– Enable Injections, Inc. (“Enable”), a leader in wearable drug delivery technology, today announced an expanded partnership with Roche. 

– The collaboration leverages Enable’s expertise in the enFuse® platform to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative treatment options.

EnFuse Technology: Revolutionizing Drug Delivery

The enFuse platform is a groundbreaking wearable device designed for:

• Subcutaneous Delivery of Large Volumes: Unlike traditional methods, enFuse delivers large volumes of medication subcutaneously, eliminating the need for intravenous (IV) administration.
• Simplified Treatment Experience: enFuse offers a simpler and potentially more comfortable injection experience for patients compared to IV treatments.

Roche Gains Exclusive Rights to Combine enFuse with Specific Molecules

Under the terms of the agreement, Roche receives a worldwide, exclusive license to develop and commercialize combinations of the enFuse technology with specific drugs from their portfolio. Enable will take responsibility for the clinical and commercial manufacturing and supply of the enFuse system.

“IV infusions can be inconvenient and time-consuming for both patients and providers. This is especially true when treating chronic disorders, which require longer-term treatment and frequent trips to the clinic,” said Mike Hooven, Chairman and CEO of Enable Injections. “enFuse was designed to overcome IV infusion shortcomings through fast, simple and convenient delivery, bringing efficiency and value to the entire spectrum of healthcare, including patients, providers, and payers, with the ability for at home self-administration.”

DispatchHealth, a provider of in-home medical care raises $330M led by Optum Ventures with support from current investors such as Humana (NYSE: HUM), Oak HC/FT, Echo Health Ventures and Questa Capital. New investors included Adams Street Partners, the Olayan Group, Silicon Valley Bank, Pegasus Tech Ventures and Blue Shield of California. Patients and their care partners can request DispatchHealth medical care via phone, mobile app, or website, and a medical team arrives within two hours equipped with tools and equipment needed to perform high-acuity medical care.

Haystack Oncology Launches with $56M for Post-Op Cancer Detection Tech

Haystack Oncology (“Haystack”), an oncology company that applies the next generation of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) detection technology raises $56M in Series A financing led by Catalio Capital Management (“Catalio”), which co-founded Haystack through its private equity and structured equity investment vehicles. Additional investors include Bruker, Exact Ventures, the venture arm of Exact Sciences and Alexandria Venture Investments. The funding will be used for the continued development and planned 2023 commercialization of its best-in-class personalized cancer diagnostic test that can detect as few as one mutant molecule in a million DNA molecules, positioning it as the most sensitive ctDNA-based MRD test for use in solid tumors.

DexCare Announces 50-state Project with Kaiser Permanente

Providence spin-out, DexCare, announced an expanded partnership with Kaiser that’ll make health system care accessible in all 50 states, including those where Kaiser doesn’t have a physical location. DexCare will now handle all of Kaiser’s clinic bookings, virtual care scheduling, phone care and health system load-balancing. The partnership is a case study in creating health system sustainability through digital modernization, which is pivotal during a time where the volatile market, low margins and external competition are forcing health systems to double down on growth and innovation to survive. Despite the current financial climate, DexCare CEO Derek Streat has seen an accelerated interest in their platform – proving there is appetite from health systems to invest in sustainable, scalable solutions. 

Babylon to Provide Fitbits for Eligible Members

Babylon Health will offer Fitbit devices and services to a subset of members that doesn’t currently have access to wearables and that fit health program criteria to promote proactive management of care and improve accessibility through its digital-first offering. Eligible members in select markets will be able to use Fitbit’s health and wellness features to track their activity levels, sleep patterns and more, and can sync this data with Babylon’s app where it will be available to them and their care team.

Uber Health Expands into Employer Market

Uber Health announced its plans to expand its healthcare offerings into the employer market.

Edifecs Partners with Empowered-Home to Deliver Automated Prior Authorizations

Edifecs and Empowered-Home announced a partnership to provide automated prior authorizations to medical associations, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), Independent Physician Associations (IPAs), medical groups, and home healthcare agencies. The Edifecs prior authorization solution combined with the clinical decision support system of patient management software company, Privis Health, forms the backbone of Empowered-Home’s ecosystem.

MEDITECH, SeamlessMD Collaborate on Digital Health Integration

MEDITECH announced that its Expanse customers in Canada can now integrate directly with digital care journey platform SeamlessMD. The collaboration will enable providers to monitor and engage their patients before, during, and after hospitalization using digital, evidence-informed pre-and post-care plans – such as for surgery, cancer, maternity, mental health, and chronic care.

Evangelical Community Hospital Switches from Allscripts to Epic

Evangelical Community Hospital switches from Allscripts to Epic’s enterprise EHR. The Hospital will go-live on Epic on December 4, 2022. This strategic move by the Hospital modernizes the patient process creating a seamless, safe, and more consistent healthcare delivery system for all patients in the community.

