Florida Startup IntelligentM: The Sensor Packed Handwashing Police

Florida startup, HealthTech,Mhealth, IntelligentM, Sensor, startupHospital Acquired Infections, or HAIs, are a very serious problem and very serious business. Over 100,000 people in the U.S. die every year from infections they acquire once they are admitted to the hospital. The biggest culprit in the passing of infections in the hospital is improper hand washing.

While it’s such a critical part of patient care, doctors, nurses, techs, volunteers, and other hospital caregivers either skip hand washing all together or quickly run their hands through water without washing them thoroughly.

IntelligentM is trying to fix that problem using sensors. The Sarasota startup has been through the BluePrint Health accelerator in New York, the GE Startup Health program, and the SXSW accelerator program.

The sensors, actually in this case RfiD tags, are embedded in a bracelet that hospital care givers wear. Sensors are also installed at hand washing stations and most points where a caregiver needs to administer care.

The water safe bracelet, similar in size and material to a “Live Strong” bracelet, communicates with the sensors on the hand washing stations. The bracelet can tell how long it’s been at the hand washing station. They emit a buzz or vibration that tells the caregiver to wash their hands and gives a shorter signal when hands have been washed.

The bracelet also has a microUSB connection that can output historical hand washing information for hospital administrators.

With the introduction of “ObamaCare” HAIs became an even bigger focus area. Hospitals will now have their infection scores posted publicly, and infection rates will play into reimbursement rates for hospitals.

The IntelligentM has been testing at a Sarasota hospital since last year.

Find out more at intelligentM.com

Image: GizMag

Memphis Startup: HandMinder Aims To Restore Hand Movement In Stroke Victims

There are some incredible startups coming out of Memphis Tennessee and HandMinder is one of them. Handminder was part of the first class at the ZeroTo510 accelerator. Zeroto510 is the first cohort based medical device accelerator and was a joint venture between Memphis BioWorks and Seed Hatchery, the local tech startup accelerator.

HandMinder was founded by Dr. Yu Liu, MD,Phd, Randall J Nelson PhD,John M Denton, Technical Advisor & CoFounder,  James Bell who currently serves as the company’s CEO.

A shocking 15 million people suffer from strokes across the globe. 12.5 million of those people survive and of those 12.5 million, 60% of them have some form of hand dysfunction after the stroke.

The devices that are currently on the market today that help rehab stroke victims’ hands deal with the problem from a total physiological perspective. The devices today allow functionality but not learned functionality. They provide localized muscular exercise but not brain function.

The HandMinder device, which fits like a glove, restores the neurological connection between the hand and the brain. The loss of hand movement in a stroke victim is a neurological problem, not just a physiological problem. By reprogramming the stroke victims brain to hand function, HandMinder closes the natural physiological loop.

Unlike other devices that address this issue, HandMinder is a take home product that allows stroke victims to rehabilitate their hands as often as they would like without having to take up extra time in their rehab clinics. It also allows them to continue their therapy while traveling, being outside and living somewhat normal lives.

When designing the HandMinder product, the team at HandMinder talked with stroke victims and their families. Because strokes are more prevalent in older patients, Handminder even talked with grandparents and grandchildren who were concerned with the way some of the medical devices looked. A lot of other devices used for this purpose, seemed somewhat scary to grandchildren which was a real concern for older patients. Handminder, while still a medical device, “looks cool”.

HandMinder presented at the ZeroTo510 demo day last month to a crowd of investors. They are currently working on their third prototype and plan to start field testing the device shortly.

Linkage:

For more info visit handminder.com

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Austin Startup: Lumos Pharma To Develop & Prepare Autism Treatment Discovered In Cincinnati

There may be some great news for parents of Autistic boys in the coming years.

A research team at the University of Cincinnati has announced that they’ve successfully treated an animal model of Creatine Transporter Deficiency (CTD). CTD is what causes Autism in boys. Over 50,000 boys in the US are afflicted with CTD.

Creatine Transporter Deficiency causes symptoms including seizures, mental retardation and speech defects.

CTD was discovered at Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati in 2000. Almost all of the research on CTD has been performed at Children’s Hospital and at the University of Cincinnati.

This is actually a wonderful, tremendous Cincinnati-centric story,” Joe Clark the UC Neurology Professor who led the research team said to newsrecord.org.. “The disease was discovered at Children’s Hospital, the animal model of the disease was made here in Cincinnati by UC, and the drug was made to treat those mice here at Cincinnati.”

The research team found that cyclocreatine, which has been dubbed CincY, has been incredibly effective at reducing the symptoms of CTD models in animals.

