physIQ won the digital health category as part of this year’s Best of INVEST awards.
physIQ is working towards the commercial launch late this year of a cloud-based analytics platform that processes data from wearables
and implantable devices to give healthcare providers triage information for remotely monitored patients.
The device-agnostic platform uses predictive analytics to monitor for changes in their condition and alert their doctors before it gets serious.
In some ways, it’s similar to the machine monitoring technology it developed when it traded as SmartSignal before it sold the business to GE Intelligent Platforms. In a phone interview with physIQ CEO and Co-founder Gary Conkright, he said it retained the intellectual property rights for healthcare.
Conkright describes its product as a proprietary personalized physiology analytics platform. It’s currently in clinical studies at four Department of Veterans Affairs hospital sites. It is intended for accountable care organizations and vertically integrated health systems that have incentives to keep people out of hospital and reduce readmissions that happen within 90 days of patients being discharged from the hospital.
But in addition to acute care, its technology is also aimed at research scientists conducting clinical trials to assess the impact of medications on individuals.It has several collaborations with Big Pharma companies, Conkright said.
“We will see physiological changes, exacerbations, co-morbidities and will give researchers insights.” One thing that excites Conkright is the idea that gathering this kind of data could lead to new therapeutic discoveries.
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.
“Patients with progressive diseases like COPD don’t get better, but arresting that [decline] will come [in part] from having 24-hour data collection.”
When physIQ got its first FDA 510(k) clearance last year, Conkright said: “This is the foundational clearance by FDA in a series of progressive clearances we will seek per our regulatory strategy as we evolve our platform to take advantage of the unique information provided by our analytics.”
It’s also working on a second application to obtain medical device clearance from the FDA to use its analytical platform to establish each person’s baseline vital signs that would be used by care teams.
Conkright is also intrigued by the idea that its physiology analytics monitoring tool could one day be sold directly to consumers. “We will expand into longer monitoring, so why not keep people out of the hospital for as long as possible?”
Asked about his observations from INVEST, he said he was impressed that most of the investors he saw were decision makers, as opposed to lower level folks.
“There were a phenomenal number of investors. At a lot of these events, you tend to see associates, but here there were decision makers, corporate executives,
I met new investors and learned about new funds that had been created.”