Cipher Skin Launches Pilot Program for Tech-Enabled Physical Therapy Rehab

Cipher Skin and Parker Health launches a new pilot program to help bring tech-enabled physical therapy to Medicare and Medicaid patients. With plans to pilot the program in Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Kansas City, the partnership will bring Cipher Skin’s wearable motion and biometric-tracking technology to select orthopedic clinics that use Parker Health’s platform. This collaboration will help accelerate physical rehabilitation by improving patient engagement and care plan completion. 

Vivalink Integrates with Garmin, Other Wearables to Address RPM Interoperability

Vivalink is addressing these RPM interoperability challenges by announcing today that leading wearables and medical-grade devices are integrating with the company’s Biometrics Data Platform. Now, leading pulse oximeters, blood glucose monitors and sleep monitors by companies like Garmin and Roche are available alongside the Platform to accelerate development and deployment of novel healthcare applications and research.

Validic Raises $12M for Healthcare IoT Platform 

Validic, a healthcare IoT platform raises $12M in funding led by Kaiser Permanente Ventures. The investment will further Validic’s mission of improving the quality of life by making personal health data actionable and accelerate the full integration of personal health device data into the electronic health record.

ResMed Launches Sleep Platform, Primasun

ResMed and Verily, an Alphabet precision health company launches Primasun, an end-to-end, clinically-supported solution for addressing complex sleep disorders, The clinical sleep care solution aims to reduce untreated sleep disorders’ impact on chronic disease and people’s lives. Through its preventive care model, Primasun works with employers and healthcare providers to identify populations at risk and connects patients to certified sleep physicians who guide them from diagnosis to treatment in a matter of weeks.

Ariadne Labs Announces Clinton Global Initiative Commitment

Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health launches a Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action called “Trusted, Equitable, Open Access Humanitarian Health Education.” Ariadne Labs is collaborating with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, International Medical Corps, and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convenes global and emerging leaders to create and implement solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.

Suki Releases Mini-Doc on Physician Burnout Challenges and Solutions

Suki, a voice artificial intelligence (AI) technology company for healthcare, announced the release of a mini-documentary that features the real-life challenge of a family physician facing burnout and how a voice assistant helped alleviate the negative impact of administrative burden. “From Burnout to Balance” is an intimate view into Dr. Elizabeth Goff’s struggles with work-life balance and how the use of a voice assistant provided the margin needed to keep her in practice full-time.

OpenLoop Health Partners with BlueJeans by Verizon to Expand Access to Quality, Reliable Virtual Visits

OpenLoop Health has signed a teaming agreement with BlueJeans to provide its clients access to BlueJeans Telehealth, an intuitive, HIPAA-ready virtual care platform designed to help drive better patient interactions from beginning to end.  The partnership will also give BlueJeans customers access to unrivaled provider staffing services through OpenLoop’s NCQA-certified network of clinicians in all 50 states, with payer coverage across 250 million patient lives.

What You Should Know:  

– Vivalink is addressing these RPM interoperability challenges by announcing today that leading wearables and medical-grade devices are integrating with the company’s Biometrics Data Platform.

– Now, leading pulse oximeters, blood glucose monitors and sleep monitors by companies like Garmin and Roche are available alongside the Platform to accelerate development and deployment of novel healthcare applications and research.

Why It Matters

Integration and interoperability are two major barriers to RPM implementation across clinical trials and healthcare. To date, RPM solutions require a host of different sensors and devices, manufactured by different companies, with data systems that operate on a whole new set of infrastructure and networks. This lack of interoperability across devices, networks and systems is severely limiting RPM’s impact on clinical trials–and vice versa–and makes it difficult for regulatory bodies to design and implement effective standards for the technology.

With the additional remote monitoring sensors and devices, the full range of physiological parameters that can be captured by the Platform, for both continuous and episodic measurements include:

– ECG rhythm

– Heart rate

– Heart rate variability

– Respiratory rate

– Axillary and skin temperature

– Oxygen saturation

– Blood pressure

– Blood glucose

– Actigraphy

– Sleep

– Weight

The biometric data and analytical insights from the Platform are designed to be easily integrated into any virtual healthcare application, including hospital at home, telehealth, remote patient monitoring, and ambulatory cardiac monitoring.

What You Should Know:

– In anticipation, many technology vendors are vying for a foothold in the US, leading to a highly varied landscape. In partnership with the Digital Pathology Association (DPA), KLAS surveyed 55 provider organizations (including hospitals, health systems, academic health centers, and reference labs) to assess the state of digital pathology among pioneers in the US and determine which vendors are gaining traction.

– 33 of the interviewed organizations are live with digital pathology; the rest are currently implementing or making plans for the future.

Insight into US Digital Pathology 2022

Digital pathology for primary diagnosis is nascent in the US, but it is primed for rapid growth, similar to what is currently being seen in Europe. In anticipation, many technology vendors are vying for a foothold in the US, leading to a highly varied landscape. The insights identified from the report are as follows:

1. State of Digital Pathology among Early US Adopters: According to the survey, 64% of the organizations used Digital Pathology for primary diagnosis, 15% used it for non clinical cases, whereas 21% used it for other clinical uses cases, other than primary diagnosis. The report also found that from a sample of 33, all of the histology slides were read digitally, whereas 21% of the cytology slides were read, as opposed to 6% of the fluorescence slides.

