The D.K. Kim International Center for Regulatory Science (ICRS) and The Consortium for Technology & Innovation in Pediatrics (CTIP) formed the ICRS-CTIP Collaborative for Regulatory Research, an authorship group that includes academic and industry experts collaborating to bolster pediatric medical device innovation. The very first project of the Collaborative was the development of a Startup Maturity Index (SMI) as an assessment and educational tool for medical device companies, pediatric medical device accelerators, and MedTech investors. SMI was tested and validated on a group of 16 startup companies and the collected data was used to write a manuscript for publication in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Sciences.