Mast Labs surgical training center coming to Philadelphia Navy Yard

John George Senior Reporter Philadelphia Business Journal

The Philadelphia Navy Yard is getting another health care tenant later this year when Mast Labs opens an independent surgical training center at the site.

The first Mast Labs was established in Bethesda, Maryland, two years ago by Dr. Scott Faucett and Terence Redmond to serve the Washington, D.C., region.

Jeff O'Donnell Jr., who was recently named president of Malvern-based Waypoint Orthopedics, joined the Mast Labs group as a general partner to bring the organization's first expansion site — with its own limited partnership of local surgeon investors — to Philadelphia.

"I've wanted to do something like this forever," said O'Donnell, a health care entrepreneur who has spent the past decade in the medical device industry working for companies such as DePuy Synthes, Intact Vascular and Trice Medical. "There is no independent place companies can use for training. I talked with Scott and Terry and said we need to do this in Philadelphia. … This is a growing med-tech hub. There is a market here for something like this."

O'Donnell said while large medical companies typically have cadaver labs at their headquarters where they can bring surgeons in for device demonstrations and training, smaller companies are left scrambling to rent space after hours at places such as ambulatory surgery centers or hospitals.

Such arrangements are not ideal, he said, because companies need to get in and out of such sites quickly, limiting their contact time for "relationship building" with the surgeons they hope become customers.

O'Donnell said they have raised just under $1 million to create and fund a 5,000-square-foot Mast Lab at One Crescent Drive in the Navy Yard.

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