– 13 of the interviewed organizations that are not yet live (including several large health systems) report plans to adopt digital pathology within the next two years, indicating a quickening trend toward broader market adoption. However, digital pathology still has ground to gain in the US before it reaches a tipping point. Larger organizations are more likely to see cost savings, thanks to economies of scale.

– 100% of respondents who have selected or are likely to select Leica Biosystems or Philips for their IMS offering report the same vendor as their selection or likely choice for a scanner. Leica’s scanner is also FDA approved for use with Sectra’s IMS, further bolstering Leica’s consideration and selection rates. Of the many additional scanner vendors that play in the market, Hamamatsu, Roche, and 3DHISTECH lead in mindshare and selections for pairings with third-party IMSs.

– The market for AI solutions in digital pathology is very early, and organizations are largely undecided as to which solutions they will choose—most solutions have yet to receive FDA approval for diagnostic use. The sole exception is the Paige Prostate solution from Paige. Visiopharm and Paige are the current mindshare leaders, though others such as PathAI and Ibex are close behind, indicating that the market is primed for a shake-up as diagnostic use expands.

– Challenges to adoption: Up-front and ongoing costs are the most frequently reported challenge when it comes to adopting digital pathology. There is little funding to help with adoption and no additional reimbursement to do things digitally. Since the conclusion of this survey, new CPT codes for slide digitization for primary diagnosis have been announced, indicating the potential for future cost mitigation with greater industry standardization.

What You Should Know:

– Lyfegen, a global health tech SaaS company driving the world’s transition from volume to value-based healthcare for high-cost drugs raises $8M in Series A financing round led by aMoon, with additional participation from APEX Ventures and others.

– Lyfegen’s value-based contracting software is used by healthcare payers and leading pharma companies, including Novartis, Roche, MSD, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) and Johnson & Johnson.

Value-Based Contracting

Currently, less than 2% of the health insurance population requiring specialty drugs is responsible for 51% of drug spending. The cost of specialty drugs in the US is spiraling out of control, increasing 12% from 2020 to 2021 alone, with no sign of slowing down due to the increase of cell and gene therapies expected to come to market. As a result, value-based contracting is becoming a more viable alternative for healthcare payers to only pay for drugs that actually work. By 2025, total net spending on medicine in the US is expected to reach up to $400B. Additionally, new drugs regularly enter the market, but when pharmaceutical companies fail to agree on commercial terms with payers, patients are at risk of being denied access to life-saving therapies.

Founded in 2018, Lyfegen’s platform helps regulators, pharma companies and payers more easily adopt value-based payment models by digitizing the end-to-end process of data collection, anonymization and contract negotiations for all parties to agree upon drug pricing and reimbursement. With Lyfegen’s patent-pending platform, health insurances & hospitals can implement and scale value-based healthcare, improving access to treatments, patient health outcomes and affordability.

“We are excited to be announcing this funding round and to have this vote of confidence from aMoon, APEX and our other investors who understand the shift in healthcare that we are experiencing, and are supporting our efforts to expand the Lyfegen platform,” said Girisha Fernando, CEO and founder of Lyfegen. “We currently work with leading government payers, health insurance companies in Europe, the US and the Middle East, and some of the world’s largest pharma companies. Our plan now is to further expand our presence in the US, partnering with both private and public healthcare insurance companies. The move away from volume-based healthcare has never been more needed, and we are happy to play an important role in the shift to value-based contracting.”

Digital twins are virtual representations of an object or system that spans its lifecycle, is updated from real-time data, and use simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision-making (IBM). In most cases, this helps data scientists understand how products are operating in production environments and anticipate how they may behave overtime. But what happens when a digital twin is that of a human being? 

By using digital twins to model a person, you can use technologies like natural language processing (NLP) to better understand data and uncover other useful insights that will help improve use cases from customer experience to patient care. Today, we’re simply generating more data than ever before. Digital twins can be useful in synthesizing this information to provide actionable insights. 

As such, there are few fields digital twins can be more helpful in than healthcare. Take a visit to your primary care physician, for example. They will have a baseline understanding of you — your history, medications you take, allergies, and other factors. If you then go to see a specialist, they may ask many of the same repetitive questions, and remake inferences and deductions that have been done before. But beyond convenience and time savings, digital clones can substantially help with accuracy. 

Having a good virtual replica of a patient enables medical professionals to dig down specific medications, health conditions, and even social determinants of health that may impact care. Greater detail and context enables providers to make better clinical decisions, and it’s all being done behind the scenes, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). 

Digital Twins in Production 

Digital clones or digital twins can greatly benefit the healthcare system, and we’re already starting to see them in use. Kaiser Permanente uses digital twins through a system that improves patient flow within a hospital. It achieves this by combining structured and unstructured data to build a more complete view of each patient to anticipate what their needs will be at the hospital. In another instance, Roche uses digital twins to help securely integrate and display relevant aggregated data about cancer patients into a single, holistic patient timeline. 

