Today’s a day where you could lose faith in modern healthcare startups.
Here’s four reasons to have hope.
A quartet of companies on Wednesday were selected among the 44 businesses that presented at MedCity INVEST, MedCity News’ healthcare investing conference this week in Chicago. The winning companies, honored as the Best of INVEST, are building breakthroughs that leverage breath tests to detect cancer or are building better tools to diagnose orthopedic injuries in the doctor’s office, among other things.
Investors from more than 60 healthcare funds attending INVEST helped select the winners, which were from four categories: diagnostics, medical devices, digital health and biopharma. A trio of judges reviewed the companies, then the remaining investors contributed a fourth “crowd” score: an average score from their ballots. Judges’ scores and the crowd score were averaged and the company with the highest score won its category.
The winners were:
- Breath Diagnostics (diagnostics category): A Louisville startup that offers breath analysis screening technology for early lung cancer detection.
- physIQ (digital health category): A Chicago company using machine learning technology to convert physiological data collected from wearables and implantable devices into actionable insight.
- Sparrow Pharmaceuticals (biopharma category): A Chicago company developing better corticosteroid drugs, as well as the first therapeutic antibody to treat PTSD.
- Trice Medical (medical device company): A Philadelphia company that has developed integrated camera-enabled needle technologies that provides orthopedic diagnoses in the doctor’s office. It has an FDA approved product and is expanding sales throughout the country.
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.
You will no doubt hear about these companies in the future because of new investment rounds, FDA approvals and other milestones. But we’ll also honor these four companies on MedCityNews.com, by celebrating their companies on a special section that will run through the rest of the year.
