FundraiseJun 28, 2026, 15:25 UTC

UTRF Accelerate Fund backs PreTel's prenatal wearables in third investment

What's the deal? The University of Tennessee Research Foundation (UTRF) Accelerate Fund has made a seed investment in PreTel, a Tennessee medical device startup.

PreTel builds wearable sensors that help physicians tell true labour from false labour. The technology also monitors labour progression and guides safe dosing of labour-inducing drugs.

Developed at UT Health Sciences by Dr Roger Young, an OB-GYN and professor, the sensors aim to reduce unnecessary cesarean deliveries and improve outcomes for mothers and babies.

Why now? PreTel has raised more than $1.6 million in non-dilutive SBIR funding and $1.5 million in seed-stage dilutive funding since its founding.

It also won a $50,000 prize at PYA's 2025 Ballard Innovation Award. With the new backing, PreTel plans to complete its regulatory assessment and begin clinical trials.

UTRF licensed the underlying IP to PreTel in 2015 and filed patents that resulted in three issued US patents.

What could go wrong? Clinical trials and regulatory approval remain ahead, and chief executive officer Marc Finch called prenatal health a "very underfunded area in the very competitive healthcare technology space."

The signal: As only the Accelerate Fund's third investment since it began deploying capital in 2023 — after biotech startup Orion Therapeutics and AI firm VisualizAI — the PreTel deal underscores how university research foundations are increasingly converting academic IP into commercial medtech ventures across the US Southeast. For an early-stage company that has already pulled in more than $1.6 million in non-dilutive SBIR funding and $1.5 million in dilutive seed capital, the backing adds institutional validation as it heads into the costly clinical trial phase.