Cambridge Consultants Plans To Double in Size Within Three Years

What do a dry-powder inhaler, an athletic training system, and a rheumatoid arthritis drug injection device have in common? They’re all engineered by Cambridge Consultants, a product development company that just made the move from Cambridge to the Innovation District.

“At our core, we are really a group of very talented engineers that are focused on bringing real products to market—not just a creative agency that’s involved in marketing, but actually developing real products that go to market,” explains company Director Dan L’Ecuyer.

Founded 50 years ago in Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge Consultants grew out of its old space in Cambridge (Mass.) and moved to the ever-expanding Innovation District near the waterfront. “Part of this move to the larger space is because we plan to double the size of the company in relatively short order,” L’Ecuyer says. “Within three years, we’ll double the size of the company.”

The company will use that extra manpower to continue developing products ranging from medical technology to consumer merchandise. “We are focused in certain industries where there is real demand for highly engineered product development, and where innovation can really bring value to that particular marketplace,” L’Ecuyer says. “There’s room for improving healthcare by bringing better, more sophisticated products to market.”

Here’s a look at three of those products:

The NEXThaler. All photos provided to bostonmagazine.com

The NEXThaler: Unlike traditional pressurized inhalers, the NEXThaler relies on the patient’s breath to draw dry powdered asthma drugs into the lungs. “We combined both our industrial design and human factors engineering skill sets with our aerosol and respiratory drug delivery skill sets to develop that device,” L’Ecuyer says. “It gives you a specific pharmaceutical performance in terms of drug position deep in the lung.”

The ArcAid

The ArcAid: Shooting a basketball may look simple, but a lot can go wrong between the hands and the hoop. That’s where the ArcAid comes into play. “We were able to combine cameras and some custom computer software and algorithms that we wrote to track the flight of a ball, towards the hoop in the case of basketball, and then analyze that trajectory and then provide immediate feedback to the athlete about how to change their throw,” L’Ecuyer explains.

The Aira

The Aira: For patients with rheumatoid arthritis, dealing with refrigerated drugs that must be administered with tiny syringes is both difficult and uncomfortable. But the Aira, with its easy-to-use design and ability to warm the medicine to body temperature, is seeking to change that. “It warms up the drug to body temperature in 40 seconds and makes it very easy for the patient to be able to manipulate the syringe and take the injection,” L’Ecuyer says. “It does that by dramatically lowering the viscosity of the drug by heating it to body temperature so the injection is then faster and less painful.”