. But a couple of weeks, way later, uh, um, the Sunday before she got to work, um, because I had a bit of time off, I was at the kitchen table and I stood up and blood just gushed down my legs. Um, and it turned out that the pregnancy was incomplete, so I'd not passed everything that I needed to pass. And that triggered a hormone surge which triggered me to hemorrhage and um, with the blood thinners, things got very dangerous very, very quickly and I ended up needing an ambulance. Um, I lost half my blood, over half my blood. If I sat up, I would pass out. Um, I had to have emergency surgery, blood transfusions. It got very, very scary very, very quickly. It was, it was frightening how, how quickly it escalated. And part of me wonders, would that have happened if I'd have had the treatment, I was allowed to have the treatment I wanted to have. And it's a question I'll never get the answer to, unfortunately. Um, and then when I returned from hospital, I was so physically weak it took me a week to be able to get to the toilet by myself. My father in law moved in, who's 74, and he used to walk me to the toilet when I needed to go. It was two months off work, two months before I left the house, two months before I could even drive. Um, and I was really forced to sit on the sofa and do nothing because I physically couldn't. I watched all of Netflix. I'd run out of films, run out of series to watch, to binge. And at that point I was really confronted with what had happened and I had to, I had to face it. I had no other choice but to look at, look at it and see, um, what went wrong. And I was absolutely furious. I thought, why has this happened to me? Where was all the tools? Where was all the care? Where was all this support? And I started to look online at the statistics, um, and then I started to look on forums or other people's experience to find out what, what was going on, all their feedback. And I realized very quickly that it wasn't a me problem, that I had been mistreated or not given the proper treatment that I needed. It was a very common problem and it was happening to so many women. And even just in the UK there are, ah, 685 miscarriages every single day. So one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. And when women go home from hospital to miscarry, whether choice or through, um, lack of resources, they're given nothing, like absolutely nothing to manage the process physically. And there was all these stories online about women using containers and kitchen sieves and buckets and anything they could find in their home and in hospital. On my previous experiences, I was given a sick bowl, so it's already intended for waste and it sits in the toilet and collects everything so there's no filtration. Everything's in there with baby tissues, feces, absolutely everything. And that's the last time you, you see baby because then the midwife takes them away and handles a process. So it's, it's all a really distressing experience. And when I was sat on the sofa, um, I'd been ordering lots of online shopping to keep myself entertained and I started cutting up like Amazon cardboard boxes, salad, taping bits again. I thought, there's got to be a solution here. And I'm an engineer, here's a problem, I can do something about this. And I started taping bits together, doing sketches, walking around my toilet at home, coming back, making adjustments, um, and eventually I got to a point where I had something and I still couldn't drive at this point. It was the second month of me being on the sofa and I asked my father in law to drive me over to the next village where there was a guy with a 3D printer. And I said, can you make this please? And he made the first prototype for me. 3D, printed it and then through a couple of refinements, um, some patient feedback, people who had known who'd been through the process, um, I went round and tested at a DIY store, um, tested it on all their toilets, walked in with my headphones on, avoiding eye contact, putting it in all the toilets and running away very quickly. Um, and we got some health professional, um, healthcare feedback as well from some early pregnancy units. And through that what we ended up was, um, what is called the miscarriage collection cradle. So It's a Class 1 patented medical device, um, and it's relatively simple, but there's a lot of thought that's gone into it. I'm quite proud of how it's been designed. And just to describe