Exploramed: Incubators the Second Time Around

Ten years ago, when Josh Makower, MD, started an incubator, ExploraMed Inc., it was arguably the device industry's first. Makower proposed a different model for device company creation: to begin without a clear idea of the business, but, backed by some money and a vision of the clinical need, to search for the right technology to address that need. Now, a year after selling one of the incubator's start-ups, TransVascular, to Medtronic, Makower has resurrected ExploraMed, and he's just funded his first company. While the model remains largely the same, subtle differences between ExploraMed I and ExploraMed II highlight how much the medical device start-up world has changed over the past decade.