Digital twins are already at work in some of the largest healthcare organizations in the world, but their potential doesn’t stop with the existing use cases. There are many other applications for digital twins at play, and they span from practical everyday use to functions that sound more like science fiction than reality. Here are some additional areas digital twins can be particularly useful in healthcare: 

Summarizing Patient Data: Providers are experiencing information overload with the amount of data in today’s healthcare system. From electronic health records (EHRs) to doctor’s notes to diagnostic imaging, it can be a challenge to connect the disparate data — structured tables, unstructured text, medical images, sensors and more — associated with an individual patient. Consider a patient with a cancerous tumor along with other underlying conditions. Typically, oncologists and other specialists will meet to determine the next steps in treatment, whether it be surgery, medication, or another protocol. Integrating all this data into a unified, relevant, and summarized timeline can be done using a combination of natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), and knowledge graph (KG) techniques today.

Accelerating Precision Medicine: Precision medicine is mostly applied in the areas of cardiology and oncology, dealing with serious conditions, as cancer and heart disease. Sometimes, instead of recommending an aggressive treatment like chemotherapy, it’s important to see if a patient has certain genomic biomarkers that can inform doctors if another approach may work better for that patient. Genetic profiling is useful to uncover these insights, helping doctors better understand a given patient’s tumor, labs, genomics, history, and other pertinent details to reach an optimal decision. As a result, the clinician can provide a more personalized approach to care. However, to achieve this, you need to aggregate much more information about the patient. By building a digital twin, you can compare an individual to other patients – similar in clinically important ways – to see if there are genomic similarities and how certain treatments have impacted them.

Process Improvement: Improving organizational performance, thereby improving patient outcomes or population health, requires a high level of specificity. For example, if your goal is to reduce the length of a patient’s hospital stay, it’s imperative to understand many other factors about their condition. Through structured data, you can find information, like whether the patient has a chronic condition and what medications they were taking, or whether or not they have insurance. But some of the considerations that really matter in terms of the duration of the patient’s hospital stay — how they are eating, feeling, sleeping, coping, moving, etc. — can only be found in free-text data. Creating a digital twin to anticipate patient needs and the length of their stay can be very valuable.  

What’s Next for Digital Twins 

Some medical devices have the capabilities of producing digital twins of specific organs or conditions so doctors can better diagnose them. Areas like NLP can be a great help here if you have a patient with a chronic condition (Asthma, COPD, mental health issues, and others). For acute issues – especially in oncology, cardiology, and psychiatry – digital twins can offer a higher level of detail. For example, creating the digital twin of a patient’s heart enables a doctor to see exactly what’s going on — whether there is scarring from previous surgeries or an abnormality that needs to be inspected further — and make better decisions before an operation, rather than during. This can mean a world of difference for patient outcomes.

We’ll start to see more advanced use cases for digital twins in the coming years. But to truly live up to the hype, it’s crucial that we move beyond simply collecting and analyzing only structured data. Recent advances in deep learning and transfer learning have made it possible to extract information from imaging and free-text data, serving as the connective tissue between what can be found in EHRs and other information, like radiology images and medical documents of all types. Only then can we begin to construct a meaningful digital twin to uncover useful insights that will help improve hospital operations and patient care. 

About David Talby

David Talby, Ph.D., MBA, is the CTO of John Snow Labs, the AI and NLP for healthcare companies provide state-of-the-art software, models, and data to help healthcare and life science organizations put AI to good use.  He has spent his career making AI, big data and data scientists solve real-world problems in healthcare, life science and related fields.

What You Should Know:

– Glooko announced, in partnership with the Diabetes Technology Network (DTN)/Association of British Clinical Diabetologists (ABCD), the expansion into Ireland of Academy, the company’s online medical education program for clinicians who treat people with diabetes.

– Originally inspired after discussions with the National Health Service England (NHSE) as part of its effort to ensure all healthcare professionals learn uniformly about technology, the program will help clinicians further increase their knowledge and stay current on the ever-growing assortment of new diabetes technologies.

 Why Ireland?

Academy focuses exclusively on diabetes health technology and education. The program includes an extensive range of online courses for healthcare providers (HCPs) to increase expertise and mastery of these technologies, to help deploy them to people with diabetes. All courses are accessed through the Glooko® platform or the ABCD website.

According to the International Diabetes Federation, Ireland, with a population of just five million people, is ranked 7th in the world for diabetes-related health expenditure per person. For people with diabetes and their healthcare providers, managing the myriad technologies like glucose monitors and insulin pumps, and the data volumes accompanying these technologies is a well-established challenge. Technology tools like web-based programs, telehealth, mobile apps and remote monitoring are improving users’ accessibility and connectivity, but adoption of these innovations can be slow and complicated.

Ireland is the second country to implement Academy in Glooko’s plans to provide the program globally. Since launching in the UK in October of 2020, over 1,000 clinicians across more than 300 clinics have registered for the program, with more than 750 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) certificates awarded.

Availability

The program is available to all diabetes healthcare professionals in Ireland at no cost and was funded in part via sponsorships from global industry partners like AgaMatrix, Dexcom, Lilly, mylife Diabetescare, Novo Nordisk and Roche. Production was provided by DigiBete (DigiBete Global, Leeds, UK), which remains actively involved in Academy. The curriculum covers the majority of diabetes devices and technologies, and HCPs that complete the program will receive CPD accreditation as well as DTN UK/ABCD certification.

