Start-up Companies

Throughout his career, Dr. Thompson has viewed innovation as a natural extension of clinical medicine. Many of the technologies he has worked to develop began with a problem encountered directly in patient care: a procedure that could be safer, a device that did not yet exist, or a disease that might be treated in an entirely new way. His approach has been to move those observations beyond the bedside, bringing together physicians, engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to develop practical solutions and ultimately translate them into technologies that can reach patients.

The Developmental Endoscopy Lab has been central to that work. It was created as an environment where new concepts in endoscopy could be developed, tested, refined, and moved toward clinical application. The laboratory has supported the evolution of novel endoscopic devices and procedures across interventional endoscopy, bariatric and metabolic endoscopy, and therapeutic gastrointestinal surgery. Just as importantly, it has provided a setting in which clinical insight could be combined with engineering and entrepreneurship, helping transform early ideas into intellectual property, prototypes, clinical programs, and new companies.

That translational work has led to Dr. Thompson's involvement in a number of medical technology start-ups. Beacon Endoscopic developed advanced endoscopic technologies and was ultimately acquired by Medtronic. GI Windows Surgical has focused on creating new approaches to intestinal anastomosis and incisionless gastrointestinal intervention. EnteraSense has explored technologies designed to generate new physiologic information from within the gastrointestinal tract, while Envision Endoscopy has pursued next-generation technologies for advanced therapeutic endoscopy. Everself extends this work into metabolic and bariatric care, with the goal of creating more accessible and scalable approaches to the treatment of obesity and metabolic disease.

Across these efforts, the underlying philosophy has remained consistent: identify an important clinical problem, understand its biology and mechanics, build a better solution, and develop the pathway required to bring that solution to patients. Entrepreneurship has therefore not been separate from Dr. Thompson's academic or clinical career. It has been another means of translating discovery into better care.