it, um, for people who are just listening, it's a semicircular shape, um, with a gap at the back. And it sits in the toilet underneath the seat so women can use it as normal. And the gap at the back allows buccal matter to pass down the outside while collecting pregnancy tissue. On the inside of the semicircle, there's a ridge along the back that is thick enough that when a woman sits on it, she can feel where that is and position herself accordingly so that there's no cross contamination. And in the center of the semicircle there's a removable sieve. So one of the most traumatizing things for me was identifying pregnancy tissue and transferring it from one container to the other. That was really difficult. So the sieve is removable and it's got elongated holes with angled internal edges. So the Material, um, like the viscous liquid, things like that that we don't want to collect are filtered away effectively. And once it's near the edge, with those angled edges, it's got enough momentum to pull things through. Um, so it collects everything and then, um, it comes with a storage container, so the sieve can just be placed directly into the storage container. Once the lid is on, it's secured in place so that it doesn't rattle. Baby's nice and protected, it's nice and safe. Um, and it's opaque and watertight as well, so then that can be taken to wherever you need to take them afterwards, whether it's psychotherapy, testing, a burial, cremation. If you want to wait and just have a little bit of time to decide, that's an option too. And it just gives the woman a bit of choice, a bit of time to process and handles that horrible physical side, so then you can process things emotionally and really look at the grief side and allow yourself to heal in that way. So my miscarriage happened in February 2024, so two years ago. And I launched the Miscarriage Collection Cradle almost a year ago. So it's the last day of May last year. Um, firstly, at the start of last year, I reached out to the nhs, reached out to several bereavement midwives within the nhs and, um, within six weeks, the NHS bought the Miscarriage Collection Cradle, which is absolutely rapid. Um, it went really, really fast. We launched the product, um, the last day of May last year, and within less than a year it's now being used in 28 NHS hospitals, seven hospitals across Europe and in seven countries in universities, to educate midwifery students about what's out there, um, how they can best support their patients. Because the people in these positions, they want to help, there's, there's not a single breath at midwife who would be in that position if they didn't care? Um, but it's just giving them the appropriate tools to be able to care, care for their patients. Um, at the minute it's just in acute and secondary care settings, in hospitals, emergency departments, gynecology wards, early pregnancy scanning rooms, things like that. And we had a Health Economic, um, data piece done earlier this year, um, by an independent company. And what we found from the trials, um, was that patients are choosing to miscarry at home rather than having surgery or inpatient stay. It alleviates barriers to travel to hospital car journeys, um, catching the Tube or the bus to the hospital while actively miscarrying is really traumatizing, um, and when people attend A and E. So we found that a third of patients who are experiencing miscarriage will attend A and E, and I think it's one fifth of those patients are immediately discharged. So a Andes emergency department and they're immediately discharged without any care. So there's no clinical need for them to be there. They just simply don't know what to do and they want some support. Um, with this shift of people now feeling like they have a viable choice to miscarry at home, um, there's actually significant cost savings to the healthcare settings, which is particularly important in the UK. With a government funded, UM service. And at 50% adoption across just England, it would save 11.2 million pounds each year, free up 12,000 gynecology surgery slots and reduce emergency department admissions by 10,000. So not only is it the right thing to do for women by offering them this choice if they want it, but it also saves the NHS money. So I'm really pushing for a national rollout and making it available to every single woman who's in this position. If they want it as that choice, it's there for them.

