Trends in Med Tech

IRegained is startup and social impact venture with a vision of helping patients regain their hand function after a stroke.

Their innovative device called MyHand leverages the principles of neuroplasticity by guiding patients through a series of highly personalized hand exercises that gradually rewire the brain around the affected area.

The device is meant to be used from the comfort of a patient’s home, which enables a more frequent and intense therapy regimen than traditional in-clinic appointments. Personalized, home-based care using an inexpensive device are key features that will broaden access and impact once the MyHand system is fully commercialized.

Check out this short intro to the MyHand System: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOHwq7cNEAg

This was refreshing conversation about post-stroke care, rehabilitation science, innovative med devices and clinical development - we loved this talk and hope you will too!

Find the full episode on our Youtube Channel here: https://youtu.be/P0yf120X0H8 

💯 Find out more about IRegained:

✅ Website: https://iregained.ca/

✅ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnsonVineet

✅ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/iregained-inc/

✅ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iregainedinc/?igshid=hzgck2qg05k8+

🌏  Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Iregainedinc/?ref=bookmarks%20

💎 Other mentions in this talk:

MaRS Discovery District: https://www.marsdd.com/

***  if you enjoy these talks, learn something from them, want to see more, be sure to subscribe 🎬🔔✨❗️🎬 🔔✨❗️ ***   

In this episode we’re joined by Rukia Mire, Madison (Maddy) McBay and Jessica Lunshoff of Tamvoes, a digital health platform empowering individuals with their information and professionals with client management.

At its score, Tamvoes solves the longstanding problem of how to collect, story and easily transfer important and sensitive personal information with people and services you trust. Scaling this solution could reduce huge inefficiencies and prevent hurdles and barriers in the patient journey.

It was great to hear that this could be achieved while also ensuring high standards of data privacy and security, which is crucial part of the success of digital health adoption.

We loved this talk and hope you will too!

Check out the full episode with extras on the MedTech Trends Youtube Channel here: https://youtu.be/eC8g43UkYoo 

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💯 Find out more about Tamvoes:

✅ Website: https://tamvoes.com/main

▶ Twitter: https://twitter.com/tamvoes

🟦 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tamvoes

⭐️  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamvoes/

🌏  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tamvoes

💎 Other mentions in this talk:

Innovation Factory: https://innovationfactory.ca/

Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization: https://www.obio.ca/

Does Having Access To Your Healthcare Information Matter?

https://tamvoes.com/main/blog_pro/post6

The Inspiration behind Tamvoes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=000Iprd044k

https://cfhuron.ca/tamvoes-launches-inspired-by-healthcare-struggles/

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In this episode we spoke with Mahshid Yassaei about Tali, an innovative NLP-based information retrieval algorithm that is built for purpose to help clinicians at the point of care.   

Prior to Tali, Mahshid also co-founded Evenset, a custom medical and healthcare software development company focused on helping entrepreneurs and established companies bring innovative ideas to life through a fast-paced, agile software development process.   

Evenset’s clients include startups such as textile computing company Myant, multibillion dollar corporations such as Essity, and government agencies such as Public Health Agency of Canada and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) in Ontario.

We also talked about the team at Tali, the challenges of finding a certain type of talent and Mahshid’s journey immigrating to Canada where she offers a unique perspective.    

We loved this talk and hope you will too!

Check the full episode-webinar on our MedTech Trends Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/Al2zblNK2Z0 

💎 Other mentions in this talk:   

Women in STEM:  https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/01/women-making-gains-in-stem-occupations-but-still-underrepresented.html#:~:text=Women%20Make%20Gains%20in%20Some,up%2048%25%20of%20all%20workers.  

Canadian immunization guide:  https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/canadian-immunization-guide.html 

Covid-19 guides:  https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/vaccines.html 

Top 12 Use Cases of Natural Language Processing in Healthcare https://marutitech.com/use-cases-of-natural-language-processing-in-healthcare/ 

Top 10 Online Medical Resources For The Patients Of The Future https://medicalfuturist.com/top-10-online-medical-resources/ 

Tali whitepaper:  https://tali.ai/

Wouldn’t it be great to have a team of coaches to help you through your day-to-day life?   

