Sonavi Labs is excited to announce a new partnership with Johnson and Johnson’s Innovation Labs. The company will be joining the JPOD @ University of Philadelphia family to continue building the company into a global healthcare technology powerhouse.
Johnson and Johnson created JLABS, an incubator supported by Johnson & Johnson Ventures “where emerging companies can transform the scientific discoveries of today into the breakthrough healthcare products of tomorrow. ” The Sonavi Labs team will take residence in the JPOD, a space co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania and JLABS to continue commercializing the Feelix platform. Nick Pachuda will be assisting the Sonavi Labs team as the site head for JPOD @ Philadelphia, taking over for Dr. Kate Merton, who facilitated the team’s entry into the JLABS portfolio. Johnson and Johnson’s key product segments include pharmaceuticals, consumer products and medical devices.
Sonavi Labs created Feelix, a suite of digital stethoscopes, supportive apps and a smart cloud platform that deploys advanced analytics onto diagnostic tools for the purposes of detecting and managing diseases. Feelix was built based on over 4 years of research and collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Whiting School of Engineering. Sonavi Labs led by Ellington West will still maintain its headquarters in Baltimore, MD.
The JPOD @ Philadelphia opened its doors in 2018 and is located at the Pennovation Center, in Philadelphia. The space exists as an o ffi ce and meeting space for residents and serves as a networking hub, that allows startups the opportunity to engage with JPALS within the Johnson and Johnson community and other mentors and thought leaders.
Other companies in the Philadelphia JPOD include Greppo Technologies , a company developing surgical needles to treat specific cancer tumors with minimally invasive techniques, Nia Therapeutics , a company developing neural interfaces to restore memory function following brain injury, and Nanochon , who specializes in developing joint-replacement solutions. The diversity of the JPOD @ Philadelphia cohort was especially attractive to Sonavi Labs, a women-led company that prides itself on building an inclusive and diverse organization to tackle global challenges.
Johnson and Johnson has been a company dedicated to supporting women since its founding in the late 19th century. When the company launched in 1886 – eight of the original fourteen employees were women . James Wood Johnson and Robert Wood Johnson founded the Johnson and Johnson company with the goal of fostering innovation and bringing the best talent together to accomplish revolutionary medical breakthroughs. “It’s no coincidence that 60% of the Sonavi Labs founding team and Johnson and Johnson team were women.”, says West, the company’s CEO, “Developing the best team possible requires diverse perspectives, and including talent from all over the world. We are so proud that our executive team is comprised of women, members of the LGBTQ+ community and first generation immigrants, because that is far from the traditional norms in the healthcare industry. If we are going to create new, innovative technology that no one has seen before, then we have to create a new and innovative company that no one has ever seen before, too.”
Sonavi Labs firmly believes Feelix has the potential to dramatically improve patient outcomes by supporting clinicians in making more accurate diagnoses, and giving patients more autonomy and flexibility. Sonavi Labs will begin its residence in the JPOD @ Philadelphia
Pennovation Center at the end of this Summer, and plans to use its two-year residence to expose the Feelix platform to global audiences, with the goal of having a Feelix device in every medicine cabinet around the world