Pittsburgh Power Moves: Meet the 6 startups in LifeX Accelerator’s fall cohort

Meet Life X’s new cohort

SouthSide Works-based Life X offers a three-month accelerator through which digital health, medtech and life science-minded startups can receive hands-on support from experts in their field. Last month, Life X announced the latest cohort that’ll spend the fall receiving a crash course in commercialization and the ins and outs of healthcare. This group comes from places ranging from Houston to Pittsburgh, and Life X Director of Ecosystem Development Kelly Collier is confident in their ability to fit into the local ecosystem.

“Being able to follow up on these introductions from our community partners with participation in the virtual LifeX Accelerator program essentially creates an extended interview process for these companies to get to know the Pittsburgh innovation ecosystem and all of our regional assets,” Collier said in a release.

Meet the fall 2023 LifeX accelerator cohort companies, as described in the press release:

• Bairitone Health (Houston) — A scalable diagnostic system for sleep apnea anatomy utilizing a home-use wearable, passive sonar technology and AI techniques
• D.Sole (Pittsburgh) — A non-invasive wearable designed to diagnose and evaluate peripheral neuropathy in diabetes patients
• Elevate_ai Solutions (Pittsburgh) — A SaaS platform designed to validate prescriptions using ML and NLP, drastically improving patient safety while creating operation efficiencies
• Meep (Ghent, Belgium) — A rapid at-home diagnostic which can quantify almost all classes of biomarkers
• Moss Health (Boston) — A healthcare patient management system for interventional psychiatry clinics
• Sonura (Philadelphia) — A beanie for newborns in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit that offers auditory protection and parental connection to promote cognitive and socioemotional growth during their stay

Former Locomation CEO takes over at Atlas Robotics

Çetin Meriçli is most known to the Pittsburgh tech ecosystem for his tenure as the CEO and cofounder of Locomation, a Lawrenceville-based autonomous trucking company. But during a tumultuous winter, the company announced it’d be laying off staff members and reducing its operations.

Now, it appears Meriçli isn’t ready to be done with the world of autonomous technology, as he’s taking over as cofounder and CEO of Atlas Robotics, an autonomous mobile robot solutions startup.

According to Meriçli’s statement on LinkedIn, during this new endeavor, he’ll focus on addressing safety, labor shortages, and managing the rising costs of doing business. Meriçli says that his past experiences in the business world will serve him well at this new company.

“I look forward to applying all the lessons learned not just from these past five years, but also from my 20+ career years as an executive, team builder, and technical expert to confront yet another large-scale, transformative challenge,” Meriçli wrote.

Abridge appoints its first chief clinical officer

After Abridge AI secured one of Pittsburgh’s biggest VC deals of Q2 2023 with $6.4 million, the healthtech company with an AI-powered app has brought on healthcare workforce expert Tina Shah as its first-ever chief clinical officer.

Shah is heralded as an expert in issues facing physicians, nurses and broader clinical workforce in addition to being a practicing physician in her own right. Additionally, Shah served in two White House administrations and in the US Department of Veterans Affairs, where she became the agency’s first director of clinician wellbeing.

This expertise is why Abridge AI’s leadership feels she’s well-equipped to help the company figure out how to alleviate healthcare worker burnout, alongside its app that records and condenses conversations between patients and doctors as a solution.

“I’m excited to join a brilliant team who is as passionate as I am about solving clinician burnout,” Shah said in an announcement. “I am one of those doctors who burned out and almost left the profession. After I saw how Abridge is eliminating time spent documenting in a major way, I jumped at the opportunity to join the team. We are hearing daily from clinicians who use Abridge that they are completing their notes before the day ends, are more present with their patients, and wake up excited about going to work. That’s game-changing.”

More Power Moves

• OraBio appointed John Boresi as the biopharmaceutical company’s new CEO and the newest member of its board of directors.
• Ansys was named as one of the Best Companies to Work For in Technology by USA Today on a list of 349 companies.
• Onward Robotics Director of Client Solutions August Drake was selected out of 400 nominees as one of the winners of the Women in Supply Chain Award for 2023. Onward is the new name of what was formerly known as IAM Robotics.