Adam Torres and Elizabeth Wong discuss Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum.
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Show Notes:
Listen to Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Elizabeth Wong, Founder & CEO at DoubleLock Healthcare, Inc., explore DoubleLock Healthcare, Inc. and Octane’s Medical Innovation Forum.
Watch Full Interview:
About Elizabeth Wong
Elizabeth Wong, CRNA, MSN, is an RN and CRNA with 40 years of experience as a front-line clinical provider.
Elizabeth is also the Founder and CEO of DoubleLock Healthcare, Inc. Drawing up drugs and injecting them at the bedside, in the operating room, or the field is an important aspect of patient care. The current IV ports are exposed and easily contaminated with bacteria. Manufacturers and hospital policy require the provider to swab the IV port with an alcohol pad in a time-wise, step-wise fashion. Problem discovery interviews demonstrate that providers only comply with IV port asepsis <<50% of the time.
An additional issue is Luer-lock misconnections and wrong-route infusion or injection errors. To solve these two problems, Elizabeth have created and patented the DoubleLock Sterile Entry Intravenous Port and Syringe System.
About DoubleLock Healthcare, Inc
DoubleLock Healthcare, Inc. is a n early stage medical device company co-founded by Danny Wong, PharmD, and Elizabeth Wong, CRNA, MSN.
DoubleLock Healthcare, Inc. has joined the Global Engineered Device Supplier Association (GEDSA) and the Association for the Advancement Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), the U. S. representative to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Elizabeth serves on 6 GEDSA committees and and on two ISO committees.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to apply. All right, so today I’m at the Medical Innovation Forum in Irvine, California, and my guest is Elizabeth Wong.
Elizabeth? Welcome to the show. Adam, thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it. All right, Liz, so this event hosted by Octane, I’ve had so much fun. This is my second ever Octane conference and we’ve been covering it and I’ve had the best interviews. I just have to ask, How’s the conference going for you so far?
I love it. It’s been a really fantastic conference for me. I’ve met so many wonderful people, including yourself. This is the first time that I’m attending the Medical Innovation Conference. Yes, I met the Launchpad Octane group and they’ve been so fantastic. They recommended that I attend the conference.
Mm. Because I would have so much exposure to investors, other entrepreneurs, I would be able to see how they work and interacted. Yeah. Ask questions. So it’s it, they were correct. It was a good experience so far and I’ve really enjoyed myself. Now I’ve been to a lot of conferences and I and I, so far as I’ve been to these conferences, I’ve talked to people that have been here since like the, you know.
15, 20 years they’ve been since Octane’s been around, I think 20 years or so. I’ve talked to people that they’ve been there, you know, four or five years on myself, two conferences, and now you’re on your first one. So I’m interested now that you’re kind of on the other side of that. Why would you tell other founders?
Like now that you’re starting to experience it, why do you think other founders, like, why do you think they would attend? Like, why, what would you tell them? So what I would tell them is. That it gives people a very good idea of what is expected of you when you reach those upper levels, when you make it to the stage and you actually give a formal presentation of your company to prospective investors and audience members.
And They’ve been so inspirational. I just can’t believe how smart these people are. The companies that they have created from nothing. It’s just really amazing. And I’m really impressed by all of them. What has been one of your favorite parts of the events? Whether it was, it could have been one of the event, the pitch competition, could have been any of the things.
Like, what’s been one of your favorite parts so far? For me, the pitch competitions have been the They’re amazing, aren’t they? They are amazing. I really enjoyed that. And that’s because eventually I aspire to Be able to present my company to investors as well as they have. I was speaking with some of the entrepreneurs afterwards, obviously.
And I was asking them how many times they had to practice their presentations, how long it took them to put it together. You know, how did they get to the point where they were able to give the presentation on stage? And backstories are actually very inspirational. Interesting. And so talk a little bit about your company, your company.
So I’m a registered nurse and a certified registered nurse anesthetist, and I draw up and administer IV drugs all day long for patients undergoing anesthesia. And I focused in on the intravenous ports of the lure lock intravenous ports and syringes are exposed and easily contaminated. And the bacteria that is inadvertently injected into the patient along with the drug can result in a healthcare associated infection.
And so I. I didn’t see a solution to that problem, and I thought I would create the solution myself. And so I began the journey of transcribing. inventing the double lock IV port and syringe system. And we recently completed our proof of concept, which was 100 percent negative for bacteria transmission.
How do you feel? That’s amazing. Let me tell you the best part about speaking with some of the people is to be able to say that we completed our proof of concept. Wow. I know that’s gotta feel amazing. Yeah, it is. It is. Because it’s been a long journey and it was very difficult because I don’t do, you know, be a founder and CEO for a living per se.
It was all to create this is like going to be like an entrepreneur, launching a product, this ambitious, right? Correct. To solve an actual issue that’s going on. Having an effect on patients. When did you go from that? Like, and the reason I ask this question is a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners that watch this and some will be able to relate and some are earlier on their journey and maybe they just have the idea, but they haven’t made the leap yet.
Right. When did it go from like just an idea to something where you’re like, okay, I’m going to spend some time, effort, money, like resources to make this happen. Like, what was that transition for you? So the transition took place when we received our patent so that it was a seven year process from researching the idea to filing a patent.
And we wanted to obtain a patent first to make sure that the idea was novel. Nobody else had. The head invented it before us, and when we obtained the patent, that’s when it went from being just an idea to, okay, now we have this piece of paper that legitimizes our idea, and so now we can go forward and actually develop it.
And so that’s when we made that transition. So talk a little bit about the plans for the company going next. So, so we completed phase one of our project with the proof of concept. We have the one patent and then we filed two additional patents when we completed the proof of concept. And so now we’re preparing for phase two.
To enter phase two, which would be the continued research and development. And that’s where we need investor money because developing a medical device is an expensive process. And you also need in addition to the funding, the people resources you need to make the networking connections with people have have skills and expertise and areas of a business that you don’t have.
And so that’s another reason to come out to these medical innovation conferences because you can meet so many people. that have different skill sets or they may know people who can help you move your project forward. Amazing. Liz, last question. If somebody’s watching or listening to this and if they want to follow up and connect with you, your team, or learn more about your company, how do they do that?
So we have put together a website www. doublelockhealthcare. com and they can go to the website in the contact us section. They can just shoot me an email and I will respond immediately. Amazing. And for everybody watching at home, just to let you know we’ll, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes to the website and all that good stuff.
So you can just click on it and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t hit that subscribe or follow button yet, make sure you hit it. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, Hit that subscribe or follow button and Liz, thank you again so much for coming on the show. Adam, it was my pleasure, my honor. Thank you so much.