Eugene Malinskiy

(Photo Credit: Eugene Malinskiy)

Name: Eugene Malinskiy
Current Job:  CEO of Indago
Favorite restaurant in town? Hard choice between L’Abaltros and Zoma 
Favorite thing about Cleveland? The great international and ethnic mix of people. The amazing food scene. And of course the Metroparks and library.

Q: Eugene, thanks for joining. Can you tell the readers how you got started as a biotech entrepreneur? I’ve been focused on health care since I graduated from John Carroll, but it goes back even further to an internship I did at the Cleveland Clinic while I was in high school and my experience as an EMT at John Carroll. Post-grad, I initially studied pharmacology and toxicology but then changed my focus and got my master’s in biomedical engineering from Cleveland State. In 2012, I sold an IT consulting business I started in college and started a healthcare innovation and engineering company specializing in medical devices for cardiology and orthopedics amongst others. By 2014, we had 15 employees.

I found I preferred working on my own products as opposed to consulting for others. Along with two co-founders, we decided to establish a new company that would focus on identifying inefficiencies in the operating room environment, particularly, in orthopedics, sports medicine and knee and shoulder surgery.

Q: So that is the company now named Indago, right? Tell me about it.

I’d spent a lot of time in operating rooms while I was at CSU and continued to do so in our consulting work. It came to me that the operating room has fundamentally not changed in 20 or 30 years. We think of all the advances in surgery-–robotics, implants—but none of these have been about how the surgical team interfaces with the operating room on a day-to-day basis.

We saw a huge opportunity to bring to the surgical space some of the innovation that is happening in other industries, whether it's machine learning, lighting, or wireless technologies. And that's what we did with our first product: ArthroFree, the world's first fully wireless, minimally invasive surgical camera. Essentially we are replacing a handheld camera with an external light cable, power cable and video cable that are attached to a surgical tower. Eliminating those cables reduces the potential for contamination, accidents and even operating room fires. ArthroFree offers further advantages in terms of costs, productivity, and ergonomics. We’re targeting sports medicine, but fundamentally, the platform is translatable for any type of endoscopic or minimally invasive surgery.

Q; Where are you in the process of bringing ArthroFree to market?

We have completed development of the device and have transferred it to our manufacturing partners, and now are gearing up for going out into the field for some more human-factor testing and demoing it with some of our physician-champions, investors, and partners. We recently announced the appointment of Leah Brownlee as President and General Counsel of Indago. She most recently served in the Corporate Practice and Life Sciences Industry groups at Squire Patton Boggs. Before that she was Executive Vice President of Compliance and Operations at Cleveland BioLabs, Inc., a clinical-stage NASDAQ-listed biotechnology company. We are next looking at FDA submission and showcasing it at the big orthopedic surgeons conference in early September.

Q: What’s been your experience raising capital in Cleveland and why are you staying here?

We definitely have had success raising capital in Cleveland, but the majority of the Seed, Series A, and ongoing Series B funding is from outside the area. A lot of that has come through AngelMD, the online healthcare investment marketplace; through the connections of our board members like Dr. Mark Froimson, who is a past president of the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons; through many physician champions who want to use ArthroFree; and from a number of family offices and venture groups.

Well, Cleveland is my home, and I have so many contacts here, but really, I can’t think of a better place to grow a medical technology company. We have amazing, research-focused healthcare institutions here, in the Clinic and UH, and even the VA. We have an advanced manufacturing and materials-science base here that is as good as, if not better, than anyplace. And we have a very supportive life sciences and IP ecosystem in Northeast Ohio. We’ve received valuable assistance from MAGNET, NASA Glenn, BioEnterprise, CWRU’s think[box], and other local organizations.

Q: How can we continue to grow the biotech industry in Cleveland? 

First is to provide stronger forums and connection opportunities for medical, pharmaceutical, and all other life science companies, their staff, and supporting and feeder organizations like universities. The repeated success of companies going from a startup to an industry player or an exit at all those places we’re always reading about (Silicon Valley, Boston/Cambridge, Tel-Aviv, etc.) is about creating and fostering a community and then allowing for some of that wealth to trickle back into the local community. And second is of course to grow the knowledge, sophistication, and speed of local and regional money/investors supporting the biotech industry.