Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. So when Susan Thompson found she needed time to pump breast milk when she returned to work five months after her son Keegan was born, she just reinvented the breast pump.
Thompson headed back to the lab at Johns Hopkins University in late 2011 to finish her Ph.D. thesis on cellular interactions in the heart. But she struggled to incorporate pumping milk several times a day into her work schedule.
"You need complete privacy, and it takes a long time, so I was very unhappy with the whole process," Thompson said.
She and her husband, an engineer, were on their way to a ski resort when they began discussing ways to mimic using her hand to pump milk. The best way, they decided, was to consider the way a blood-pressure cuff compresses when inflated. What emerged was the Gala Pump, a doughnut-sized device that can be worn inside the bra, allowing a woman to discreetly pump milk anytime, anywhere.
"We wanted to keep the technology as easy and cost-efficient as possible," Thompson said. "Instead of a vacuum-powered suction pump, we created a massaging-based compression pump."
Using $20,000 from competitions and grants, the couple developed a prototype and entered MassChallenge, the $1.3-million startup competition. In May, they learned their newly incorporated company, DS Labs, was among 128 finalists in a field of more than 1,200 applicants.
"It was challenging to leave Johns Hopkins and all the resources there," Thompson said. "But MassChallenge has helped connect me with mentors who have a wealth of knowledge."
Recently, Thompson received permission to test the patent-pending Gala on other nursing mothers. If all goes well, she hopes to get Food and Drug Administration clearance to sell it on the market for about $250 as the nation's only wearable breast pump.
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