What You Should Know:

– Prenosis, Inc., a precision medicine company, announced a venture investment from PACE Healthcare Capital, an early-stage investment firm committed to improving health outcomes. This investment brings total funding in the company to over $20 million, including partnerships with Foxconn, Roche Diagnostics, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and others.  

– Precision medicine company will use the funding to grow its industry-leading biological datasets, to advance its AI/ML capabilities to transform data into actionable insights for healthcare providers, drug developers and researchers, and to initiate the commercialization of its diagnostic and clinical decision support tools

Prioritize patients. Deliver the Right Therapy, Faster

Sepsis is currently one of the leading causes of mortality in U.S. hospitals, and the WHO estimates that it causes 1 in 5 deaths worldwide. Prenosis is pioneering a revolution in managing acute diseases that have previously eluded conventional methods, starting with sepsis. Sepsis occurs when the immune system reacts abnormally to an infection, setting off a chain of events that leads to tissue damage and organ failure. 

Prenosis is leveraging machine learning algorithms trained on deep biological data and broad clinical data to create precise and comprehensive maps of acute disease. Using these maps, Prenosis develops and markets valuable navigational tools to improve patient care by illuminating the optimal treatment pathways for each patient.

Prenosis has spent nearly a decade building fit-for-purpose biological and clinical datasets at an unprecedented level to better understand sepsis and other acute care conditions. Using this information, Prenosis has developed patient maps and valuable navigational tools to empower physicians to administer optimal treatment to patients faster. Prenosis’ first such tool, the Sepsis ImmunoScoreTM, is a Software-as-a-Medical Device (SaMD) digital diagnostic designed to aid in the risk assessment for progression to sepsis of patients admitted in the emergency department or hospital. Prenosis is currently seeking to obtain FDA clearance for the tool by the end of 2022. The test runs on Prenosis’s Immunix™ software platform, which interfaces with hospital Electronic Medical Records that hosts multiple products to improve patient care. 

“Personalized medicine is the next frontier of healthcare. Complex acute diseases, such as sepsis, can only be conquered through a robust understanding of the biological response of each patient’s immune system – one patient at a time. Prenosis brings our understanding of the disease patterns to a whole new level and enables physicians to make better decisions faster for their patients,” said Julia Monfrini Peev, Founder and Managing Partner of PACE Healthcare Capital. “We are excited to partner with Bobby and the whole Prenosis team as they continue to develop their technology and transform the way we understand and provide care for patients with complex acute diseases.”  

What You Should Know:

– BrightInsight, provider of the leading global platform for biopharma and medtech regulated digital health solutions, announced a partnership with global biopharma, UC to build digital care solutions for rare diseases.

– BrightInsight will build and bring to market a digital disease management solution to support patients with Myasthenia Gravis (MG), a rare autoimmune disease that disrupts how nerves communicate with muscles, affecting more than 700,000 people worldwide and approximately 36,000 to 60,000 in the United States.

BrightInsight, Inc., a provider of the leading global platform for biopharma and medtech regulated digital health solutions, today announced a partnership with the global biopharmaceutical company, UCB, to develop and bring to market a digital disease management solution for patients with rare diseases. UCB selected the proven, scalable Brightinsight® Platform to accelerate time to market for UCB’s digital care solutions in a compliant manner. 

UCB’s Digital Care Solutions for Myasthenia Gravis

Built under a robust Quality Management System to support regulated products, the BrightInsight Platform enables UCB to develop and launch its digital health solutions at scale while maintaining compliance with privacy, security, and regulatory requirements across the globe. Leveraging the BrightInsight Platform, built on Google Cloud, UCB’s digital disease management solution will first include a mobile patient app to support patients with Myasthenia Gravis (MG), a rare autoimmune disease that disrupts how nerves communicate with muscles. The solution and its future evolution will help those living with MG better manage their condition and supports UCB’s commitment to bringing digital solutions to patients with rare diseases to improve overall care and outcomes. The solution will be available first in the U.S., with plans to incorporate feedback and patient insights into future versions, to eventually launch on a global scale.

Why Digital for Rare Diseases?

Patients and providers face several challenges managing rare diseases that make it a promising field for digital solutions. Because rare diseases can be difficult to diagnose and often require multiple referrals to specialists, patients can go years waiting for a diagnosis. That can cause a lack of trust in medical providers and lower adherence. Powerful algorithms hosted on a digital platform can help patients get diagnosed faster and on the right treatment earlier.

Digital solutions can help support a patient’s treatment journey with apps and other digital tools, including medication reminders and tracking tools, information on disease management, patient journals, and a secure line of communication with their healthcare providers to enable real-time information sharing to optimize care. For patients in remote areas, these tools can help them connect with specialty care from the comfort of home.

A systematic review of digital interventions for one rare disease found that 94% of participants reported improvement in self-management-related outcomes. And 63% showed high levels of satisfaction and acceptability of the interventions.

