The recent February issue of Health Affairs, which features a series of articles on innovation, provides us with an opportunity to examine the state of America’s innovation ecosystem for medical technology. This ecosystem has produced a myriad of medical advances, ranging from advanced imaging to molecular diagnostics, minimally invasive surgical tools, and incredibly sophisticated implants. These technologies have shortened hospital stays, reduced the economic burden of disease, and saved and improved millions of lives.
El nuevo holter sin cables se coloca en tan solo dos minutos, tiene tres años de duración y registra todas las incidencias cardiacas del paciente para emitirlas de manera automática desde su domicilio hasta el centro hospitalario a través de un módem.
Des chercheurs du Centre Hospitalier Universitaire d'Osaka, dont le Pr. Yoshiki Sawa, viennent de mettre au point un patch à appliquer directement sur le coeur qui favoriserait la régénération des vaisseaux sanguins et des cellules myocardiques pour des patients victimes d'insuffisance cardiaque.
Blueprint Health, a NYC based mentor-focused health technology accelerator has revealed its Winter 2015 Accelerator class (seventh class) of seven digital health startups to its portfolio. Blueprint is a member of TechStars’ Global Accelerator Network. Today’s addition of seven companies brings the accelerator’s total to 60 digital health with more than 140 entrepreneurs in Blueprint’s alumni community.
A stroke or traumatic brain injury starts a race against the clock. Neurosurgeons, emergency room doctors, and paramedics have to take action to limit the damage as quickly as possible before it spreads and devastates portions of the patient’s brain, taking functions such as speech, movement, and memory with it.
After that desperate sprint comes a grueling marathon as patients and their families are joined by different medical specialists. Physical, speech, and occupational therapists replace doctors as the goal becomes helping patients recover what was lost and rebuild their lives.
TrialReach is an interesting startup on a number of fronts. Firstly, the company is based in London but does most of its business in the “fast-moving” U.S. healthcare market. Secondly, and more significantly, it’s using technology to solve a very human problem and one of the biggest obstacles in medical research: matching the right patients with the right clinical trials, which in turn should help speed up the development of new treatments and ultimately save lives.
An innovative early disease detection system that uses the sense of smell is going mobile.
The NaNose breathalyzer technology developed by Professor Hossam Haick of the Technion will soon be installed in a mobile phone – to be called, appropriately, the SniffPhone. A tiny smell-sensitive sensor will be installed onto a phone add-on, and using specially designed software, the phone will be able to “smell” users’ breath to determine if they have cancer, among other serious diseases.
The New York City-based digital health startup accelerator StartUp Health has added six new companies, bringing its portfolio size to 90 companies.
Companies in the new class represent subsectors ranging from telemedicine and patient engagement to wellness, nutrition, and diagnostics.
The new StartUp Health companies
AlemHealth (Dubai, United Arab Emirates) is an integrated telemedicine platform that links hospitals to a global provider network at prices patients can afford.
Health care is just now starting to effectively use information from the human genome to diagnose and treat disease. Nowhere is this more crucial than in the treatment of cancer, from which 7.6 million people in the U.S. die each year, and for which we spend $87 billion a year on treatment.
One of the reasons cancer is so difficult to treat is that current testing methods often don’t help doctors match specific cancers with effective drug treatments. And it’s a moving target — cancer cells are constantly changing, mutating.
The field of RNA-based drugs is moving fast. Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS) has an approved drug, and more potentially on the way. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) has a slew of them in development, and a few that could be approved in the next few years.