Speaker A: So, um, well, I, uh, will tell you this, that in. We've done 265 episodes, by the time this gets released, I'm not sure there was a heavier 18 minutes, um, of a, uh, podcast I've done. So I really appreciate you sharing that. I think it's important, um, for people who are listening, but also people who can visually see you into the product but, you know, to be that vulnerable and share that kind of story. Kudos to you.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: Um, because you, it's, it's, it is. No one should ever be expected to do that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: However, it, it is so important for people to understand that level of trauma to, to innovate in this space, to invest in this space. That is probably, you know, there's a lot of reasons, there's a lot of hypothetical reasons why Women's Health receives a pathetic amount of venture capital.

Speaker C: Um,

Speaker A: uh, but if, if you are a person listening to that first 15 minutes of this podcast, there's no way you can walk away and not understand the pain you were in, the need for innovation, why this would be important, um, why it's needed and, and, you know, for you to share that, that's the kind of stuff that sparks a person listening in to say, boy, feels like that is way too barbaric to be. Absolutely how we do things in 2026.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You know, um, absolutely. So, so, yeah, I really appreciate you sharing That I, I've again done 265 episodes. There, there, there was, there's been a few episodes where people have shared uh, really in depth journeys, uh, episode 28, which was like forever ago. Um, but, but a person on the podcast shared, she shared um, how her family, um, uh, immigrated from a country that know like it was like life or death, um, for them. Um, and it was, it was crazy and I wasn't expecting her to do that, but she shared it as part of her journey. There was another one where someone shared about a car accident they were in. And you know it's, it's, they're, they are innovating to, to um, solve uh, chronic um, pain. I think that was episode 101. But I knew you were going to share this and um, I just, even with prep, I'm not sure I was totally ready.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: To listen to that again. So it's such, again.

Speaker B: I, I, it absolutely is. And it really surprised me that you know, this is not a new problem. Humans have always experienced miscarriage. This is not a new problem. It's just not being solved. And when I went through it and I was, you know, sat on the sofa and looking at solutions, I thought, you know, maybe the Scandinavian countries have got it right, maybe America's got it right with their world class healthcare. And it really, really blew me away that the UK seemed to be world leaders in pregnancy loss. We have these early pregnancy units that dedicated to early pregnancy and early pregnancy loss. We have bereavement midwives. And yet still the standard of care is to give women nothing. And one in four end in this way. It's not an uncommon problem, it's just a taboo subject. And quite frankly it's hard for people to talk about their experience. It's taken a lot of discipline and getting used to telling my story and sharing it. But I think it's so important because when I've spoken about it, so many other people have come forward to speak about their experiences and it's not just at the moment where it's happening and it's difficult. Well, I had um, a radio interview and there was this woman who called in to show her experience. She was 78 years old and she was talking about her experience 50 years earlier. And she, she uh, ended up in tears. She was crying. She was very upset about the situation. She remembered what happened, the room she was in, the, the dates, you know, the important dates, the due dates, things like that. And it's not just, just this moment, um, in time where this Affects people. It's a lifetime of trauma. And that's what I found quite astonishing with people coming forward and sharing their own stories with me. How long it impacts people, it's never really forgotten. It's just you learn to live with it and that's part of it. And if we can do something so simple to avoid that trauma, it's so worth it. I don't. I think the beauty in this innovation is it's so simple. You know, the problem is so obvious and that's I think, done a lot. Um, along with the speed of how this has progressed and the adoption and how it's spread and the inbound requests that we're now getting is that, ah, it's such an obvious problem. No one's ever turned to m. Me and said, no, that's fine. You know, what we're doing is absolutely fine. It's very obviously not.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah, I, um. I, I think when, when a, when a podcast, uh, starts this, this, this heavy, it's, it's uh, questions immediately feel not inappropriate. But, um, in perspective, it feels like the, the questions I have just aren't that big of a deal anymore.

Speaker B: No, that's okay. But you can have go away.

Speaker A: We are going, we are going to attempt to, to, um. Uh, I think that, um. The, the one thing I think like kudos to you again, which is when you've had something this traumatic like this is one of those devices where there hasn't been kind of goes through a number of things. And the, the one that is very obvious is this emotional state of getting to say goodbye.

Speaker B: Absolutely right.

Speaker A: Um, so there's. That. That is very clearly for me, like as you were going. Yeah. I mean, I have two daughters. Um, I, I totally, I totally get that. Um, and then when you think about it, you know, then you have to take this emotional piece of this and then put a business hat on. And this is where it feels to me is like when you have a product like that.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: When you start thinking about the business aspect, it, it. That is where it feels like it's just dwarfed. Like, yeah. You know, we have to talk about the business aspect somehow. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And um, in, in your case. So, so when you get past the fact that, you know, maybe not everyone wants that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Closure or good buyer, they can handle that. Right. Um, when you start talking about the business piece of it. That's what I wanted. I think that's where naturally I'd love to get in your mind to inspire other entrepreneurs who are. There are a Lot of entrepreneurs out there who do stuff because of a deeply emotional, um, event, uh, that happened that they're trying to solve for and they might not be as brave to talk about it as you were. Right. Um, and so I wanted to talk about how you did that and how you thought about this. And the first natural place was that cytogenetic testing you talked about.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So this, tell me more about this. So this happens after you've had your third miscarriage in the uk.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Then they do cytogenetic testing. Okay.