UCB is the third pharma to partner with BrightInsight in rare diseases. The others BrightInsight partnerships include Roche/Genentech who developed a dosing calculator for physicians treating patients with Hemophilia A and with CSL Behring who built a patient app for its flagship drug, Hizentra® for Primary Immune Deficiency (PID) or for Chronic lnflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP).

“BrightInsight welcomes UCB to our growing list of innovative, global biopharma partners who are prioritizing digital health and who rely on our proven platform to bring compliant digital solutions to market,” said Kal Patel, M.D., CEO & Co-Founder, BrightInsight. “We are pleased to be UCB’s digital health partner and to collaborate with them to bring digital solutions to patients with rare diseases. Our collaboration reflects our companies’ common goal to develop digital health solutions for disease management that enable better patient experiences and outcomes.”

What You Should Know: 

– Ibex Medical Analytics, the pioneer in AI-based cancer diagnostics, today announced that it has signed a deal with Roche, the world’s largest biotech company and global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Ibex will be integrating its Galen™ platform into Roche’s uPath enterprise cloud software in order to help pathologists to enable pathologists to seamlessly access Ibex’s AI algorithms, insights, and decision support tools using NAVIFY Digital Pathology, the cloud version of Roche’s uPath enterprise software.

Pathologists play a crucial role in the detection and diagnosis of cancer, but a rise in cancer prevalence and a shrinking number of pathologists worldwide have resulted in a significant increase in pathologists’ workloads, leading to missed and inaccurate diagnoses. 

Optimizing Cancer Detection

Ibex’s Galen™ platform was recently granted Breakthrough Device Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is CE marked in Europe for breast and prostate cancer detection in multiple workflows. Through this alliance, customers using Roche Digital Pathology will gain access to Ibex’s innovative tools, such as algorithms that analyze prostate and breast biopsies, in addition to the AI tools already provided by Roche. Ibex’s Galen platform provides a second set of eyes for overworked pathologists, allowing them to deliver more accurate, rapid and objective diagnoses of cancer biopsies. 

The clinical-grade AI algorithms and digital workflows included in this expanded menu of tools will enable pathologists to provide accurate, efficient and timely diagnoses for their patients and support them in the detection and grading of cancer, identification of important non-cancerous features, case reporting and more. 

“Digital pathology provides the capability to introduce new, innovative ways for laboratories to improve quality and efficiency of cancer diagnosis. Together with Roche, we look forward to transforming pathology by delivering powerful AI-based tools to the fingertips of pathologists,” said Joseph Mossel, CEO and Co-founder of Ibex Medical Analytics.

What You Should Know: 

– Prenosis Inc., a precision diagnostics company transforming clinical diagnosis with artificial intelligence, announced today the expansion of an existing partnership with Roche Diagnostics that will total close to $6 million to improve and expedite the clinical recognition of sepsis.

– Building upon the collaboration that the companies started together in 2020, Prenosis will significantly expand its core NOSIS™ dataset, and the two companies will work together to obtain U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for the Prenosis Sepsis Immunoscore™ and the Roche Elecsys® IL-6 Assay.  These tools aim to provide physicians with powerful new solutions for fighting sepsis through early risk identification.

Impact of Sepsis

According to the World Health Organization, more than 11 million people die from sepsis worldwide annually, more than the deaths caused by all cancers combined.  Studies show that sepsis is the leading cause of death in U.S. hospitals, with total annual costs of treatment and rehabilitation estimated at $62 billion. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 1.7 million adults in the United States developed sepsis annually.  During the pandemic, this problem was greatly exacerbated, as most COVID-19 deaths are due to viral and/or bacterial sepsis.

Early prediction of at-risk patients that require emergency department evaluation and hospitalization can dramatically improve outcomes. Combining routinely obtained clinical information with additional critical biomarkers could help identify at-risk patients earlier and more accurately for life-saving treatment.

Prenosis Dataset

The Prenosis dataset, which features Elecsys IL-6 measurements, in addition to measurements of a diverse set of parameters representing several different dimensions of immune response, is the world’s largest and fastest growing hybrid biomarker-clinical dataset for sepsis care.  The partnership drives the unique combination of a traditional diagnostic test with next-generation predictive analytics, demonstrating the potential to usher in a new era of holistic digital diagnostics for more comprehensive profiling of complex heterogeneous hospital conditions.

The Roche Elecsys® IL-6 assay measures interleukin-6 concentrations from patient plasma or serum samples. Elecsys IL-6 is a predictive biomarker essential in the disease pathways of many inflammatory conditions, including sepsis thanks to its early elevation. The Elecsys IL6 results can be provided in 18 minutes. The Prenosis Sepsis Immunoscore™ diagnostic utilizes the combination of Elecsys IL-6 with other sepsis biomarkers and distinct clinical risk parameters and aims to predict, diagnose and treat sepsis earlier.

“We are excited to expand upon our relationship with Roche and to accelerate the birth of ‘prenostic’ testing to help reduce the burden of the sepsis crisis,” said Prenosis CEO and Co-Founder Bobby Reddy, Jr.  “Prenostics, or predictive and precise diagnostics, test the right patient parameters at the right time for the right clinical situation/context. The Prenosis platform is ushering in a new era in pre-emptive diagnostic testing. The implications are groundbreaking: we have the ability to accurately and cost-effectively predict disease much earlier, enabling prevention instead of treatment.”

