Health 2.0 NYC Empowered Patients event rescheduled to 16 May; apply now to the Digital Health Breakthrough Network (NYC)

Empowered Patient 2018: Using Big Data & Technology to Empower Patients & Providers to Make Healthier Decisions
Verywell, 1500 Broadway (at 43rd), 6th Floor (Verywell)–now 16 May

Overview: Big Data is rapidly transforming the healthcare industry – from personalizing content to the patients’ individual needs to making medical diagnoses and outcomes more predictive. The panel of industry experts from various companies ranging from healthcare publishing, research, and technology will discuss how Big Data is enabling this evolution with content, product, and services to democratize health information and provide insights that improve medical care, research, and the overall patient experience. Technology is already making a difference, but raises privacy and ethical issues.

Agenda:
6:00 – Meet, Greet, and tweet with healthy snacks provided by event sponsor: Verywell
6:30–  Panel Discussion
7:15 – Get to know other healthcare innovators in the community

Moderator: Dr. Deepna Devkar, Senior Director, Data Science, Dotdash
Panel:
Marlene Guraieb, PhD – Senior Data Scientist, Oscar Health
Dmitriy (Dima) Gorenshteyn, PhD, Senior Data Scientist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Rob Parisi, SVP/GM Verywell – This evening’s sponsor and site host is a leading health and wellness site that provides trusted advice for a healthier life to its 20 million monthly unique visitors.
Joy Fennel, Empowered Patient – pilot patient on mymee, a digital therapeutic solution for autoimmune disorders – see www.mymee.com
Libbe Englander, PhD., CEO, Pharm3r, a healthcare analytics company helping improve outcomes with big data

Tickets $15, the snacks and drinks (and crowd) are great. Register and pay here. TTA and Editor Donna are longtime supporters of Health 2.0 NYC and Medstartr, the organizing groups behind this event.

A startup looking for funding? Look no further than the Digital Health Breakthrough Network. Sponsored by NYCEDC and HITLAB, they are in the process of recruiting their fourth class of startups. Eligible companies are early-stage startups (pre-revenue/pre-Series A), based in NYC (50 percent+ of employees), with an innovative digital health technology that presents a novel solution to a significant need in the health marketplace. Applications are open until 15 June. More information here and here.

End of year action: Vivify/InTouch, InTouch/TruClinic, Medtronic, NYCEDC winners, ActiveProtective, Adidas exits wearables, Fitbit (updated)

  • Dallas-based Vivify Health is partnering with California’s InTouch Health to integrate their telehealth remote patient management with InTouch Health’s acute care video consult/device platform. For InTouch, it is a move into the home by using Vivify’s Managed Kit and BYOD and related APIs. For Vivify, this helps in their post-acute RPM sell to large healthcare organizations. (Is their VA partner Iron Bow somewhere in the mix?) Their VA Home Telehealth rival Medtronic announced their partnership with American Well a few months ago [TTA 21 Oct]. InTouch release via Telecom Reseller
  • Updated. InTouch also announced their agreement on Jan 4 to purchase DTC telehealth provider TruClinic furthering their move into home telehealth. TruClinic will be merged into InTouch. Heading it up will be recently appointed EVP of Marketing and Consumer Solutions Steve Cashman, who founded and headed pioneering but overly ambitious for the market health kiosk HealthSpot [TTA roundup here]. Release  (Our update on the state of health kiosks here)
  • Speaking of Medtronic Care Management Services, MCCM touted its VA Home Telehealth ties to Healthcare Analytics News. Intriguing claim: they’ve treated 310,000 veterans since 2011 (Cardiocom, the 2011 awardee, was purchased in 2013). VA itself credits only 156,000 patients to Home Telehealth in Federal FY 2014 (the last official count), 43,000 patients in 2010 and 144,000 in 2013. A very rough estimate by this Editor is that they were about 25 percent of the veterans in the program.
  • Announced at last week’s NYC Economic Development Commission (NYCEDC) Health 2.0 Digital Health Forum attended by this Editor were the winners of the third annual NYCEDC/HITLAB’s Digital Health Breakthrough Network accelerator program for pre-revenue startups: Altopax (VR behavioral health), Navimize (doctor/hospital scheduling), Tatch (sleep quality biometrics), and PainQX (pain level monitoring). The Forum also had Digital Health Marketplace matchmaking meetings for 65 NYC-based health tech companies with prospective clients. The Marketplace furnishes competitive grants to offset the cost of piloting between growth-stage tech companies and providers. Release, MedCityNews
  • ActiveProtective‘s controversial protective airbag to cushion hips from falls by high-risk older adults [TTA 10 Jan] gained $4.7 million in Series A funding led by Generator Ventures. Mobihealthnews
  • Adidas is shuttering its wearable device development unit and condensing its offerings, focusing on the Runtastic GPS-guided exercise offering and a shopping app. It follows similar moves at Nike and Under Armour proving that big names in sports fitness clothing couldn’t pull off wearables. Mobihealthnews
  • Meanwhile, Fitbit’s Ionic continues to develop with now an App Gallery with 60 apps–11 of which are health/fitness related–and more than 100 watch faces. (Wonder if any are Mickey Mouse?) What we termed a ‘Hail Mary’ pass may actually get past the goal line. Mobihealthnews

