MedTech Global Gateway seeks to bring international companies to northeast Indiana
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Parkview Mirro Center for Research and Innovation in Fort Wayne has launched an initiative alongside the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership to attract international med-tech companies to northeast Indiana.
The MedTech Global Gateway is designed to provide a “soft landing spot” for companies looking to enter the U.S. health care market and take their innovations from the research lab to a patient’s bedside.
Dr. Michael Mirro, chief academic research officer at Parkview Health, says the goal is to lower the barrier for companies to come to Indiana.
“We will connect them to other resources, [including] visa support, opportunities for non-dilutive funding through IEDC,” Mirro said. “We partner with other life science entities in the state of Indiana, most notably BioCrossroads, and now Plug and Play and the med tech accelerator that they have out of Warsaw. So all those will work in concert to help produce this ecosystem that is very attractive for international companies to come to the U.S. and specifically Indiana.”
The center said in a news release that the MedTech Global Gateway will welcome companies specializing in musculoskeletal care, orthopedic devices, medical wearable technologies, regenerative medicine, telemedicine, minimally invasive surgery technologies, and 3D & bioprinting for medical applications.
Dr. Mirro said the gateway will build on work that has already been done over the last decade that has made northeast Indiana an ideal launchpad for companies looking to expand in the U.S.
“Things need to be tested clinically to see realization at the bedside,” he said. “So this will accelerate what I would call the bench-to-bedside pathway for med-tech companies that are trying to solve real life clinical problems. We’re trying to help patients, but we want Indiana to be the center of the med-tech industry, not just in this in the United States but worldwide.”
The Mirro Center recently hosted Enterprise Ireland, an agency designed to help Irish companies go global, which brought 15 companies to the United States, and one of their stops was Parkview Health.
Dr. Mirro said the immediate feedback from the companies was that they found the place where they want to be.
“We basically aligned those 15 companies with the clinical service lines—cardiology, oncology, neuroscience, physical medicine, rehabilitation, orthopedics—and basically they found that they were getting immediate feedback of relevance to their product development,” he said. “And so they said this is what they’ve been looking for.”
By providing assistance on visas, connecting companies to funding opportunities through the Indiana Economic Development Corp., and making connections to potential venture capital funding, Dr. Mirro said establishing a U.S. headquarters in Indiana would be a lot easier for international companies.
That would, in turn, create more jobs in the region, he said.
Both the Mirro Center and the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership said there is a strong potential to grow the MedTech Global Gateway to other parts of the state in the future as well.
“Our region plays a critical role in global med-tech development, and the gateway is a strategic extension of our efforts to build strong international partnerships,” Stéphane Frijia, CEO of the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership, said in written remarks. “We are fostering meaningful connections with med-tech clusters worldwide, ensuring that companies entering the U.S. market gain unmatched access to talent, resources, and strategic collaborations that accelerate their growth and impact.”
The Mirro Center has opened applications for med-tech companies ready to expand their presence to northeast Indiana.