Seven finalists have been selected to compete for $22,500 in awards in the Fall 2020 Skandalaris Venture Competition. In anticipation of the SVC finals, on December 8, 2020, we are publishing a Q&A series with the finalists. Today's featured team is Cedars Health. 

About

Cedars Health is developing an implantable device that provides immediate and permanent relief of BPH symptoms without complications

Industry: Medical Device

Number of Employees: 3

Total Funding (as of November 2020): $7,300

What problem are you solving?

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is prostate enlargement that blocks the urethra, causes urinary problems, and reduces the quality of life for more than half of men over 50. This translates to 40 million BPH patients in the US, 500 million patients worldwide, and a $30 billion global BPH treatment market. BPH medications need to be taken daily for years and have side effects while surgeries can have severe complications, forcing most patients to live with medications and side effects. 

About the Founding Team:

• Raphael Chung studied Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering for undergrad and finished the Master of Engineering in Biomedical Innovation program. He is interested in the translation of biomedical engineering principles into devices and worked as an intern at a medical device startup company.
• Kevin Park studied Biomedical Engineering for undergrad and finished the Master of Engineering in Biomedical Innovation program. He worked as a clinical specialist for a medical device company.
• Dr. Arett is a urologic surgeon with over 12 years of experience focusing on BPH and men’s health. He is an Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine and also has an MBA from Olin Business School at Washington University. He understands the innovative design process and knows that an innovative product alone cannot create a successful business without the right management, marketing, competitive advantage, service, and understanding of the patients’ needs, surgeons, and medical systems.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned since starting your venture?

Customer discovery and user validation is an ongoing process. It is important to identify potential users and listen to their feedback.

What do you love about being an entrepreneur?

It is exciting to identify a problem and create your own solutions for the problem. It might seem difficult to tackle current solutions since they are usually being widely used already and are well-understood. However, we felt that there are always problems with current solutions, which gives us a chance to tackle them. The BPH market has grown since 1980, and many large companies such as Medtronic, Olympus, and Boston Scientific are now in the BPH market. There have been attempts to replace the gold standards, but none of those newer solutions have been able to dominate the market. Creating solutions ourselves to potentially replace the current solutions is what we love about being an entrepreneur.

What words of advice do you have for those interested in starting a business?

Website: cedarshealth.weebly.com