NYC Healthcare Innovation Festival: four big events 28 Nov – 6 Dec–readers get 20% off

NYC will be a health and health tech-related hub for a busy 10 days between the holidays of Thanksgiving and the run-up to Christmas. Run by four separate organizations, they are being co-marketed as the NYC Healthcare Innovation Festival. So after you digest your turkey and trimmings, you’ll have four great conferences plus an opportunity to do some holiday shopping in NYC! Registration for each event is separate–see the discount code below offered by NYCHIF!

HITLAB Innovators Summit, 28-30 November, Columbia University, Lerner Hall, 114th Street (2920 Broadway)

This is a provider/pharma-focused three-day meeting, with topics ranging from implementing entrepreneurial principles in life science companies to M&A and investing trends in digital health. HITLAB is affiliated with Columbia University. It hosts the 2017 HITLAB World Cup of Voice-Activated Technology in Diabetes, presented by Novo Nordisk, the main sponsor. Click the title above for more information and registration.

MedStartr Momentum 2017 (MedMo17), 30 November – 1 December, PricewaterhouseCoopers headquarters, 300 Madison Avenue @42nd Street

MedStartr’s third annual Momentum meeting will be highlighting the young companies which will be transforming the future of healthcare. Want to get involved with the best new companies in healthcare? Join the five pitch contests, nine Momentum talks, and seven panels over two full days, all about driving innovation in healthcare from the perspectives of patients, doctors, partners, institutions, and investors. Sponsored by MedStartr and Health 2.0 NYC, this attracts a wide swath of speakers and participants from global healthcare players to startups and academia. It promises to be a lively gathering! TTA is a MedStartr and Health 2.0 NYC supporter/media sponsor since 2010; Editor Donna will be a host for this event and a MedStartr Mentor. Check the MedStartr page to find and fund some of the most interesting startup ideas in healthcare. For more information and to register, click the link in the title above or the sidebar advert at right.

NODE Health Digital Medicine Conference, 4-5 December, Microsoft Innovation Center, 11 Times Square

What will be the effective digital solutions bringing value across the healthcare continuum? Health system, payer, pharma, investors, academics, and healthcare tech executives will be discussing how to use digital health to improve outcomes, patient experience, and population health, and review the scientific evidence for digital innovation. It’s a combination of special sessions, workshops, Center of Excellence Tours, exhibitions, and poster sessions. TTA is a media partner of NODE Health 2017. Click the title above for more information and registration. (more…)

Pilot Health Tech: call for applicants 18 December (NYC)

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Pilot-Health-Tech-logo.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]The New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), in partnership with Health 2.0 and now Blueprint Health, are calling for joint applicants for the third annual Pilot Health Tech NYC. The program invites innovative healthcare companies and “host” partners (mainly providers) to jointly apply by 18 December for $1 million in competitive commercialization awards. If chosen, these will pilot together to validate a technology solution for commercial use or investment.There are 10 awards across three categories: complex systems, scalable solutions and turnkey projects. Application is here; they also have a Q&A Webinar at noon on 1 Dec to ask questions about the funding program and details about the application process. Prior program winners include GeriJoy, QoL, Nonnatech, Flatiron Health, eCaring and Canopy Apps.

Pilot Health Tech NYC winners announced (US)

Last Thursday, the 11 winners of the second annual Pilot Health Tech NYC program were announced at Alexandria Center, NYC. A joint initiative of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and Health 2.0, it provides early-stage health tech companies based in NYC a ‘test bed’ in partnership with many of the most prestigious metro area healthcare organizations, and another platform to keep health tech growing in the city. Each project represents a distinct need in the spectrum and a common theme is integration of care into workflow. Some needs are obvious: senior care, pediatrics, rehabilitation, cardiac disease and diabetes management. Others are less so: vision, medication adherence, data analytics, blood donation and social support.