Speaker B: In the uk.

Speaker A: Right. Um, cytogenetic testing on the baby or to, to determine maybe what caused this. To help get you some answers, which seems crazy enough as it is that we've chosen three as the number. Yeah, yeah, I mean we'll, we'll start there. But, but walk me through how you thought about that process and the importance of that. And I mean.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, yeah, so in, in the uk, on the NHS government funded there, there's a finite amount of resources you are able to go privately, but it is quite similar in a lot of other countries where you have to wait for three. And by the way, if you have one miscarriage, two miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy, the counter restarts back to zero. So you could be going through years of this process before you can finally get some answers.

Speaker A: Um, and Laura, pause there real quick just because we have a lot of listeners, explain what an atopic pregnancy is.

Speaker B: An ectopic pregnancy is one that doesn't implant within the womb, it implants within the fallopian tube. So it's non viable and life threatening, ah, pregnancy to mum. So it is non viable. It will never result in a healthy baby. Um, so if a woman experiences that, ah, the clock resets to zero and you have to go through three more before you're eligible for genetic testing, which again is a whole other issue. But at that point, um, when you get to it and you can get testing is where you can get some answers. Is there some genetic defects? Is there something that we can intervene or, or is it maybe an indication that an alternative pathway where you could have IVF and screen pre implement implantation for any genetic diseases that might be a way forward. But the point is it gives you some answers and it gives you, um, it gives you a way forward in some cases to avoid that from happening again, which I think is so important. And as a woman going through this, even with as much logical head on as I can, you know, I always think, did I sleep too much? Did I, did I go for too big of a walk. Did I eat something that wasn't quite right? And there's a lot of what ifs that come with that. So having some form of answers provides a lot of closure and eases a lot of anxiety and guilt. Now, what happens when people go home and collect baby to bring back into the hospital is anecdotally from midwives who are on the receiving end of that sample. Um, they can look at the sample and say, this lady has not brought the right thing. I know full well this is not the right thing. But in that moment, what benefit is it to tell the woman that they've not brought in their baby and they've lost their baby potentially down the toilet? I personally agree with the sense that there's no benefit in that situation at all. It'll just compound the grief and the trauma. So the shampoo gets sent away for testing regardless, and it comes back with a. It comes back with a insufficient sample result, which means it's not a yes or a no, it's just insufficient. So it still leaves answers. And what we're trialing at the moment, um, with one hospital in Glasgow, is that any samples that are brought in within this container, um, they're writing down and doing some analysis of whether that sample is actually testable. Because if it is tossable, that's great, the parents can go away and get to get some answers and take action on it and do something about it. Because it feels very helpless not having something to do in that moment. You just talk it away and just try again. It's one of those things. So there's absolutely cost savings to be had there and improve the pathway for people to get answers. Um, but the thing that stuck out to me most was the cost differentiation in service pathways. So a lot of women would take surgical option because, um, because they didn't know what to do at home, they didn't want to face that problem. And I admit I didn't want to do that either. But that's kind of pushed as the only reliable collection method. Um, so if you want cytogenetic testing, your chances of collecting are significantly higher with surgery because there's no way to collect at home. But now with the collection Cradle, we've had 100% collection rate so far, the data that we've got back, so it's providing a reliable alternative to surgery. And, um, women are feeling more comfortable going home and having this in their own toilet and in their own house, in their own bedroom, with their own food and their own SOFA and not having to worry about childcare. So it really opens that door for them as well.

