Boston skyline along the Harborwalk
MassChallenge marked the end of its first digital health cohort PULSE@MassChallenge with assurances from Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker that the Commonwealth would back a second class of digital health businesses and provide funding for health technology innovation center TechSpring. Health technology businesses with eye tracking technology for concussion detection, virtual reality to reduce social isolation for nursing home residents and a telehealth alternative to ambulance radios were among the 31 participants in the inaugural class to be singled out at the Boston event.
The goal of the program is to make Boston a digital health hub.
Although Baker comes from a health administration background as a former CEO of Harvard Pilgrim, his presence at the event marking the end of the six-month program is not the kind of recognition most healthcare accelerators are able to muster from their home state.
A few of the businesses that took part in the cohort received financial awards for demonstrating the impact of their technologies and meeting the program’s milestones.
SyncThink’s EyeSync test, an FDA-cleared device that uses eye tracking technology housed in virtual reality headgear, received $100,000. The brainchild of Stanford neurosurgeon Dr. Jam Ghajar, the test involves patients visually tracking a dot moving in a circle to assess ocular motion synchronization and was several years in the making. Ghajer’s work has been validated in many peer-reviewed journals. But in an interview with CTO Daniel Beeler, he said the company only formed a few years ago because the VR headset is such a suitable form factor for the test. Patients are asked to follow the movement of a dot in a circular pattern. A concussed patient’s eye tracking will be poor and will show variance in the eye target position compared with healthy patients. SyncThink’s technology targets the world of student athletes and is designed to speed up the decision-making process when students are injured as to whether students should be taken out of a game and if they should seek treatment.
Twiage developed a telehealth platform to help paramedics to securely transmit images, video and other patient-related information of interest to physicians en route to the hospital. In an interview with Twiage CEO and Founder Dr. YiDing Yu said hopsitals pay an annual subscription fee for the service based on their size. She noted that the company has amassed 14 hospital customers, including Jefferson Health in Philadelphia. Yu said it is also working with 40 EMS service providers. She also added that Twiage is working with Pathfinder International looking to export an international model of its company. Twiage also received a $60,000 award.
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.
Rendever developed a virtual reality program to enable seniors in assisted living facilities and nursing homes to feel more connected to family members and loved ones. Friends and family use smartphones to record a wedding or a walk and those videos can be shared through VR goggles. The idea is for the company to eventually be able to livestream those experiences so that residents of these facilities can feel part of the experience. It received a $40,000 award
Also singled out for recognition were care coordination business ActMD, Cake, and teledermatology business 3Derm.
The fifth annual Seed Accelerator Ranking Project published last week listed MassChallenge in the third of five tiers alongside 500 Startups and biotech seed accelerator IndieBio in San Francisco, and Healthbox in Chicago. The ranking by researchers at Rice University, MIT Innovation Initiative Lab for Innovation Science and University of Richmond, is based on a set of criteria. They include the valuation of accelerator grads, accelerator alumna that are acquired acquisitions or initial public offerings of $5 million or more, founder satisfaction and the percentage of startups that have gone through the program that are still in business. The challenge of applying this ranking to healthcare startups is that healthcare entrepreneurs frequently take part in multiple accelerator programs, especially since many of them no longer take equity in companies. Other accelerators that work with healthcare startups listed in the ranking included Dreamit (which also includes nonhealthcare companies) Health Wildcatters, Techstars and Y Combinator.