Realizing that people have complex and ever-changing health needs – something that healthcare systems are not well equipped to handle - YourCoach has set out to enable people to improve their health and wellness through a holistic approach and a “squad” of certified coaches.   Health and wellness coaches are becoming an important part of integrated health and wellness teams and are increasingly being recognized by industry bodies. 

Coaches are also getting the attention of trade and non-profit organizations that largely shape the healthcare sector.   

One of the most exciting opportunities here (to me) is that YourCoach has the potential to enhance personalized health and wellness plans, in real-time, through a holistic team of expert certified coaches to essentially any individual. This level of service has historically been reserved for executives who would pay top dollar for teams to help them maintain a high level of performance by managing their exercise, diet, sleep, stress and other facets of health and wellness.   

Stay tuned as they unveil the YourCoach platform and features in 2021. We loved this talk and hope you will too!

Check out the full length episode on our Youtube channel MedTech Trends: https://youtu.be/FQY8Iwb35ZY

💯 Find out more about YourCoach:

✅ Website https://yourcoach.health/

▶ Twitter: https://twitter.com/yourcoachhealth

💟 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourcoachhealth/

🚩 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourCoachHealth/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel&eid=ARBY0JQa0fgjk4ggw5D_M9nibiq3yZfa_Zt9q74Ffo7gUTlGOaIChtuUQyIklItcbSpbsoJa1F3jTuzQ

🟦 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourcoachhealth/

🛑 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOrr9630f6COrwyGU-EQ5hA

💎 Other mentions in this talk:

Read the industry report by YourCoach.Health:

https://yourcoach.health/healthcoachingreport/

🎧 Eugene’s podcast featuring guests in digital health and beyond

“Challenging problems. Promising solutions. World class Innovators.”

https://digitalhealthtoday.com/

National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching

https://nbhwc.org/

Open Orphan is paving the way for the large-scale adoption of “human challenge studies” for vaccine development.

Although this unique study design has been around for over 40 years and has been used to test a variety of vaccines and anti-virals for disease such as, cholera, influenza, asthma and RSV, among many others, the challenge model has recently gained a lot of attention globally due to Open Orphan’s pioneering its use for covid-19.

What’s more, these studies hold potential to supplement, or perhaps one day substitute, traditional phase 2 clinical trials and to be used as part of regulatory decision process for new vaccines.

Considering the current pace and global interest in these advancements, it’s not an overstatement to say that this could be a major leap for all stakeholders involved in supporting global public health through vaccines.

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Open Orphan (ORPH) is a publicly traded vaccine-development (CRO) company with offices in London, Dublin, Paris and the Netherlands. Its two main subsidiaries, hVIVO and Venn Life Sciences, are well-established in vaccine testing and regulatory consulting with a combined 50 years of experience servicing among the largest of vaccine manufacturers in the world.

As we learned from speaking with Cathal in this episode, the company has grown tremendously over the last two years and was profitable in Q4 2020, driven by its existing CRO-based services.

Among its several non-core assets is a hugely exciting data repository and analytics platform called Disease in Motion, which is about to be made commercially available to medical device companies (e.g., wearables) and vaccine manufacturers who would like to use its longitudinal disease progression data.