The Sepsis ImmunoScore™ is an Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) that Prenosis intends to submit to the FDA for clearance by the end of the year. It is intended to aid in the risk assessment for progression to sepsis of patients admitted to the emergency department or hospital. The solution incorporates holistic, multidimensional inputs using machine learning to more adequately capture the vast heterogeneity of sepsis and to improve the accuracy of diagnosis compared to the current standard of care risk assessments. The solution incorporates 23 parameters from the patient’s hospital Electronic Medical Record (EMR), including demographics, vital signs, labs, and other specific sepsis biomarkers, including Elecsys IL-6.

The diagnostic creates a calculated sepsis risk score, a risk stratification category and other supplemental information that can be visualized in a unique Sepsis Patient View within a hospital Electronic Medical Record or via a web interface. By employing parameters representing many dimensions of information, the Sepsis ImmunoScore™ seeks to more effectively diagnose sepsis and risk stratify patients for care based on severity of illness.

What You Should Know: 

– Innovaccer Inc. the Health Cloud company, announced it has entered into a three-year collaboration with Roche to partner in the development of innovative clinical decision support solutions on the Innovaccer^Ⓡ Health Cloud for the U.S. market.

– As part of the strategic collaboration, the Innovaccer Health Cloud and its core Data Activation Platform will be used to integrate disparate data from EHRs, labs, claims, pharmacy—virtually any healthcare data source—to provide contextualized patient insights that can inform and enhance clinical, financial, and operational workflows; and help accelerate the development of novel clinical decision support solutions.

– Together, the new clinical decision support solution will open new opportunities to unlock the value of previously siloed patient data. 

What You Should Know:

– The digital diabetes market is on track to reach $1.5 billion dollars by 2024, according to a new report by Research2Guidance.

– The confident growth of digital diabetes care will be driven by the growth of the global addressable market for digital diabetes services. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of diagnosed diabetics with access to smart devices is set to increase from 109 million to 180 million. 

– Digital diabetes solutions have disrupted the diabetes care market and are changing overall chronic care, targeting not only diabetes but also its various comorbidities, such as obesity, hypertension, and depression.

– The report, The Global Digital Diabetes Care Market 2020: Going Beyond Diabetes Management focuses on the continued expansion of digital diabetes providers into other chronic conditions (vertical expansion) and new service opportunities (horizontal expansion), highlighting the market’s strategic direction in the next few years. This expansion will create new revenue opportunities, improve payer acceptance, and grow user bases beyond the diagnosed diabetes audience.

– In the report, the Top 10 market players LifeScan Inc., Ascensia Diabetes Care, Informed Data Systems (One Drop), mySugr (Roche), H2 Inc., Livongo Health, Omada Health, Abbott, Dexcom, and Dario Health are profiled with their offerings, mobile app portfolio performance, and strategy analysis, as well as Top 10 country profiles (market opportunity size, number of solutions, downloads, number of users, Top 5 players).

What You Should Know:  

– Babyscripts today announced a commercial partnership with Roche Diagnostics, a division of the world’s largest biotech company and a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. 

– Roche will partner with Babyscripts on the development of Babyscripts’ remote patient monitoring (RPM) programs to leverage groundbreaking data science through the next generation of RPM in pregnancy. 

Babyscripts, a Washington D.C.-based virtual care platform for managing obstetrics, today announced a commercial partnership with Roche Diagnostics, a division of the world’s largest biotech company and a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche Diagnostics and Babyscripts will collaborate on the next generation of digital and diagnostic combinations in women’s health.

Commercial Partnership to Power Next-Generation of RPM in Pregnancy

Under the terms of this collaboration, Roche will partner with Babyscripts on the development of Babyscripts’ remote patient monitoring (RPM) programs to leverage groundbreaking data science through the next generation of RPM in pregnancy. These programs will be focused on solving issues of blood pressure-related complications through RPM, such as prenatal hypertension. Babyscripts participated in Startup Creasphere, Roche’s digital health accelerator program, which was instrumental in initiating this collaboration.

Babyscripts Virtual Care Platform Background

Babyscripts has spent the last six years building a clinically-validated, virtual care platform to allow OBGYNs to deliver a new model of prenatal and postpartum care. Using internet-connected devices for remote monitoring, Babyscripts offers risk-specific experiences to allow providers to manage up to 90% of pregnancies virtually, allowing doctors to detect risk more quickly and automate elements of care.

“Roche’s investment in Babyscripts solutions is a tremendous validation of our vision for improving maternal care, and an example of the kind of strategic collaboration essential to moving the needle on outcomes,” said Juan Pablo Segura, co-founder and President of Babyscripts. “Roche’s vast expertise in the field of women’s health diagnostics and clinical science combined with our on-the-ground experience in the virtual maternal health space is going to prove a game changer for rethinking how we approach prenatal and postpartum care.”

