FS-UNIT: Light-weight, portable medical Field Suction Unit to disrupt the pre-hospital market

Excitus is an award-winning high-tech health start-up set to disrupt the pre-hospital emergency care market by providing a lightweight, easy-to-use, instantly functioning portable medical suction device. Sudden out-of-hospital cardiac arrests remain are highly lethal, with 9 out of 10 of the 350,000 EU cases ending in death. When a person’s heart stops, fast response is needed. Many times, fluid such as vomit clog up a person’s airway during a cardiac arrest, and so it is standard practice for ambulances to carry suction devices to clear airways. Prompt airway clearing can increase survivability in trauma cases by as much as 10%, yet current portable suction devices are not designed with a paramedic-centric view. Instead, they are heavy, bulky, difficult and time consuming to use, requiring both hands for operation and extensive cleaning afterwards. Resultantly, paramedics do not carry them to the scene at first response, thereby compromising the patients’ lives. Having worked for the world’s largest supplier of emergency care pre-hospital medical devices for decades, we were disappointed by the lack of innovation and user-centric design. We imagined a scenario were paramedics would enjoy using portable suction devices. After widely consulting with paramedics, physicians and Emergency Services operators, we created a completely new handheld design applying advanced mechatronics to deliver a suction device that is 85% lighter than current products whilst achieving the required life-saving performance. We have received the support of the largest private ambulance providers in Europe and the US and are currently creating a global distribution network. The market for medical suction devices is growing to just under €1bn by 2024 with one of the key drivers being the demand for compact portable medical devices. Our Vision is to be the market leader in this sector achieving cumulative sales of €68M by 2026 with an ROI 8.4, with total required investment of €2.5M.