July 1, 2020 - Mente has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Phase I award supports early-stage research and development to establish technical feasibility and evaluate commercial potential, and it reflects strong reviewer confidence in both the intellectual merit and broader impact of the proposed work.
Wes Hill, CEO of Mente and the Principal Investigator on the award was excited to receive notification, and looks forward to kicking off the proposed R&D.
We were excited to see a strong group of reviewers recognize the potential of instrument-level data to improve operating room efficiency, this funding will help us accelerate R&D on a unique data stream that can reduce waste in surgical operations while supporting high-quality patient care.
The Phase I project is focused on capturing instrument usage data in the operating room and translating that signal into actionable analytics. The goal was to help perioperative teams understand what instruments are actually used during surgery, quantify variability across surgeons and procedures, and identify opportunities to streamline the supply of instruments without compromising clinical function.
Perioperative teams face persistent operational challenges: instrument trays that are larger than necessary, growing reprocessing burden for sterile processing, and variability that makes optimization difficult to sustain. When hospitals lack objective usage data, tray changes can turn into a tug-of-war between preference and habit, and improvements can drift over time.
By generating reliable usage evidence, the work supported by this award aims to make optimization decisions clearer, reduce unnecessary reprocessing workload, and help teams supply the right instruments for each procedure with confidence.
The NSF STTR program, part of America’s Seed Fund, supports startups commercializing technology that originates in research institutions. STTR awards are designed to bridge early research and real-world deployment by funding feasibility work and reducing technical risk during the earliest stages of development.
Mente is a surgeon-founded company building a data-driven operating room. We capture instrument usage automatically, then use that evidence to help hospitals and sterile processing teams supply fewer instruments while preserving clinical functionality and surgeon satisfaction.
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