Armor Medical wins MedTech Innovator Grand Prize
Startup developing wearable sensors for early detection of postpartum hemorrhage
Armor Medical, a startup co-founded by Christine O’Brien, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, was named the 2025 MedTech Innovator Early-Stage Grand Prize winner Oct.7 in San Diego.
The $350,000 nondilutive award will advance the startup’s flagship technology, Maternal aRMOR, a wrist-worn, noninvasive, real-time monitoring platform designed to help providers detect postpartum hemorrhage earlier — even when bleeding is internal and hidden. Postpartum hemorrhage is the leading global cause of maternal mortality.
MedTech Innovator (MTI) is the world’s largest accelerator for medical technology startups, connecting early- and mid-stage innovators with strategic partners, investors and mentors to help bring transformative health technologies to patients. The competition finals took place at the MedTech Conference, with finalists presenting their value propositions and answering questions from a panel of industry experts.
O’Brien joined the WashU faculty in 2022. Her lab uses noninvasive optical spectroscopy and imaging methods to develop tools for solving global problems in women’s health. She co-founded Armor Medical with Leonid Shmuylovich, MD, PhD, assistant professor of dermatology at Washington University School of Medicine, and Kelsey Mayo, CEO of Armor Medical Inc.
In 2023, Armor Medical Inc. won the Global Impact Award and $25,000 in nondilutive funding from the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship at WashU. It also received support and funding from the WashU Office of Technology Management (OTM) through the Gap Fund. O’Brien participated in the national Equalize Competition, which is designed to increase the number of women academic inventors forming university startups, and won the medical technology category. Spanning 2023-2024, Armor Medical won a cumulative $415,000 prize in the third phase of the National Institutes of Health’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Technology (RADx Tech) for Maternal Health Challenge, and received a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Across 2024-2025, Armor Medical has raised about $700,000 in pre-seed investment from angels, the Laerdal Million Lives Foundation and Catalyst by Wellstar.