Speaker A: Yeah. You could um, uh, very, very quickly tie the economic impact there to, to, to the individual. Uh, again you talked about it in there, so I'd like for you to kind of bring it up again and explain a little bit more. But you're an engineer.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Who is a mom who has, who's experienced an immense amount of trauma. Um, when you were figuring out the other health economic impact of this.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, how do you stay focused and set the emotions aside and figure out this economic impact? And I'm referring to the stats you were sharing in terms of hey, if more people felt comfortable being at home, then that means the surgical suite can be um, used more or the OB GYNs can be doing other things. And the reason I bring this up is like, you know, we've at Project Medtech, we've, we've worked with 125/startup companies and the conversation I hate the most is that, you know, and actually Tony Mango who was um, he's from Orlando Health, he was an episode of the podcast in the 150s or 60s or 250s, 260s just recently and he was talking about the hardest conversation for him is when a product dies because it's really good for patients, it's ah, really good for clinicians, but there's no economic value to it.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: And you know, that is a, for me it's like, it's tough.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: To just put the emotion aside because I know how good of a product it is and I also know that it probably won't be successful because the ugly side, you know, there's. Healthcare is an imperfect system like anything else in the world, but there's a economic side to it that can sometimes rear the ugly head, you know, and um, that is frustrating. Um, as a internal optimist like I am, or as a scientist where I can see this, but I know it won't ever be successful. But for you, I have to imagine that it's, it's like, you know, the immense trauma, you know, how valuable this could be for a patient and, but you know, you need, as an entrepreneur and a business owner, you need, you know, you need to focus on, well, what's the economic story for NHS and the hospitals to give this product out. And so how did you navigate that as a engineer, you know, starting a company. But then also to table that, that immense emotion to be like, oh, this is frustrating that I even have to think about this, which I imagine has to come up, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I. My background is I worked, um, for the NHS for a while as a, um, technical lead on their demographic services. So I am familiar with the NHS ecosystem and appreciate there are finite amounts of pots of money, finite resources. It's just the world we work in, you know, less so in the government sector. And what I, I think did quite successfully early on is really identify the stakeholders. So who are the people who are going to care about this? Because straight away, there's an obvious benefit to patients here, and that's been proven in the trials that we've got, that women want to have this method for managing the pregnancy loss. But second are, uh, the bereavement midwives, the midwives, the sonographers, the people who see this problem day in and day out, who are there as product champions, who know the problem and can advocate for it. The problem is they're not always the budget holders. Um, and the people in finance are where they look at the numbers. They may not have experienced pregnancy loss at all, they may never have come across this problem, or they don't, quite frankly, don't care because they're looking at the numbers. That's their role. And that's why I was really keen on getting the health economics piece. So even with the lack of that detailed report that we ultimately ended up with, back of the envelope calculations, data online service pathways, cost. I mean, the cost of a room in a hospital, how much is that that's published online? That offset against the cost of the miscarriage collection cradle is immediately obvious. It can save so much money for the hospital. And when we looked at, um, we had a really interesting stat that, uh, you know, when you get the waste bags in hospital, you have the general bin and then the clinical bin in each patient room. So the cost of removing the clinical waste bag from a room costs more than the cradle. So by saving a patient room just by the clinical waste bag, you've already saved money for the hospital. So having some of those key comparable stats that immediately people can resonate with is so important. And then to take that emotion out of it completely, um, at the end of the day, we talked about cytogenetic testing. I wanted to collect a sample for testing, look at all the other hospital procedures. If I wanted to have a sample of your intestine, I get a pot. You know, why is it different for different areas of health care? So to argue that point, um, that it needs to be consistent across all fields in women's health care, as well, really struck a chord with some people. And then on top of that, um, I, with my local hospital, I was very frustrated with my experience with my local hospital. Um, and I basically said how, how do I get these people to listen, knowing the hospital is listening to me? Who, who do I go to? Who, who do I go tell on them to? Who do I tell teacher on, you know? And I went to my um, local mp, which is my government representative for my area and told her about the problem and she was immediately supportive. Um, so together we raised a motion in Parliament, um, we got some signatures from other members of Parliament to support it and it got debated in the Houses of Parliament last, last November. So I just kept going up the chain. I was like, who's in charge of this ultimately? How do I get to those people and make them care about one the. But to the financial benefits that we can see here. And um, we've now been having conversations with the Department of Health and Social Care and senior figures within NHS England, um, who are now incredibly supportive of this idea. Unfortunately, in the UK we've had a bit of a political shake up in the past week. It's just throwing a spanner in the works, but that's just the nature of the beast. Um, but going to different stakeholders at different levels and really identify what is important to them. So at the government level in the UK there was a 2023 pregnancy loss report and that looks at all gestations of pregnancy and identified 70 recommendations to improve care. I didn't know about this when I, um, made my own device, but three of those recommendations were something for dignified collection, something for dignified storage, accompanying components to make the experience more pleasant, like escalation leaflets, um, ways to contact mental health support, things like that which hospitals can put in, um, and make it available in, um, hospitals, acute care, emergency department out in the community. And that was something I could point to a government level like, you guys have signed off on this as recommendations that should be implemented and it really gave me something to work with. And since then, um, I've done a lot of analysis on like the Women's Health Strategy, um, shift to community care over hospital care and looked at the government's policies to really identify what's important at that level of stakeholder, um, to get some backing in that area. So I think looking at all of those options has really helped. And then we've done a tiny little bit of um, pr, um, that's been really successful and now at the moment it's available for Instance in Glasgow, but not yet in Edinburgh. And now people who are based in Edinburgh have been advocating to the hospital, hey, it's available in Glasgow. Why is it available to these people and not, not to me? Why do they deserve this treatment? And I don't get that. So it's getting the patients involved and we've asked them to write to their representatives to support it, which has been quite successful. Um, and it's really identifying the key stakeholders in the journey and what's important to them, I think has worked really, really well.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, that is great, uh, insight into the process and what it's taken. So, um, class one device, um, seven countries, you're in the uk, it seems like there's been good adoption at nhs. You have patients advocating for it. Um, is there plans to take the product to the US market?

