A Harvard Healthcare Acceleration Challenge launched a competition in October to speed up availability of healthcare technologies earlier this year. About one month later, it has selected four healthcare startups spanning how hospital blood banks bid on blood from blood centers to predictive analytics for palliative care.
Four finalists were selected from 500 applicants in 29 countries and 43 states in the U.S. as part of the challenge. For the next year they’ll pursue their dissemination plans. In April, they will makes presentations at a conference on the Harvard Business School campus in Boston. They will share $150,000 in prize money now, and the winner, which will be named in November, will receive $50,000.
Here is a summary of each of the finalists:
Bloodbuy has developed a framework for hospital based blood banks and blood centers to improve the bidding process for blood supplies. The idea behind the Dallas based company is to improve the geographic distribution of blood supplies and improve the prices they pay while avoiding shortages. Chris Godfrey is the founder and CEO.
I-PASS wants to improve handoffs of patients during shift changes.The goal of the company, which is based at Boston Children’s hospital, is to reduce medical errors that are caused during these handoffs.
Medalogix is using predictive analytics to figure out which patients are eligible for hospice care. It seeks to reduce the difficulties and costs associated with this kind of a move and provides a way for clinicians to help patients navigate their hospice options and the transfer process. Earlier this year CEO Dan Hogan raised $5 million to expand the platform designed for post-acute care patients to skilled nursing facilities and in-patient rehab for patients as they recover from major surgery.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Twine Health developed a collaborative care tool to improve communication between patients and their physician that includes goal setting, messaging. Clinicians use a dashboard to see which patients need extra help. John Moore is the CEO and co-founder of the company which was developed from years of research at MIT’s Media Lab.
