136. Pneumeric Founder/CEO Dr. John Aho

Dr. Aho is a surgeon and scientist with an insatiable appetite for invention and more than 20 patents to his name. He was still in his surgical residency at Mayo Clinic when he spotted an opportunity that led him to develop a medical device now in use around the world. Tension pneumothorax is a life-threatening emergency that occurs when air builds up between the lungs and chest wall. It’s not especially common, but it’s one of those medical situations that TV medical dramas often act out because the way to treat it is to jam a large needle into the chest and wait to hear a gush of air. It occurred to Aho: there had to be a better way. He developed the Capnospot, a device that provides visual confirmation that treatment of tension pneumothorax has been successful. The Capnospot is now standard equipment on ambulances and in emergency rooms everywhere, from Minnesota to Poland. It's the first product to be released by Aho’s parent company, Pneumeric. But it took five years to get here, and challenges persist, from manufacturing to marketing. Aho walks us through the long, expensive process of earning FDA approval for a medical device. “I would have raised more money, earlier,” he says. “Everything takes twice as long, and costs twice as much as you expect.” He’s raised $2.2 million to date. Aho says venture capital for medical devices tends to go to the really big ideas, rather than “little innovations,” like the Capnospot, that improve on everyday treatments. We discuss the opportunities, and the challenges, of being both practicing surgeon and entrepreneur. “Being a doctor, you get to help people,” Aho says. “Doing a medical device, I get to help people on a system wide, national and international scale.” Following our conversation with Aho, we go back to the classroom with the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business where Dan McLaughlin is a senior executive fellow who teaches health care management. He explains why Aho's path to successful medtech developer is unique; most medtech innovation comes out of big companies that employ teams of scientists. He points out the value of basic business training in helping entrepreneurial thinkers turn their ideas into business.