Mark Toland, CEO of Corindus Vascular Robotics (acquired by Siemens for $1.1B last year), has announced his departure and will be joining BioStar Capital, a health-tech venture capital group focused on cardiovascular and orthopedic medical devices. As a partner and entrepreneur in residence, Mark will help to identify and develop innovative companies leveraging AI, deep learning, robotics, and other transformative technologies that address a wide range of unmet needs. The BioStar team has invested in over 30 medical device startups – including Corindus – with nearly half acquired by major medical device manufacturers, including Boston Scientific, Medtronic, and Covidien.

Life sciences venture capitalist Jeanne Cunicelli will be promoted effective Jan. 1, 2021, to president of UPMC Enterprises—the innovation, venture capital, and commercialization arm of leading health system UPMC. Currently, executive vice president of UPMC Enterprises, she will succeed Tal Heppenstall, who is retiring from this role.  A former managing director at Bay City Capital in San Francisco, Cunicelli joined UPMC in 2017 to lead UPMC Enterprises’ translational science efforts. She has built a team of more than 20 scientific and investment professionals to accelerate the translation of ground-breaking research into medical advances that dramatically improve patient care.  

Nordic Consulting names Jeff Buss as the company’s first-ever Chief Information Officer (CIO). Buss is a former Navy Captain and EY Alumni with a storied 27-year career in IT operations and cybersecurity. His experience ranges from running and defending one of the largest global IT operations in the world, the Department of Defense Information Network, to advising America’s top banks on cybersecurity.  

Experity, a provider of clinical and practice management software to the urgent care space names Tim Dybvig as its senior vice president of patient engagement. This appointment follows Experity’s recent acquisition of Dybvig’s previous company, Calibrater Health. In his new role, Dybvig will oversee Experity’s patient engagement offerings, providing strategic direction on innovation and vision, new product development, design, competitiveness, and in-market excellence.

b.well Connected Health names leaders John J. (“JJ”) Ostlund Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Imran Quereshi Chief Information Officer (CIO). Ostlund previously served CTO of Expedia Group’s global vacation rental platform, Vrbo®, where he led a team of product engineers and scientists in perfecting an online marketplace serving millions of travelers with millions of vacation rental homes. Ostlund earned the CTO role after serving as Senior Vice President of Technology for Expedia before the company’s acquisition of Vrbo in 2015.

Qureshi was previously Chief Data Science Officer of Clarify Health Solutions, a pioneer in machine learning-enabled care optimization. Before that, Qureshi was chief software development officer for Health Catalyst, a provider of data and analytics technology, where he led the engineering team that built the company’s Data Operating System (DOS).

Cancer diagnostics company Biofidelity Ltd, appoints Stephen Miller as Chief Commercial Officer, based in the US. Stephen’s appointment follows former Roche executive, Heiner Dreismann, joining the Board as Chairman. 

EvidenceCare names Bo Bartholomew as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to accelerate growth. Prior to EvidenceCare Bo was the CEO and founder of PharmMD (now AdhereHealth), a leader in medication therapy management services. He served as chief revenue officer at Shearwater Health and is a board member at several health tech ventures.

FundamentalVR, pioneers of immersive HapticVR™ surgical training technology appoints Kim Parkins as Vice President of Client Solutions & Partnerships for North America. In his role, Parkins will build and oversee relationships with residency programs, medical societies as well as device and pharmaceutical partners in North America that utilize the company’s surgical training platform, Fundamental Surgery.

Catapult Health has promoted Julie Dimoulakis to the position of President and Chief Operating Officer. Julie’s expanded scope of responsibilities now includes sales, marketing, client success, clinical services, technology, and operations.

OODA Health has appointed Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA to its Board of Directors. Dr. Klasko is the President of Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health.

W2O expands its global leadership team with the addition of eight industry veterans, addressing key areas in healthcare including analytics and digital transformation.

The newest industry veterans to join the W2O team are:

• Julie Adrian – Global Chief Experience Officer
• John Capodanno – President, Financial, Corporate & Capital Market Communications
• Nikki Levy – Practice Leader, Advocacy Relations
• David Magrini – President, CRM and Marketing Solutions
• Jane Petrino – Practice Leader, Communications Strategy
• Marlena Edwards – Head of People and Performance
• Carrie Galli – Head of Organizational Growth and Planning
• Jonathan Robbins – Head of Talent Acquisition

Dr. Nicole Christian-Brathwaite joins InSight + Regroup’s leadership team as Senior Vice President and Medical Director for Scheduled Services and Inpathy.  Dr. Christian-Brathwaite has extensive clinical experience treating children, adolescents, adults, and families, especially those from diverse backgrounds, and has worked in multiple psychiatric settings including outpatient, inpatient, partial day programs, community-based programs, and intensive outpatient programs. 

Craig Bloom has been named Chief Growth Officer for Intercept TeleMed to move their ICUs to a higher standard of patient care and efficiency. Bloom is also charged with growing Intercept’s burgeoning tele-consultative services that offer health systems virtual specialists. These additional consultative services complement the care within the ICU in order to provide a full spectrum of coordinated care to the sickest patients.