Unsung Heroes respond to a dire medical need
In the suffocating humidity of post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico, the failure of the “cold chain” was not a logistical abstract, rather a death sentence for many people, as the hundreds of deaths after the hurricane confirmed.
While the world watched the collapse of the Island’s power grid, thousands of patients dependent on refrigerated medication – insulin, Humira and oncology treatments – entered a silent health crisis. Deprived of electricity, thousands of people saw their life-saving doses spoil in useless refrigerators, leading to what Doris Candelaria, co-founder of Insuhealth Design, described as “cánceres de salud” (health crises) across Puerto Rico.
“Because so many blackouts still continue to occur on the Island, it [keeping medication refrigerated] remains a recurring problem for these patients,” she said.
Candelaria, along with two other college students, were taking an innovation seminar sponsored by the University of Puerto Rico and the University of Houston when they decided to take on the situation and make it their innovation proyect.
“During our research we realized this was a global problem that not only affected communities that didn’t have a reliable access to electricity, but also companis transporting medications and vaccines,” Candelaria explained.
To further compund the situation, the financial stakes of failing to keep medication refrigerated are equally staggering. Globally, the pharmaceutical industry hemorrhages millions of dollars annually because the “last mile” of transport still relies on 19th-century technology: foam boxes and ice packs.
Thus, what began as a response to a localized humanitarian emergency transitioned into a high-tech venture as academic mentors pushed the founders toward a commercial path. The journey from a student prototype to an operational technology firm was characterized by rigorous validation and a three-founder structure designed to bridge the gap between engineering and business.
For Candelaria and her team, the transition from academic innovators to industrial players revealed a brutal reality: the prohibitive cost of the very machinery required to save lives. As recent graduates, the founders lacked both the capital and manufacturing experience to scale a physical product. An early attempt to bridge this gap saw the team sourcing components from Asia and performing the final assembly in Mayagüez, but they quickly realized they lacked the scale to meet the overwhelming market demand.
The Pivot: Engineering the Future of Refrigeration
Recognizing that the true value of their innovation lay in the “brain” rather than the “box,” Insuhealth Design underwent a strategic transformation. The company has moved away from being a product manufacturer to becoming an Engineering and Technology Development firm.
The core of their business is now the licensing of their internal cooling system – a technology that allows for prolonged refrigeration without direct electrical access. Already holding one patent, and two more in development, Insuhealth is currently operating under non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with two U.S.-based clients to integrate their technology into a new generation of market-ready cold-chain products.
“We decided to licence the technology to companies that do have the resources for large scale manufacturing and we kept the engineering and development part of the business,” the young entrepreneur said.
The Unique Device
While INSU, the name of the refrigeration device developed by this group of young Puerto Rican entepreneurs, might look like a “simple cooler,” the technology in it is far from merely “simple.”
One of the versions of this device does not look like a cooler at all, but rather like two square 6-volt batteries strapped together.
“What we are licensing is the refrigeration system that we created, which can operate for long periods of time without directly needing electricity. This technology can be used for different kinds of products,” Candelaria explained. “Some products need to be frozen during transport, others need only be kept cold, depending on their nature: medication, hormones, vaccines…,” she added.
The technical viability of Insuhealth’s technology was confirmed not just by engineers, but also by the market and the federal government. A brief, three-minute television appearance in Puerto Rico resulted in hundreds of calls from desperate families, illustrating a massive, untapped demand. This market validation was followed by a significant financial windfall from the National Science Foundation.
Today, Insuhealth Design maintains its technical heart in Mayagüez, where its laboratory serves as a testing ground for new innovations. While the engineering team remains in Puerto Rico, Candelaria manages the firm’s marketing and business development from the U.S. while completing her MBA at Johns Hopkins University.
The company is now positioning itself as a collaborative innovation hub by keeping an open doors policy to other inventors and firms to utilize their specialized engineering facilities and expertise to bring new technologies to market, effectively acting as an incubator for the next wave of Puerto Rican innovation.
Candelaria views their success as a testament to the resilience of the local entrepreneurial spirit. “Puerto Ricans always find a way to invent something,” she observed, reflecting on the firm’s evolution from students to global technology licensors. “We have worked with many other entrepreneurs who have had brilliant ideas… and it has always turned out great for us.”