If you would like to learn more about these studies or to participate in one, check out these pages for more information:

Main: https://www.openorphan.com/human-challenge-programme

Participant recruitment (London): https://flucamp.com/

UK Covid Challenge participation: https://ukcovidchallenge.com/

Also check out the full videocast on our MedTech Trends YT channel: https://youtu.be/1sMAbk447mE

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Find out more about the Open Orphan:

https://www.openorphan.com/about-us/company-overview

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OpenOrphanPLC/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/open-orphan/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVSFYFrrKh3ZXGlmyiJ05_Q/featured

Other mentions in this talk:

Raglan Capital:

https://www.raglancapital.ie/

Open Orphan on AIM:

https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/ORPH/open-orphan-plc/company-page?lang=en

Open Orphan on Euronext:

https://live.euronext.com/en/site-home-page

Zied Tayeb, CEO and Samaher Garbaya, COO co-founded two award-winning startups that are poised to bring impactful innovation in both health-tech (Myelin-H) and space tech (Myelin-S).

Their mission statements are:

🏥 🧠 Myelin-H: to allow clinicians to remotely diagnose and monitor the health statuses of their patients anywhere, anytime, regardless of their physical locations.

&

📡 🚀 Myelin-S: to bring neuromorphic computing for in-space autonomy & making new strides in human-robot cooperation in outer space.

Both companies are founded on a software platform created by the co-founders called Body-Mirror that allows controllers (people) to interact with objects via a brain-computer interface.

Their unique solution and value propositions present interesting opportunities. In the health-tech space, this includes diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases, remote disease progression monitoring and potentially even prognosis. In the space-tech space, this includes teleoperating for space exploration, on-orbit servicing and space exploration.

Both companies are well underway in their testing phases, and they are growing their partnerships with key industry players.

We learned a lot about their startup journies and ambitions for the coming years, and we look forward to hearing more about their successes in the next talk.

If you’re passionate about healthcare and space, have a listen and enjoy!

Check out the full episode on the MedTech Trends Youtube channel here: https://youtu.be/pk4VsS1_Gsc

Find out more about Myelin-H

Myelin-H https://myelinh.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MyelinH

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/myelinh/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKvajLyo6pGDQoK4f93omMg

Find out more about Myelin-S:

https://myelins.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/s_myelin

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/myelins/?viewAsMember=true

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbeXlNcF_3zJ-SkeB6tMHBg/videos

Other mentions in this talk:

NASA iTech Competition:

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/itech/2019_meet_the_innovators_MyelinS/

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/itech

Gumpy BCI:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30215610/

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Ending Credits:

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Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tell-me-instrumental​

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/IsDZxG0bExY​

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Genre and Mood: Dance & Electronic + Brigh

On this podcast we are always looking for innovative technologies and services that address unmet need in healthcare, expand access to essential and effective healthcare and improve outcomes for both patients and providers. So, we were excited at the opportunity to speak with Tim from Caravan Health!

While ACO’s may not have the appeal of flashy new gadgets from the big-four tech companies, underneath their modest surface is a program with huge potential to impact lives. Accountable Care Organizations are the result of a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) program aimed at incentivizing the rapid adoption of value-based care. These programs, if implemented effectively and sustainably, could save CMS hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, by actually expanding healthcare access in both rural and urban communities, all while maintaining high standards of quality care.

Caravan Health has been leading the way in the world of ACO’s and has become a model for others through its proven method that ‘makes the numbers work’. The numbers speak for themselves: 26k providers in their network, 300+ organizations, ~600k attributed Medicare lives, north of $100MM in total shared shaves (and projected to grow, as we learned from Tim in this episode), and 95% average MIPS (quality of care) score in 2019.

Caravan has a suite of solutions and a unique onboarding process that can help new members better manage their patients and also tap into shared savings with greater success than perhaps any other ACO in the industry. This involves a combination nurse-led service delivery, focus on preventive care, tapping into new billing codes and 340b discounts, and a few other key elements in their recipe for success.

We enjoyed speaking with Tim and learning more about ACO’s - and hope you will too!

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Check out the full episode on our MedTech Trends Youtube Channel here: https://youtu.be/8e_9WeXrZAg

Find out more about the Caravan Health:

https://caravanhealth.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/caravanhealth

Facebook: https://www.linkedin.com/company/caravanhealth/

LinkedIn: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKOT5Its3ZWDpR4Ut5BMecg

Digital therapeautics (DTx) are clinical intervention delivered as software that can help with medical ailments as wide ranging as asthma, epilepsy, IBS, depression, diabetes, arthritis, among many other conditions.   

