Collaborating for Clinical Credibility

Nick Delmonico's professional journey is diverse, spanning the worlds of both healthcare and finance. His roles at ECG Management Consultants, PwC, and J.P. Morgan provided Nick with a multifaceted perspective on the economics of healthcare. He has a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Delaware and went on to do an MBA at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. But it’s not only this impressive professional and academic background that led him to found Strados Labs. 

Nick was only four years old when diagnosed with severe asthma. Growing up, he spent a lot of time in the ER and the ICU and experienced the constant fear and uncertainty of not knowing when his symptoms might escalate to the point of needing hospital care. Although it was traumatizing as a child, Nick rose above and made it his mission to find a better way to manage respiratory conditions like his. 

Nick founded Strados Labs in 2016 and the core team came together at a health hackathon hosted by Independence Blue Cross and Thomas Jefferson University. He says, “I knew healthcare was a messy business, and there was a need to have better, earlier interventions to reduce hospitalizations.” 

Strados has set out to develop a solution that could help people with chronic respiratory diseases receive better care. As an asthma patient himself, Nick recalls, “I remember being asked by a doctor, ‘When did your symptoms start? When did you start having difficulty breathing?’ And I didn't really know how to answer those questions.” 

The initial goal at Strados was simple yet to the point: create a tool that would enable clinicians to understand and track patient respiratory health in real-time, reducing the anxiety and uncertainty of managing their condition by detecting whenever the patient coughs or wheezes. Nick explains, “We enable care for patients with pulmonary conditions outside of the four walls of the hospital so that we can get ahead of events before they get really bad–before ER visits and before hospitalizations.” 

Their device, the RESP™ Biosensor, is a small, lightweight, wireless wearable that remotely captures sounds from the patient's lung, like a high-tech stethoscope that you wear all the time. “It’s an acoustic wearable that you place on your chest that listens to your lung sounds and measures your breathing patterns. Lung sound data is transferred to the cloud, where our proprietary algorithms detect when those events are occurring and how much worse they are getting, and then notifies the care team so they can take action,” Nick explains. 

The real-time monitoring gives clinicians a better picture of their patients' health outside the hospital, and the data allows providers to better follow their patients’ pulmonary status and receive early insight into exacerbations, enabling timely interventions.  

Strados gained its first FDA clearance for the device back in 2020, recognizing the safety of its product as a prescription device. Currently, the company is in an exciting phase: focusing on manufacturing, building a distribution network, and preparing for commercialization. Today, the RESP™ Biosensor is used in six languages across 65 (and soon to be over 150) trial sites.

Key Learnings From Nick’s Experience

• In addressing complex problems, especially in healthcare, it's crucial to first gain a deep understanding of the issue. Actively engage with various stakeholders, such as patients, doctors, and administrators, to gather a wide range of insights.

• Explore uncharted paths that align with your business's unique needs and market position. For example, by understanding the research requirements of pharmaceutical companies, Strados not only validated its own technology through others’ research but also gathered invaluable data and got paid for it along the way. 

• Starting with non-dilutive funding methods such as grants and competitions is a smart strategy for medtech beginners. This approach allows you to maintain ownership and focus on product building versus the distractions that often come with fundraising.