The winners are supported by $1 million in funding to operate and report results from the individual pilots which will take place starting in late summer through end of year. An interesting fact from the announcement release is that the Pilot Health Tech inaugural class companies [TTA 1 July 2013] have raised over $150 million in private investment since their win: AdhereTech, eCaring, Rip Road, Vital Care Services, BioDigital, Flatiron Health, Sense Health, Bio-Signal Group, Opticology and StarlingHealth (acquired by Hill-Rom).

The winners (some of which we’ve been following like GeriJoy, NonnaTech and eCaring) and their partners are:

  • Smart Vision Labs / SUNY College of Optometry
  • GeriJoy / Pace University
  • QoL Devices, Inc. / Montefiore Medical Center
  • Urgent Software, LLC / Mount Sinai Health System
  • Nonnatech / ElderServe
  • Fit4D/ HealthFirst
  • AllazoHealth / Accountable Care Coalition of Greater New York
  • Canopy Apps / Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY)
  • Healthify / VillageCare
  • Tactonic Technologies / NYU Langone, Rusk Rehab Center
  • Hindsait, Inc. / NY Blood Center

More information in their release. Many thanks to NYCEDC and Eric Vieira of ELabNYC (another NYCEDC initiative) and CUNY.

Related reading: ELabNYC Pitch Day in March

Concussion diagnostics a hot area

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Cerora-Simon.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Diagnosing concussive and sub-concussive head blows both in sports and on the battlefield have been challenging, and your Editors have chronicled several approaches. One of the 2014 graduates of NYCEDC’s ELabNYC was Oculogica; their EyeBox CNS records three key eye movements in a 4 1/2 minute test to determine whether they fit a normal box pattern, with subsequent exams determining rate of brain recovery [TTA 17 Apr]. (We’ll be seeing more of Oculogica at NYC MedTech 13 May, along with MC10 which helped to develop the Checklight impact indicating skullcap with Reebok, seen at last November’s CES preview [TTA 15 Nov 13] and winning CES’ 2014 Design & Engineering award.) Now out of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is Cerora’s MindReader, developed out of Lehigh University, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of NE Pennsylvania and in the first StartUp Health Academy/GE Entrepreneurship class. It is a wireless dry contact EEG reader which combined with other biosensor data and clinical observation aids speedy diagnosis. The reader is worn either on Google Glass or a headset (pictured above left on CEO Adam J. Simon, PhD). It’s in early days and still in testing; the baselines alone will need data from at minimum tens of thousands of subjects beyond the current testing on Lehigh U. athletes. Dr. Simon is also projecting use for sub-concussion injury, Alzheimer’s, PTSD and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Lehigh Valley Live, release on presentation at the American Academy of Neurology Annual meeting 30 April, WFMZ Ch. 69 News (video)

ELabNYC Pitch Day

10 April, Microsoft HQ, NYC

The Entrepreneurship Lab NYC (ELabNYC) presented its second annual class of companies to nearly 200 life science funders, foundations, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare organizations, universities and the occasional Editor. Of the cohort of 19 companies finishing the three-month program, 56% are now funded and 25% had first customer revenue by the end of the program. Each company pitched for five minutes on its concept, its current state of advancement (including pilots/customers), its team and a funding timeline. This Editor will concentrate on the five companies with a digital health component; she was intrigued by their diversity and focus on difficult problems of compliance and diagnosis, especially dementia and concussion. (more…)

Pilot HealthTech NYC winners

The Pilot HealthTech NYC program, which paired health tech innovators with NYC-based providers [TTA 15 March], announced their ten winners on Friday. The companies are: AdhereTech, eCaring, Rip Road, Vital Care Services, BioDigital, Flatiron Health, Sense Health, Bio-Signal Group, Opticology and StarlingHealth. The companies are provided with up to $100,000 each for their pilot projects. A listing of companies and partners is on the Pilot HealthTech website and a summary of the partnerships on StartUp Health’s blog (StartUp Health a program collaborator with Blueprint Health and Health 2.0). Examples:

  • StarlingHealth and VillageCare of NYC will place touchscreen tablets (in eight languages) by residents’ bedsides at VillageCare Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. The tablets will deliver education materials to residents, send requests and real-time feedback to administrators. Wall Street Journal/release.
  • eCaring and Pace University will use the eCaring care management/monitoring system for six months with a randomly selected group of chronically ill, multicultural older adults in Henry Street Settlement’s Vladeck Cares Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC). eCaring release
  • Pace University is also partnering with Vital Care Services, a telehealth provider, to provide services for six months to test the effectiveness of telehealth with diverse communities. This will combine both telehealth monitoring sent to a Pace RN with visits from Pace student technicians to assist with the monitoring process. Pace release.