Why do we bring this up now? A handful of DTx companies have been around for about a decade or so, but the pandemic has accelerated the development and release of these therapies, increased awareness among legislators and sparked talks among regulatory and reimbursement agencies to establish global standards for assessing safety, efficacy and cost-effectiveness. If national programs are established to cover the cost of DTx and to create guidelines for prescribing DTx, this could have huge implications for healthcare systems, population health and especially for expanding access to under-served people, such as those living in rural areas.   

In this episode I spoke with Megan about how the Digital Therapeutics Alliance (DTA), a non-profit trade association with roots in at least 15 countries, is helping to advance DTx. Their mission is to “broaden the understanding, adoption and integration of clinically evaluated digital therapeutics” among key healthcare stakeholders.   

We hope you learn something from this talk – we sure did!   

Check out the full video episode on our Youtube Channel: https://youtu.be/yVw7kpfl2nQ

Find out more about the DTA:  

PAI Health’s mission is to become the new global standard for physical activity. And they are well on their way …

Everyone knows that physical activity is correlated with overall health, but have you ever wondered exactly how much activity is enough to keep your heart and body optimally healthy?

Enter PAI Health. The Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) index is based on an algorithm that transforms heart rate data into a standardized, scientifically validated measure of cardiovascular fitness. The app is available for free to general consumers via an app store, and it’s also device agnostic so it will work with any platform that integrates PAI (disclaimer: I have it with my Fitbit).

PAI points can be gained through ANY physical activity that increases your heart rate. The higher your heart rate, the more PAI points you earn. Most importantly, maintaining 100 PAI on average over a 7-day period can dramatically improve your health and longevity. And it is personalized and adaptable to each individual’s level of physical fitness!

Originally developed by a research team based at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the PAI index is now backed by numerous peer-reviewed studies and is based on hundreds of thousands of individuals and well over a million person-years of data.

PAI Health has also developed unique solutions for insurers, employers and healthcare providers. In addition to a growing impact in the insurance and corporate wellness program markets, they are also focusing on cardiovascular health among diabetes patients, and are also pursuing solutions for engaging patients in clinical trials.

Check out the full video podcast on our Youtube Channel: https://youtu.be/oiHIOTA0a3I 

Find out more about PAI Health:  

Despite the hardship brought on by the covid-19 pandemic, one of the silver linings (if we can say so) is the major shift toward digital access to healthcare around the world.

If access to affordable, timely and effective mental health services was a major challenge before the pandemic, what we’ve seen over the past year is a skyrocketing demand for these services coupled with an explosion of options for personalized therapies from companies like MindBeacon. Although there is still more work to be done in breaking down barriers to mental health services, MindBeacon is in a perfect position to make a lasting, high impact transformation in this healthcare segment with its recent offering in public markets.

As we discussed in this episode, the real barriers to mental health services go well beyond knowledge and education, and are more centered accessibility in terms of timing (getting intervention early), location (having to travel to a limited number of sites ,primarily in urban areas), logistics (including booking and scheduling appointments, and taking time away from work to attend appointments), stigma, privacy and many other issues.

MindBeacon is changing the game with offerings including self-guided therapy CBT, live therapy CBT. sessions and an education platform called Stronger Minds – all available online so people can get the help they want (or need) on their own terms. Never has obtaining mental health services been easier and more affordable to Canadians. And they are just getting started. MindBeacon is growing rapidly, even during the pandemic, and is in the process of hiring more therapists and data scientists who will collectively help to expand and personalize their offerings further.

It was a pleasure speaking with Sam and we look forward to hearing more about how this exciting company and will impact the healthcare system and improve people’s lives.

Learn more about MindBeacon: