Remote patient monitoring is one sector of healthcare that has seen widespread adoption in recent years, from more seniors opting for home-based care, in part due to the pandemic, but also since the CMS introduced reimbursement codes to improve monitoring chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
At the MedCity INVEST conference at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Chicago March 28-30, 10 companies will take part in the remote patent monitoring and smart devices track of the four track Pitch Perfect contest. The conference draws attention to innovation topics across healthcare and attendees include healthcare executives, startups and investors.
To view the full agenda, click here.
The judges for this track include:
- Brett Cook, Principal, F-Prime Capital
- Dipa Mehta, VP Corporate Venture Capital and Innovation, Advocate Aurora Health
- Tom Olenzak, Managing Director, Strategic Investing, Independence Blue Cross
Here’s a look at the companies taking part:
11 Health & Technologies has created the first sensor-enabled, digitally-connected ostomy wearables providing actionable insights for patients and remote monitoring for clinicians to reduce the incidence and severity of common complications in ostomy patients. The company has demonstrated an 80% reduction in 30-day readmissions as well as a 66% reduction in 30-day ER visits. The company is raising money to launch its commercialization program in conjunction with new contracts with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois and Universal Care and to finance value-based pilot programs with commercial leading insurers.
Blumio is transforming health monitoring through a wearable sensor that can measure blood pressure noninvasively and continuously. The key innovation for the company is the use of radar to directly measure movements of the arterial wall and measure vital signs. The first application is in maternal health where 1 in 25 expecting mothers develop preeclampsia. In the US, the condition results in 40% of unnecessary preterm deliveries and 10,500 infant deaths annually. Delivered as a reimbursable, remote patient monitoring solution prescribed through OB/GYNs, Blumio’s predictive analytics engine identifies blood pressure anomalies and monitors for the onset of preeclampsia throughout pregnancy. Founded in 2016, Blumio is venture-backed and supported by medical advisors with expertise in cardiology, anesthesiology, and emergency medicine. The company has received recognition from the American College of Cardiology, as well as research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Center for Disease Control.
electronRx is a deep tech company based in Cambridge, England, paving the way for personalized digital medicine through the development of novel chronic disease management solutions. Its algorithms allow the company to extract medical-grade vital signs and insights into cardiovascular and respiration function from smartphone sensors alone, with no additional hardware needed. It has a team of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers from leading academic research organizations working with an international consortium of clinicians to place the power to collect physiological health insights into the hands of 6 billion people worldwide. In doing so, the company seeks to transform how healthcare is delivered and how disease is treated by creating digital therapeutics that enable proactive, preventative care and inform personalized interventions in real-time. The initial focus is cardiovascular disease; scaling cost-effective tools to improve disease detection and management for the 82.6 million people living with cardiovascular disease in the U.S. alone by improving patient adherence, streamlining remote monitoring workloads, and lowering overall costs of care to secure the sustainability of health systems.
Encora Therapeutics is developing smart wearable devices that can track tremor progression and provide personalized hand tremor relief in real-time for individuals with neurological movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor–all without causing side effects or tremor management burden.
LCP Medical Technologies is a young company with 25 years experience in the semiconductor and printed circuit industries. Its advanced manufacturing technology can help make any device in this category better, 50% to 200% smaller with more accurate measurements, improved battery management and secure wireless communications and with a roadmap for generations. The core technology allows for making the circuits used in these types of devices much smaller while embedding the sensors used directly into liquid crystal polymer, which is one of the only biocompatible materials that can be implanted or worn. The company has access to 67 patents and a $5 million investment plan to establish quick turn first article product with volume manufacturing partners to support devices in this category from start-up companies to industry leaders.
Neursantys creates innovative wearable devices that expand access to comprehensive personalized diagnoses and treatments for people with balance disruptions caused by aging, injuries, or disease. Age-related balance impairments caused by vestibular dysfunction affect 35% of U.S. adults aged 40 years and older (58 million Americans), and the onset of balance dysfunction can be accelerated by injuries and disease. The economic burden is over $250 billion in the U.S. Currently, diagnosing these disruptions requires expensive clinical equipment and complex procedures that most patients cannot access, and treatments to restore balance require surgically implanted electrodes. Neursantys has developed Neurvesta, a non-invasive wearable device that allows clinicians to screen for impairments to the vestibular balance system and then apply corrective neurostimulation to help restore disrupted balance. The Neurvesta device and related services are positioned to become the cornerstone of an aging-in-place market already valued at $150 billion per year in the U.S.
NXgenPort Inc is addressing an unmet need in cancer care by remotely monitoring patients between chemotherapy visits with an implanted Smart Port. By measuring cell counts, vitals, and heart function in vivo, NGP will alert physicians to signs of infection, reduce hospitalizations, and gather important physiological data to improve patient outcomes. There is additional value for cancer researchers and drug delivery stakeholders to remotely monitor a participant’s biological response to interventions.
Rhaeos Inc. is a venture backed, clinical stage medical device company developing FlowSense, a platform technology and a noninvasive wireless, wearable skin patch that can assess and monitor fluid flow peripherally throughout the body. The company is initially targeting hydrocephalus, a life threatening condition caused by an abnormal accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Implantable shunts, the gold standard treatment, often fail, leading to multiple trips to the emergency room and repeat surgeries. There is no technology available today that can easily assess CSF flow in shunts wirelessly, bedside, and without capital equipment until now. Rhaeos has raised more than $8 million in financing, received FDA breakthrough designation, published clinical data in Science and Nature family journals, and is on track for initial market entry in 2022. The company is currently raising a $6 million Series A round for launch.
Sway Medical is an FDA-cleared digital assessment platform to evaluate balance, cognition, functional performance, and fall risk. Assessments on the Sway platform require nothing more than a dedicated iPad in the clinic, or the patient’s own smartphone device and can be completed in just a few minutes. Sway’s technology leverages the built-in sensors of any mobile device to provide an accurate measure of postural stability and functional movement by simply pressing the device against the chest and completing a standardized protocol. Sway provides objective measures by replacing expensive force platforms, motion capture systems, and subjective screening procedures with an integrated digital solution for objective data collection utilizing inexpensive smart devices.
Vivalink provides digital healthcare solutions for patient monitoring, virtual care and decentralized clinical trials. The company’s robust biometrics data platform allows healthcare solution providers to rapidly build and scale their technologies in any therapeutic area. The platform includes wearable medical-grade sensors and IoT cloud software that continuously captures human vitals and biometrics to accelerate healthcare application development and deployment. Its unique platform leverages physiology-optimized medical wearable sensors and cloud data services to enable a deeper and more clinical understanding between provider and patient.
Picture: kentoh, Getty Images
