How many people do you know in tech who say that they have an idea for a company that is absolutely going to change the world? It’s great to aim high, but nine times out of 10, you hear the idea, you nod, you give words of encouragement. You do all of those things to show that you’re a good friend, but we all know what you’re really thinking:
BULLSHIT.
Disrupting the refrigerator is not a game-changer. Designing the perfect app that gives you the optimal path to work that would give you the best possible workout – nice, but no cigar.
On any given week, we see literally hundreds of startups here at AlleyWatch. We probably should have been VCs; who knows – maybe one day we will be. In the course of at looking at all of these so-called game-changing startups, there are those that do stand out. Those true disruptors that actually could change the world for the masses and/or help to in some way improve the lives of those they touch.
The innovative companies that are saving lives, changing lives, bucking the odds, and changing the game are only a slide away…
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Before you check out the list…
The 30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Kinsa
Kinsa is an easy-to-use, toddler-friendly, award-winning Smart Thermometer that gives fast and accurate temperature readings – in just ten seconds.
But there’s more to this first-ever FDA-approved Smartphone-Connected Oral Thermometer than that: it’s also creating the first real-time health map, to track and stop the spread of disease. The information is uploaded so that you can see if there are illnesses going around at schools or in your local area.
Now, think about something like the Ebola virus.
Since January 2014, thousands of people have fallen victim to the Ebola virus, and more than 6,000 people have died in the worst-ever outbreak to date. Liberia has declared a national emergency. Eight other countries in the region remain on high alert. Imagine if this Smart Thermometer was out there in the world – globally – to offer a clear map of where the virus is, where it’s spreading, and the path it’s likely to take next. Or SARS. Or MERS.
There’s a reason why it’s a winner: Grand Prize, Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation; Grand Prize, NYC Innovation HealthTech; Grand Prize, Demo Mobile, 2013; Grand Prize, Health 2.0/DC2VC; Gold Winner, 2015 National Parenting Publications Award.
It’s also potentially a global game-changer.
CityMD
There was a time when doctors made house calls, and those days are long gone. In fact, the average wait time to see a doctor in many metropolitan areas across the US is 18.5 days. In New York, the average wait time to see the family doctor is 26 days, and frankly, that’s sick. And anyone who has ever had to go to the ER on a weekend, because his or her doctor wasn’t available, knows that it’s never a pleasant experience and dollars to donuts, you have to plan on spending the better part of your day or evening just waiting your turn.
That’s also why CityMD Urgent Care is on our list of game changers. With medical office in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Westchester and Rockland County, the doctor is in when you need one. 365 days a year. No appointment necessary. And it’s about time someone disrupted the ER.
It’s not just a storefront. CityMD provides a highly trained staff who use electronic medical records and electronic pharmaceutical transactions, and a board-certified emergency medical physician will see you quickly – and take the time to give you the right diagnosis, answer your questions, and set up the aftercare you need. Just walk in. They also accept most insurance plans, and will treat children and adults. Aren’t you feeling better already?
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Oscar
If ever there was a health insurance company for the Digital Native, it would be Oscar, which does have the potential to break an industry that is ripe for not only disruption, but could use a bit of shaking up. And upgrading. And being more user friendly. How friendly is Oscar? You can shop for a doctor and pick the one you like. If you need to speak to one immediately, you can do that, too. Members can click to talk to a board-certified doctor over the phone for advice and common prescriptions, and get free checkups, flu shots, generic drugs, and other preventive care needed to keep one healthy.
It’s New York only – at least for now – and modernizing the insurance industry is not easy – or cheap (the company, which counts Joshua Kushner as a cofounder, has already raised $150 million), but if successful – and scalable – Oscar has the potential to change the insurance world.
Owlet
50% of new parents’ idea of a baby monitor is the antiquated audio and video, yet detecting disease early and reducing infant mortality rates through technology can change the world, and utilizing the Internet of Things to detect early illnesses in children has amazing potential ramifications on a global scale. Especially considering that, even in this day and age, the infant mortality rate in the US alone is three babies, every single hour of every single day.
Globally, the numbers are much worse.
Owlet is a Smart Monitor that wraps around a baby bootie to monitor information like heart rate, breathing, sleeps quality and skin temperature, and transmits the information via Bluetooth (or over your wireless network) to your smart phone or any connected device, in real time. . It uses the same LED technology used in medical pulse monitors, and has a companion iOS app for parents to check.
Forget connecting your phone to your stereo system. That is not disruption. Owlet is a huge potential global game changer for the tiniest new members of the planet.
And that’s just for starters, baby. Think about what a difference this technology could make when it comes to home care and monitoring for the elderly and infirmed…
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Adhere Tech
Non-compliance – meaning, people who are not taking their medication, or forgetting to take it – is a huge issue, and the ramifications for non compliance are literally deadly. Enter Adhere Tech, a patented smart pill bottles to track and improve medication adherence in real-time – and texts patients to remind them to take their meds. If a patient misses a dose, it sends an alert like an automated phone call or text. The company not only wants to improve adherence to medications, but also improve clinical trial efficiency and research in the pharmaceutical industry.
