Success Story
Puzzle Medical Devices: Profile of a Quebec Company That Created a Revolutionary Technological Innovation
Puzzle Medical Devices is a promising company known for having developed a revolutionary heart pump designed to improve the care offered to patients with heart failure.
What Is Heart Failure?
Heart failure is a very common chronic condition in which the heart is unable to pump blood efficiently. Patients become weak, frequently experience shortness of breath, and are often hospitalized. Few treatments effectively treat this irreversible disease, leaving open-heart surgery, which is both invasive and very expensive, as the only option for most patients with heart failure.
Some Statistics
- Heart failure affects 26 million people around the world
- 10% of them have advanced heart failure
- 250,000 patients in North America are currently awaiting open-heart surgery
- Worldwide annual treatment costs are estimated at $108 billion
- Treatment costs for those in advanced stages represent 80% of the total cost.
A Less Invasive, Less Expensive Solution Is Needed
Current heart failure treatments are far from optimal, very expensive, and invasive for the patient. In 2018, two mechanical engineering and robotics students, Jade Doucet-Martineau and François Trudeau, decided to address the issue by partnering with Dr. Gabriel Georges to develop a minimally invasive heart pump. Puzzle Medical Devices is the result of this endeavor.
The company developed ModulHeartTM, a small transcatheter heart pump. This device provides mechanical hemodynamic support that averts the need for open-heart surgery and blood trauma. This revolutionary technological solution increases access to care and improves patients’ quality of life while reducing the costs associated with managing heart failure.
Impressive Progress
With support from Centech, the École de technologie supérieure’s incubator, Puzzle Medical Devices quickly finalized the development of its technological solution and obtained positive preliminary results. In vivo preclinical tests then showed that the pump was helpful in significantly reducing blood trauma and postoperative complications.
In 2021, just three years after Puzzle Medical Devices’ inception, its ModulHeartTM heart pump was designated a breakthrough device by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (find out more).
The team is getting ready to begin clinical studies in humans by establishing a clinical and commercial committee, finalizing partnerships with medical device industry leaders, and expanding its facilities.