When Mechanical Engineering alumnus Antony Koblish ’87 develops a new company, his goal is to make a positive impact on the lives of medical patients. He does this by providing physicians with innovative
tools, implants, and services in areas traditionally underserved by large medical technology organizations. The medical device entrepreneur recently credited the WPI Plan as an excellent training ground for the development of advanced technologies and pioneering companies. He offered that the encouragement of lifelong learning and an open-minded approach to interdisciplinary collaboration prepares and inspires WPI alumni to use theory and practice to make a positive impact on the world.
From financing, R&D, clinical/product development, FDA approval, reimbursement and commercialization, Koblish greatly enjoys figuring out the many complexities of bringing a product to market. And over the past seven years he has co-founded the medical technology companies Onkos Surgical and Telabio—joining fellow WPI alumni in making the world a better, safer, more humane place. Onkos Surgical uses digital surgical imaging and 3D printing technology to produce patient matching implants with a focus on limb reconstruction and mobility preservation for cancer patients. Telabio is a biologics device company developing reinforced tissue matrices which remodel into a patient’s own tissue and provide natural repairs in hernia and plastic reconstruction surgeries; this product minimizes or eliminates the use of synthetic mesh in the human body.
Koblish follows WPI’s strategic expansion of the Life Sciences program with great interest. “It is great to see my school invest heavily in life sciences and medical technology, this is an important leap forward since my day, which pre-dated bioengineering being a common and routine field of study."