Relative to other affluent countries, the United States devotes disproportionate resources to health care with disappointing results. Complex insurance rules and distorted market signals create massive inefficiencies, frustrated patients, and providers burdened by excessive paperwork.
Hospitals are usually founts of information, revealing how many people they serve, how many are treated for what disease, their positive impact on the community, etc. But there’s one data point that hospitals are understandably reticent to share – how many patients picked up an infection inside the institution and subsequently died.
To make sure that patients can find out that information – and any other data they need to determine the effectiveness, safety, and quality of a hospital, Israeli entrepreneur Moni Milchman developed ArchimedicX, the world’s first search engine for information about hospitals.
Researchers around the world have explored the ties between the immune system and devastating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. San Francisco biotech Alector wants to exploit those ties to make drugs, and today it announced $32 million in venture funding—with another round likely coming by year’s end—to continue that work.
Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) said its Qualcomm Life subsidiary has acquired Capsule Technologie, an Andover, MA-based healthtech systems company with more than 1,900 hospital customers in 38 countries. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
El 80% del gasto sanitario en España se dedica a atender las enfermedades crónicas: cardiovasculares, diabetes, cáncer, dolencias psiquiátricas, pulmonares... La mitad de la población, es decir, más de 20 millones de personas, sufre al menos una enfermedad crónica. Y, pasados los 65 años, tienen de media cuatro.
The importance of data in delivering efficient, effective health care has long been obvious—and has never been greater. The increased focus on value-based care is shifting financial incentives to a model in which providers are compensated based on how their patients fare, rather than by the number of tests, visits, or procedures performed. This means that providers, patients, and everyone in between are more eager than ever to measure patient outcomes in order to determine what works and who gets paid.
In June Vivek Ramaswamy, a 29-year-old former hedge fund partner, canceled his honeymoon plans to hike in the French and Swiss Alps. He instead brought his new bride to stand beside him as he rang the bell of the New York Stock Exchange to launch the biggest initial public offering in the history of the American biotechnology industry. What could be more romantic than a few hundred million in paper gains in a single day?
Sanifit (Mallorca), fundada en 2004, es una compañía biofarmacéutica dedicada al desarrollo de productos para el tratamiento de enfermedades relacionadas con calcificaciones patológicas, una enfermedad rara para la cual no existe actualmente un tratamiento eficaz.
Beds, which have more or less remained unchanged for thousands of years, are getting a smart upgrade.
Israeli medical device and Internet of Things start-up EarlySense is introducing this week its “smart bed” solution that records data on how an individual is sleeping, how often they toss, turn, wake up, and fall back asleep, breathing and heart rates, and more.
The myEarlySense monitor integrates with other smart systems. It can turn heaters on and off when a user is under the covers, turn on the automatic coffee machine and brew a cup of coffee a few minutes before the alarm goes off, and turn off the home alarm when an individual gets out of bed.
When GlaxoSmithKline started up a venture fund a few years to invest in electronic medicines—treatments that use electrical impulses, rather than manmade chemicals or protein drugs, to impact disease—a startup called SetPoint Medical was its first investment. A few years later, with SetPoint nearing a key clinical trial, the British drugmaker has deepened its ties with the Valencia, CA-based startup.
