AIC-AMTZ MediValley

Work out which door you need

Medi Valley offers three quite different things, and they have different routes in.

• A lab test or calibration. You do not have to be incubated. The pre-compliance testing lab is offered to incubatees, innovators and manufacturers, and the electronics lab is open to innovators, research labs, academia and startups. Email with the device, the standard you are testing against and your timeline.
• Space and campus access at AMTZ. That is the Innovation Passport, registered through its own form. It is an AMTZ initiative, so it assumes you take up plug-and-play space on the campus.
• An innovation call. These are themed — digital health, women's health, elderly care, rehabilitation, medical devices. Each call page carries its own application form.

Before you spend time on a call page

• The call pages do not carry dates. Most are a poster image and an apply button, with no deadline, no eligibility text and no contact for the call. Email info@medivalley-aic.in and confirm the call is still taking applications before you build a submission around it.
• One apply button is broken. The Digital Health call's button points at an editing link rather than a live form, so it will not open for you. If a button fails, say so in your email and ask for the current route.
• The rehabilitation call has no form at all — only a downloadable poster listing the products it wants. Approach it by email.

What the one fully documented call asked for

The Digital Health call is the only one that published its criteria, and it is the best guide to how Medi Valley thinks:

• Indian registered startups, MSMEs and individual innovators could apply.
• Reviewers looked for work that closes the gap between demand and supply of essential medical equipment, and that shows a benefit to patients, healthcare and society.
• Selection was a pitch to a jury, with the result announced the next day.
• Selected teams then spent about five weeks building a proof of concept at the AMTZ campus, ending in an agreement with Medi Valley.
• Innovators had to be present at AMTZ, with no work permitted outside the campus. If you cannot relocate a team to Visakhapatnam for the build, raise it before you apply.

What to have ready

• A clear statement of the device or solution, the clinical need it addresses and who benefits.
• Your registration status — company, MSME or individual innovator.
• Evidence of where you are technically: a bench prototype, a design file set, any testing already done.
• Whether you need the labs, campus space, or both. That decides which route fits.
• A short pitch you can present live, since selection has been run as a jury pitch.

Practical notes

• There is one published email, info@medivalley-aic.in, and one phone number. Use them for everything; there are no per-programme inboxes.
• Medi Valley sits in the I-Hub Building on the AMTZ campus in Visakhapatnam. Plan a visit if you are serious about the labs — most of what it offers is physical.
• If you want to mentor rather than apply, the site has a separate mentor form.

AIC-AMTZ Medi Valley Incubation Council is a medtech incubator inside the Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) in Visakhapatnam. It describes itself as AMTZ's innovation arm and as an Atal Incubation Centre funded by NITI Aayog under the Atal Innovation Mission. It works from the I-Hub Building on the AMTZ campus at Pragati Maidan, and says it is the only facility in India dedicated to health technology that sits inside a medical device manufacturing zone.

AMTZ and Medi Valley are two different things

Founders looking at Visakhapatnam usually meet both names, and they do different jobs. AMTZ is the park: an enterprise of the Government of Andhra Pradesh spread over 270 acres, set up so that medical device makers can share expensive scientific facilities instead of each buying their own. It was incorporated in April 2016 and its foundation stone was laid in August 2016. Medi Valley is the incubation council on that campus, and it is the part that works with innovators and startups rather than with established manufacturers.

The practical difference is where you have to be. Medi Valley's own labs are services you can buy time on. AMTZ's Innovation Passport, and the campus facilities it opens up, assume you physically move onto the AMTZ campus. The one call that published its full conditions was explicit about this: selected innovators had to be present at AMTZ, with no work permitted outside the campus. Assume campus presence is expected for anything involving product development at AMTZ, and ask before you plan around it.

What Medi Valley supports

The focus is medical devices and health technology across the whole journey, from an idea to something that can be manufactured. Medi Valley says it handholds innovators at all stages, from ideation to manufacturing, and that innovators are mentored by researchers, manufacturers and policy makers.

Its published calls show the specific areas it has gone looking for: digital health, women's health and FemTech, elderly care, and rehabilitation. The rehabilitation call is the most concrete about what it wants — prosthetics such as a below-elbow bionic arm, a below-knee bionic leg and an endoskeletal below-knee prosthesis; orthotics including ankle-foot, knee-ankle-foot and foot orthotics; and mobility aids such as a motorised wheelchair, elbow and axillary crutches, a patient hoist, a commode chair and a standing frame.

Who can apply

There is no general incubation application and no published cohort. You get in by answering a specific call, or by registering for AMTZ's Innovation Passport.

The Digital Health call, which is the only one that published its criteria, was open to Indian registered startups, MSMEs and individual innovators. It asked for work that could close the gap between demand and supply of essential medical equipment and that demonstrably benefited patients, healthcare and society. Applicants pitched to a jury, results came the next day, and selected teams then built a proof of concept at the AMTZ campus, ending in an agreement with Medi Valley.

The Innovation Passport is open more widely: AMTZ describes it as recognising startups globally, with plug-and-play space on campus for any length of time.

The labs are not limited to incubatees. Medi Valley says its pre-compliance testing lab serves incubatees, innovators and manufacturers alike, and that its electronics lab is open to any innovator, research lab, academic group or startup that needs it. That matters if you are based elsewhere in India and only need a test done.

Facilities

Medi Valley runs four labs of its own, in a co-working block that also holds laboratory, office and meeting space. Its pages give two different square-footage figures for that block, so treat the size as approximate.

The pre-compliance testing lab does EMC checks before formal certification: radiated and conducted emissions, radiated susceptibility, electrostatic discharge, electrical fast transient, surge and conducted RF immunity. Medi Valley says its reports show up potential EMC problems early and reduce the risk of a device failing certification later. The calibration and testing lab holds biomedical calibrators and says it can test and calibrate more than twenty medical devices at its current capability, covering safety and efficacy checks, insulation resistance, humidity and air flow. The electronics lab carries test and measurement instruments for design and development work. The mechatronics lab is the prototyping space, with power and machining tools, open-source boards such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi and NodeMCU, sensors and motors, measuring instruments, hand tools, crafting materials and safety gear. It is split into a basic lab and an advanced lab, as is the electronics lab.

Those first three labs are supported by the Department of Pharmaceuticals under the AMDTF scheme guidelines.

Beyond its own labs, Medi Valley points startups at AMTZ campus facilities: a 3D printing centre with design software, FDM, SLA, SLS, PJP and metal printing, and a rapid tooling unit with CNC milling, a five-axis machine and laser engraving; bio-material testing covering sterility, histopathology, physio-chemical evaluation, accelerated ageing, package validation, SEM, TEM and biological evaluation; EMI/EMC, mechanical, electrical safety and thermal testing; and a gamma irradiation centre. There is also an artificial limb centre on site, which fits and fabricates prosthetics and orthotics for patients rather than serving startups.

Medi Valley says its labs hold accreditation from NABL, BIS and CDSCO. Its certificates page shows the three certificates as images without stating their scope or validity, so ask for the certificate covering the specific test you need.

Track record

The counters on Medi Valley's home page report fourteen incubatees, thirty products, fourteen labs and twelve patents. These are its own published figures, and the numbers only appear in the page code rather than as visible text, so treat them as indicative and ask for a current count.

How to apply

Watch the innovation call pages and apply through the form on the call you fit. Registration for the Innovation Passport runs through its own form on the campus access page. Mentors, rather than founders, have a separate application form on the site. For anything else, including lab bookings and enquiries about whether a call is still open, write to info@medivalley-aic.in or call the number on the contact page. Medi Valley also runs a recruitment page where candidates can drop a CV.