Maternova, Inc. is a trusted resource for cutting-edge medical innovations in newborn, obstetrics and reproductive health. The company researches, reviews and sells proven obstetric and newborn technologies to private hospitals, governments, Ministries of Health, NGOs and healthcare professionals around the world. The woman-owned, women’s health solutions company has a network of over 30,000 clinicians, midwives, and thought leaders as part of its sphere of influence. Maternova is a social enterprise that is mission driven delivering products in a socially conscious way. The idea for the company originated when co-founders Meg Wirth and Allyson Cote recognized a gap in efficient technology transfer services for maternal and child health. Wirth noted that many organizations provide clinical or policy-related services and universities and startups create helpful biomedical technologies. However there have been few linkages between the two entities. Wirth and Cote knew that more lives could be saved with a dedicated, trusted, efficient, commercialization platform.
According to Wirth, the three biggest threats to pregnant mothers around the world, including the United States, are postpartum hemorrhaging, eclampsia, and sepsis (with anemia and malnutrition underlying all three causes). In many developing countries there is one death caused by postpartum hemorrhage every four minutes. Often women die while in transit to a hospital. But what if you could stabilize the woman until she reaches help? This is the idea behind the company’s top selling item, the Non-Pneumatic Anti-Shock Garment (NASG), an external pressure suit (with an embedded hard sphere over the uterus), used to stabilize a woman experiencing bleeding after delivering a baby. This anti-shock garment has been proven in clinical trials to help stop hemorrhage and reverse shock in women while in transport in an ambulance or while awaiting blood transfusion at a hospital.
As a local company with a global reach, Maternova has hosted several Brown University Public Health students, such as Nirdesh Tuladhar, MPH ’15 and Hugo Petitjeam, MPH’ 17 for their internships. At Maternova students have the opportunity to manage projects, create media strategies and outreach, vet new supplies, and create tracking processes. Tuladhar said “Maternova was a perfect match considering my prior applied experience and interest in working in global health and health commodities marketing. The whole approach of Maternova to pool in both large and small-scale manufacturers of medical innovations for newborn, obstetrics and reproductive health on an online platform is a new direction in business-to-business model. Tuladhar went on to say that “In addition to get the opportunity to actually design a study to test a new rapid diagnostic testing (RDT) kit, Maternova opened me to the world of startups, social entrepreneurship and social media marketing. The internship at Maternova also allowed me to complement new skills I was learning at the Brown University School of Public Health such as designing health interventions, epidemiology and applied methodologies of research design. If you are creative, innovative, business orientated and can think of out of the box solutions for maternal and child health programs globally, Maternova is the place for you. Founders, Meg Wirth and Allyson Cote, are wonderful people to work with and are excellent mentors. Their mission and passion to uplift women’s health globally is inspiring.”