Speaker B: Absolutely. We're hoping to launch in the next, in the next few months. Um, we've had an interest from a number of hospitals, um, which is really exciting. We've got FDA approval, um, so we're ready to go with just working out the best strategy over the next few months. Um, but some of the things, I know it's a different healthcare system, but there's benefits here, one for the hospital because it'll save the hospital money, similar to the uk, but there's options to get it on, added as an insurance item. So we're working on that, um, and trying to progress that. Although it's tricky being someone from an outside perspective. And there's also an option where, um, I forgot the name of it, but if you have sufficient insurance, you get so much that you can spend on consumables like at a pharmacy. So you might get paracetamol or something like that, so.

Speaker A: Oh, like a health savings account.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. If we can add it to that, um, is what we're trying to do. So then people can go out to the pharmacy and go grab it if they need it. It's in the community. Um, additionally, because of the cost of surgery for people who aren't insured, getting one of these kits is so much cheaper for the patient than paying for the out of pocket expensive surgery. So there's all of these extra benefits that, uh, for the hospital, for the insurance, for the patient and it's just getting them out there and really going through the process of making it happen.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, yeah. Um, Laura, I have one question for you. Um, as we kind of wrap up here, um, one piece of advice for someone listening in who has this medical device idea. They want to spin it out, they want to do it. Maybe they don't want to do their own company, maybe they want to take it, you know, do it to their current company. But regardless, someone sees a clinical unmet need.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Someone sees an innovation, someone wants to do something about it. What's your single piece of advice for them?

