The AcQumen Story: Necessity is the Mother of Invention
On New Year’s Eve 2022, Dori Jones and her infant son ended up in the pediatric ICU. At the local hospital, “he was really starting to crash,” Jones recalled. The staff sent the Joneses by ambulance to the nearest academic hospital, where doctors placed her son on a breathing machine. Much to everyone’s relief, he began to stabilize. As she caught her own breath, Dori took stock of how the initial go-to devices, the blood pressure cuff and the pulse oximeter—“which he kept kicking off his toe,” Dori noted—simply weren’t up for the task. She figured: there has to be a better way to measure the signs of cardiovascular failure in children. She was, after all, a medical engineer.
AcQumen Medical: The Vitals
Company name: AcQumen Medical
CEO and founder: Dori Jones
URL: https://www.acqumenmedical.com/
Founded: June 2024
Headquarters: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Core device: UltraTrac
Problem it solves
- Gives neonatal and pediatric ICU teams continuous, noninvasive insight into cardiac output and other hemodynamic measures in critically ill infants and children
Regulatory status
- Preparing for first regulatory submission; impedance portion has FDA 510(k) clearance
Note: AcQumen Medical was one of four award winners at the MPDC Showcase 2026
Expected go-to-market date: Q3 2027
Win After Win, for AcQumen
For AcQumen, the MPDC 2026 Showcase award of $50,000 is one in a series of wins. In October 2025, the company won the Minnesota Cup Grand Prize. AcQumen also recently joined the MedTech Innovator 2026 Accelerator Cohort.
“It’s real validation of the work we’ve done to date,” Jones said, smiling—as is nearly always the case. In the MedTech Innovator program, AcQumen is sponsored by Becton Dickinson and its advanced patient monitoring division. “They’re exactly suited to the work we’re doing,” Jones noted. “The program staff is really curating this support system for helping these companies succeed.”
Likewise, AcQumen is a portfolio company in four of the FDA-supported pediatric device consortia (PDC): the MPDC, the Southwest PDC, the UCSF-Stanford PDC, and the Alliance for Pediatric Device Innovation.
The Power of the PDCs
“What they provide that really no other program does is pediatric specific resources,” Jones said of the PDCs. “If we’re talking about our regulatory strategy, getting approval for a pediatric indication is very nuanced. It’s not the same as any other medical technology.”
That pediatric focus for AcQumen, since their device is designed for neonatal and pediatric ICUs. UltraTrac will combine ultrasound precision with bioimpedance to provide continuous, noninvasive cardiac output data for critically ill patients. For Jones, that means the company needs guidance from people who understand pediatric patients, children’s hospitals, and the regulatory path for pediatric devices.
“It’s really its own segment of the industry,” Jones said. “It’s also an incredible community.” So incredible, in fact, that AcQumen hopes UltraTrac to be market ready by Q3 2027.
Members of that community, Jones believes, are well-positioned to build dominant and durable markets. She points to OrthoPediatrics: a publicly traded company focused entirely on pediatric orthopedic care. In their recent investor deck, OrthoPediatrics note how they serve “100% of top children’s hospitals in the US [and] sell in over 75 countries around the world.”
“I want AcQumen to be on a growing list of such success stories,” Jones said.
For Jones, the impact of the work will always hit close to home. With UltraTrac, AcQumen now has the chance to show that pediatric-first medtech can scale with real clinical and economic impact.
AcQumen’s story shows what can happen when pediatric medtech innovators find the necessary clinical, regulatory, and commercialization support. Connect with MPDC to learn how the pediatric device community helps promising technologies advance.