Clark reported that the time from discovery in 2000 to the discovery of this possible treatment in just twelve years was actually a rather short time frame. While this work has been done on animals, it may be another two to three years befor CincY can be used to treat humans.

Clark is quick to point out that this is just a treatment for the disease and not a cure.

“Essentially, a cure is fixing a broken pipe at the break, and a treatment is making a bypass around the afflicted area without fixing it, but in a manner that eliminates the symptoms” Clark said.

Linkage:

Source: newsrecord.org

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Austin Startup MapMyFitness Announces $9 Million Dollar Round

Austin fitness startup MapMyFitness has received a $9 million dollar round of funding.

SiliconHillsNews is reporting that Austin Ventures and Milestone Venture Partners led the series B round for the fitness app development startup. Competitor Group Inc, and The Running Specialty Group LLC also participated in the round through other business partnerships.

The Austin based startup makes a variety of fitness apps that allow their users to track their progress on their smartphone or other mobile device. They’ve already built up a strong community of over nine million registered users. They are currently adding 25,000 new users per day.

“Austin Ventures’ continuing enthusiasm is a great validation of our success to date.  We’re also thrilled to leverage Milestone Venture Partners’ unique expertise on healthcare technology services, and to deepen our business partnerships with Competitor Group and run.com, the e-commerce platform for The Running Specialty Group,” said Richard Jalichandra, chief executive officer of MapMyFITNESS. “This Series B funding allows us to continue innovating and improving our tools for people of all levels to improve their fitness, nutrition and overall health.”

One of MapMyFitness’ strong points is how their apps are resonating within the fitness community. Fitness event producers have used MapMyFitness to track participants progress in races, decathlons and more.

“MapMyFITNESS’ amazing growth of one of the largest audiences of runners, walkers, cyclists and active people has tremendous synergy with what we’re doing at Competitor with events like the Rock N Roll race series,” said Scott Dickey, president and chief executive officer at Competitor Group, Inc.

“The MapMyFITNESS team has created one of the most engaging utilities for fitness enthusiasts, one that complements what we’re trying to do with our new website, run.com,” said Ken Gart, President of The Running Specialty Group.

MapMyFitness is available across multiple platforms. Of course iOS and Android are their leading platforms but it’s also available as a native app for Blackberry, Windows Mobile and iPads.

Linkage:

Find out more about MapMyFitness here

Source: SiliconHillNews

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DC HealthTech Startup MedClimate Presents At TechBUZZ

MedClimate, a DC area startup in the HealthTech field, presented last week at TechBUZZ as part of Capital Connection 2012.

MedClimate is looking to take a problem that many new and expectant parents face with doctors and that is, getting questions answered without increasing wait times in already packed waiting rooms. As Tim Barnes, Founder of MedClimate, points out in his pitch, everyone has experienced long waits at doctors offices.

What you may not have considered is that as information has become more and more available to patients, including new parents and expectant parents, wait times in waiting rooms are increasing because more patients are asking more questions. This definitely makes sense when you’re the parent, or patient, but never in the waiting room itself.


Through a disruptive approach to appointment management and using things like videos, video messaging, and making web and mobile appointments, medclimate hopes t o streamline care and make wait times less painful. They plan on doing this all and still allowing for an increase in patient/parent care questioning.

MedClimate plans to use video conferencing to allow patients to ask questions and get immediate feedback from their doctors from the comfort of their own home, or office, while still allowing the practitioner to collect payment via insurance.

The ultimate goal is to not affect everyones already busy schedule with unnecessary appointments.

Check out Barnes pitch below:

Arkansas Startup: Univeristy of Arkansas Announces E-Braa

A team of engineers out of the University of Arkansas have developed a new wireless health monitoring system being dubbed “e-bra”. The “e-bra” has textile sensors built in that monitor cardiac signs, blood pressure, body temperature, respiratory rate, oxygen consumption, and even some neural activity. The sensor laden bra communicates all of this information back to a smart phone.

The system that’s designed to be outfitted in a sports bra for women or possibly a vest for men does not require any kind of cuff and could function as a replacement for at home blood pressure monitors.

“Our e-bra enables continuous, real-time monitoring to identify any pathophysiological changes,” said Vijay Varadan, Distinguished Professor of electrical engineering. “It is a platform on which various sensors for cardiac-health monitoring are integrated into the fabric. The garment collects and transmits vital health signals to any desired location in the world.”

The sensors themselves are smaller than a dime and include gold nano wires. They also have flexible conducting textile nano sensors. The textile sensors are than woven into the bra and don’t require sticky adhesives or gels.