Speaker B: So background is an engineer. So I quote from that perspective. So I love it. I think a lot of people, when they, they see a problem, they'll focus on the solution. You know, it's like the classic case is, I'm hungry. Well, there's a salad in the fridge. No, I don't want a salad. I want to have a Chinese takeaway with, with you. So I don't feel guilty. You know, the food is not the problem. I just don't want to have the guilt of eating fast food by myself. And I think a lot of people focus on the solution and the solution will come. Once you thoroughly understood the problem and really identified the user needs, um, and what's involved, the process, who are your stakeholders in that journey, your patients, the people who store your products at the hospital, how are you going to get it to pack? Because in early pregnancy units, they're tiny. We need to make sure that we're shipping small batches that they can manage and they can give out and all the training that comes with it so they feel confident using it and using the right language and they're not going to offend everyone. So that whole encompassing package of really thoroughly understanding the problem I think is worth spending so much time on. And the solution falls out. What are the needs, what are the wants? And um, then you can identify what the solution is. Um, I think that's really important to do, Laura.

Speaker A: It's great, It's a great piece of advice. Uh, um, there's an episode of the podcast, episode four.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So we are on episode 266. This is June 18th, 8th of 2020. Episode four. Um, I had Lance Ah Black on and at the time he was at the Texas Medical center for Innovation and he since moved on and um, he's, he's a great. If you're listening to the podcast, put in Lance Black into your, your LinkedIn connect with him. He's a physician, but great person to follow. Um, really leading voice in the, the M MedTech innovation ecosystem. Um, he talked about being a historian of the problem. So before, you know, understand the problem.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But then go back and look at the history of the problem. How has it evolved? How have solutions evolved? Why did solutions fail previously? That maybe those assumptions may have changed, um, since it failed the first time. Uh, he used to share really good examples about it. Um, and I just thought, wow, that is totally right. Like, you know, did we kill an innovation before because the tech wasn't there, but maybe the tech has evolved now where you want to pull that innovation back forward. And so I just love what you brought up, but I do think people need to take time to learn about, learn about the problem as it exists today. Yeah, but learn about the history of the problem and how it's evolved and what's changed in assumptions. And so, um, uh, Laura, I really appreciate you coming on here, um, being so vulnerable, sharing that with the listeners. Um, and then still again being able to talk about the, the, the other ways, the ways you've built this company, the ways you've identified the problems, how you created it. I just, um. Yeah, there's not a lot of words to describe, um, how hopefully inspiring of a podcast that'll be for other people. Um, yeah, uh, hang on for one minute, we'll chat offline. Uh, we'll have the links to your, your LinkedIn, the website, everything in here. So if you're inspired by this, you want to reach out to Laura, um, you'll be able to do that so directly. Uh, and then just. Yeah. Thanks so much for being on the podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Speaker A: M. Hi, I'm Freddy Coffey, Director of Marketing at Jumpstart. The Project MedTech podcast is proudly sponsored by Jumpstart Inc. Jumpstart's Trailblazer accelerator helps Ohio's most innovative early stage health tech startups fast track their growth with tailored advising from serial entrepreneurs, non dilutive funding to fuel their journey, and unrivaled access to a network of experts, resources and investment opportunities. Whether it's improving patient outcomes, advancing digital health, or reimagining care delivery, jumpstart provides the high impact services and critical resources to bring big ideas to life. Learn more@jumpstartinc.org startups.

Speaker C: Thank you for listening. At our core, we at ProjectMedTech are networkers, educators and consultants. We meet you where you are to bring value and to create impact. We care deeply about helping medtech companies succeed right from the start through to exit by providing consulting and fractional services, hosting impactful industry events, and of course, sharing incredible guest insights like the ones you heard today through our podcast. Please reach out at any time. If we can be of assistance, check out our website at www.projectmedtech.com or email us@inforojectmedtech.com.