Fellow Spotlight: Aurie

Souvik Paul is the CEO and founder of Aurie, a mission-driven, human-centered medical device company that partners with its community of users living with disabilities to co-design products that deliver on the promise of increased freedom and independence. The company’s first product is a safely reusable intermittent urinary catheter system.

Aurie has built technical prototypes of the catheter system and tested them in microbiology labs at the University of Notre Dame and conducted human factors testing of interactive prototypes with catheter users in Houston, TX. The startup has received several grants to support its vision, including from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research.

The FDA reviewed the promising results of Aurie's reusable catheter system testing and designated the device as a Safer Technology. The FDA believes that the Safer Technology program will help patients have more timely access to medical devices by expediting their development, assessment, and review. The Safer Technologies designation does not confer FDA marketing clearance or approval but is given to devices that are reasonably expected to significantly improve the safety of currently available treatments or diagnostics that target an underlying disease or condition associated with morbidities and mortalities less serious than those eligible for the Breakthrough Devices Program.


"The Aurie System's inclusion in the FDA's Safer Technologies Program is a testament to the need and potential of the Aurie System to offer people using intermittent catheters a more advanced, safer option... This designation will allow us to communicate regularly with FDA enabling us to better define our regulatory strategy and potentially accelerate our ability to bring the Aurie System to catheter users," - Aurie founder Souvik Paul.


We’re thrilled to announce that Aurie has been accepted into the 2021-22 NEMIC Foundation Accelerator Program! Their mission-driven business model will complement our emphasis on equity in entrepreneurship, and we hope to support them in achieving their vision of working with people living with disabilities to improve their health, freedom, and independence.