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HealthTech Startup In California Attracts NFL Champion Investors

Former Denver Broncos Terrell Davis and Byron Chamberlain with Credential Protection co-founder Jeffrey Fricher (photo Andrew Foulk for the Californian)

Former Denver Broncos players Terrell Davis and Byron Chamberlain have invested in a health tech startup in Temecula California. The startup called Credential Protection LLC is taking a different stab at the doctor review space.

Credential Protection LLC is using a mix of on the ground, in the office data along with online data to build a more dependable review database for doctors. The Credential Protection system actually begins in the doctors office with surveys given to patients. Doctors can join credential protection in a variety of plans that range from $195 a month for surveys and assessments to $1495 per month for a package that includes overall social media management for the physician.

The need for services like this is what drove Chamberlain and Davis to invest in the company that was founded by Jeffrey Frichner.

As an ex-football player, people want to know where you get the best doctor because they assume we had the best in the NFL,” Davis said to North County Times.

Davis had a stress fracture in his shin, late in his football career that took to long to diagnose. Davis also said that he was looking for a doctor to help him diagnose memory loss, mood swings and headaches, conditions Davis feels may have come from his football playing days. Although he did suggest they just may be from getting older.

“I love the fact that Credential Protection not only protects the doctor, but the public,” Chamberlain said.  Chamberlain had a ruptured tendon in his hand that never quite healed right

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Kansas City Startup: Cognovant Raises $500k For mPHR Pocket Health

A Kansas City startup called Cognovant launches last summer and has been working on a new, easy to use mPHR (mobile personal health record) application. Their application, called PocketHealth, is actually a suite of applications and is cross platform. The company has been saying for months that they will be launching on iOS and Android this month.

With the news that they just raised a $500,000 seed round, they should be that much closer to reaching their deadline.

Cognovant’s PocketHealth, will be free for individual users to download and use. The app captures data and allows users to manage their wellness. It’s built under the stringent medical industry standards. Cognovant has said that the application is based on international data standards and has the same foundation as a full electronic medical record.

Cognovant CEO, Dr. Joe Ketcherside, confirmed to SiliconPrairie today that they are still on track for a  launch in about two weeks after final testing is complete.

Beyond the base, free app, users will be able to download a multi-user “family” version which will give users the ability to manage multiple health records. They will also have an upgrade called PocketHealth PHR which will allow users to manage more complex health issues.

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North Carolina Startup: Nanoly Wins Duke Startup $50,000 Spring Challenge

(photo: Sophia Palenberg/The Chronicle)

A women owned startup called Nanoly has just won the Duke startup $50,000 spring challenge. Duke University’s $50,000 spring startup competition ran from February until this week. The startups in the challenge had to fit into one of three tracks; the functional track, special interest track or pilot track. Within the functional track were 5 categories; Clean Energy, Healthcare and Life Sciences, IT, Internet and Media, Social Enterprises and other. The grand prize winner came from the Healthcare and Life Sciences category.

Ting Ting Zhou (Duke University), Nanxi Liu (Berkeley) and Crystal Lee (Stanford) founded Nanoly with one common goal, to use a nano-sized solution to solve a macro sized problem. While you may not think about it the problem that these three women are hoping to solve is actually a big problem and one as Americans we may take for granted.

Zhou explains in her pitch video that while developed countries have access to vaccines and diseases like small pox are pretty much eradicated, emerging countries don’t have access to vaccines. One of the main reasons emerging countries don’t have access to vaccines can be boiled down to refrigeration and electricity.

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With Two Startups In The Program, New Health Focused “WellTech” Incubator Launches In New York

There’s a new startup incubator in New York City hoping to help launch new businesses in the health and wellness sector. The WellTech incubator is based in New York’s Gramercy neighborhood and is headed by Peter Ellis who is the CEO and  one of the founders of SpaFinder the world’s largest spa and wellness resource.

Welltech is being financed by Ellis’ Jubilee Investments. Jubilee found it’s big success by being a first round investor in Gramercy One. Gramercy One offers cloud based business management solutions for over 5,800 spas, gyms and medical practices world wide. Gramercy One announced a $14.5 million dollar round of financing led by Steve Case’s Revolution Ventures, GroTech, TD Capital and Jubilee, last fall.

“The phenomenal success of SpaFinder and GramercyOne showed us that technology holds enormous potential for helping people lead healthier lives,” Ellis said. “New York City is home to some of the most creative innovators in both the technology and wellness sectors, and we look forward to working with them to take wellness-related technology and services to an exciting new level.”

Companies chosen to participate in the WellTech Incubator will receive $50,000 in seed capital to start their business, along with office space. They’ll also have access to GramercyOne and Spafinder executives for guidance and mentoring. There may also be future financing rounds in the cards from WellTech along with other introduced investors.

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