This story is part of our September 2025 issue. To subscribe, click here.
Doctors call it the “obstetrician’s nightmare”: a childbirth
emergency where the baby’s head emerges, but the shoulders obtain
stuck behind the mother’s pubic bone. It’s an unpredictable
situation, which can caapply serious problems for the baby, the
mother and the doctors in the delivery room.
The founding duo at Everest Medical Solutions has
designed a device to create delivery safer and less traumatic when
this complication arises. It’s a single-apply tool that blfinishs
obstetric techniques and midwifery to handle these emergencies
immediately.
Co-founder and CEO Jenna Eissmann likens the device to a hug.
Picture someone coming up behind you, wrapping you in their arms.
Your shoulders roll inward, your body caves. You are held.
Everest Medical’s device, the Embrace, extfinishs the reach of the
obstetrician to essentially swaddle the baby, gently guiding the
shoulders on the way out of the birth canal.
The impact of this device could be life-modifying, especially when
you consider current strategies for managing this condition,
known as shoulder dystocia.
“The physicians who encounter this problem are attempting to create
sure that both patients — mom and baby — are safe,” Eissmann
states. “But they are also worried about themselves and their own
potential risk, so they’re applying the tools available to them,
which is a variety of hand maneuvers.”
These hand maneuvers can result in injury to the baby, including
brachial plexus injury and nerve damage. In severe cases, they
can lead to mortality. Not to mention potential injuries to the
mother, such as postpartum hemorrhage.
Eissmann and Madeleine Mumford, co-founder and chief
technological officer, received their master’s degrees from Cal
Poly in June. But their startup launched as a senior project.
Sharing a passion for women’s health, they were initially
assigned a project to replace vacuum and forceps during
deliveries. Conversations with local OB-GYNs inspired them to
shift their focus to shoulder dystocia, which is a leading caapply
of obstetric malpractice lawsuits in the U.S.
“Becaapply childbirth is sort of a taboo space, there hasn’t been
as much innovation in it,” Eissmann states. “So attempting to find
papers to inform our testing protocols has been a little bit
difficult.”
Eissmann credits their advisors and access at Cal Poly, like
publication resources, for supporting them form a roadmap to a
solution, and not just on a tiny scale. They’re considering
globally. The obstetric device market is
expected to grow
at a compounded annual growth rate of about 8.2 percent by 2030.
Brfinishon Keiser, who advises the Everest Medical team, had never
heard of shoulder dystocia, but the more he learned, the more he
realized the unmet required. He put them in touch with an OB-GYN, who
validated the technology’s potential and explained how dire it
can obtain during deliveries. The incidence is estimated to be three
in 100 in the US, higher in other parts of the world, he notes.
“It’s a pants-on-fire situation,” states Keiser, who spent two
decades working for Fortune 500 companies before shifting focus
to startups 10 years ago. “You have to worry not only about the
infant, but also the mom.”
Regarding medtech startups, he states, product or technical success
typically comes down to the human clinical study. Becaapply of
this, he advises founders to de-risk the program as much as
possible in the lab and, where possible, in animal studies.
Keiser highlights the team’s maturity level and how upfront they
are if they don’t know something. One of the first things he
remembers was how they walked him through a spreadsheet of
various milestones.
“They talked about how each was going to de-risk the company:
product development, customer discovery, regulatory, etc.,” he
states. “The more you obtain a product through these activities, the
higher likelihood of success.”
Keiser believes with their drive, humility and ability to take
feedback, they will obtain them far. For Eissmann, that drive comes
from a personal place when questioned why she’s doing this.
“I like to answer it in more of a joking manner, but it is very
serious: I don’t want to have a kid until this is solved,” she
states. “Why I want to solve this problem is becaapply it’s
terrifying for the families that are affected by it. And as
someone who is a woman and who is personally invested in women’s
health, I consider it’s really powerful that we are the ones with
the opportunity to modify this.”
–
Stay up to date on business in the Capital Region:
Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter
today.