MDChat
There are times when doctors need to reach other doctors or healthcare colleagues – stat – and it’s not always as easy as you might think. Just ask a doctor. In fact, MDChat was founded by a doctor. While building the largest neurosurgery practice in New York’s Westchester County, Dr. John Abrahams was often frustrated by his inability to reach colleagues or referring professionals and found that existing platforms were nothing more than social media tools with no true patient care, regulatory compliance or practice productivity benefits. MDChat is the first HIPAA-secure communications platform designed to improve workflow productivity within and between healthcare environments.
Now when a doctor has to reach another doctor – especially in an emergency, and isn’t it always – done! Yes, it’s a game changer and has the potential to make a world of difference, when it may well literally be a matter of life or death.
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Maven Clinic
Not everyone can get to a doctor or medical practitioner, when they need one, and they’re certainly not available to see 24/7, and we know when emergencies arise – when the doctor is not in.
Telemedicine is a game changer. Women are the primary caregivers for the family, and while they always have a million things to do and places to be, a doctor’s waiting room isn’t one of them. Maven Clinic is the first-ever online go-to solution for women, with medical professional who meet whatever the need may be at the time – nurse practitioners, doctors, nutritionists, lactation consultants, and other specialists – who are available 24/7 – and who will consult via video chat. The internet is full of bad information about women’s health, and it’s even more confusing when it comes to children’s health. Maven helps women get definitive, personalized answers from a carefully vetted group of women’s and children’s health practitioners — and considering how difficult it can be when you need immediate medical help for a sick child – Maven Clinic is poised to change everything.
Board Vitals
There’s no such thing as too many doctors. Board Vitals has trained over 20,000 doctors and nurses, which in turn impacts the healthcare of hundreds of thousands of patients – and is the only medical question bank that brings together content from all of the major publishers, top research institutions, and individual doctors. It’s not only a new technology: It’s a new ecosystem that brings the whole industry together. Say CEO Daniel Lambert, “’For the first time, medical content is not just peer reviewed: it’s reviewed by hundreds of doctors in that specialty. Every piece of content on our platform is continually rated, and we receive hundreds of feedback notices every week.”
And having medical practitioners up on the latest information and most innovative forms of treatment – and with all of the information available online, in one place – is a game changer.
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Augmedix
Augmedix is a service powered by Google Glass that reclaims the hours physicians spend on the computer entering or retrieving data from electronic health records and refocuses them on what matters most: patient care. Doctors talk to their patients and Augmedix extracts the data from the conversation via an audio-visual stream captured by Glass, and fills out the forms in the Electronic Health Records in real time. And it works both way: doctors can also use voice commands to call up information from the EHRs, instead of taking the time away from the patient to look them up.
It seems Google Glass might have a healthy future in the medical community – and can be a game changer in patient care and doctor-patient relationships.
Wellthie
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a person healthy, wealthie… yeah, yeah, we know. But shopping for health insurance can be intimidating, confusing, overwhelming – and can cause a lot of people to lose a lot of sleep over what decision to make. Wellthie has created a consumer experience that is simple, personal and easy to understand, transforming a once thorny transaction into something approachable and understandable. The cloud-based platform helps insurers to understand people’s needs, and helps potential customers to make informed decision.
Funny how simple can be so game-changing (and stress-reducing).
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Noom
There are a lot of weight loss programs and fitness apps out there, but Noom offers smartphone apps that promote healthy living by monitoring the progress of its users, and providing advice on weight management.
In other words, Noom might just be the one that helps to tip the scales.
As Cofounder and Co-CEO Artem Petakov told AlleyWatch, “We don’t simply track, but rather, we coach. We’re not simply a place to record actions; instead, we guide patients on a path to improved health. We do this in a way that keeps users coming back during what can be a very difficult journey—we’ve retained 42% of consumer users over two years. Improving diet and exercise creates results that feel good later on, but can be very challenging day-to-day. Much of our work has been to find ways to keep our users on the path to success, even when it feels slow or especially challenging.“
Between Noom Prevent, which provides mobile delivery of the clinically-proven NDPP curriculum; Noom Diabetes Coach, which incorporates diet, exercise, and basic medication/blood sugar tracking, and is designed for use by patients with their care teams; Noom Monitor, which applies cognitive behavioral therapy to eating disorder treatment and includes intuitive food logging, behavior tracking, and an integrated therapist dashboard; and Noom Coach Enterprise, a customized weight loss app for large groups, with curated social support specific to the organization, trained facilitators, and custom dashboard tracking and data integration, they’ve got it covered. And of course, there’s also the original Noom Weight Loss Coach. Noom has a full package which seems to be changing the game.
EpiBone
EpiBone is a revolutionary bone reconstruction company that allows patients to “grow their own bone.” Literally, and considering that before this, the only way to get human bone was to literally cut it out of a human, and usually it was the same human who needed that bone transplant. And didn’t that leave him or her short a bone somewhere? And if the bone was taken from elsewhere, there was always the risk of rejection.
EpiBone’s pioneering technology utilizes a scan of the patient’s bone defect and the patient’s own stem cells to construct and cultivate a defect-specific autologous-like bone graft – which means superior bone graft that will provide exact defect repair, a simplified surgical procedure, improved bone formation and regeneration, and shorter recovery times, without the complications of foreign body implantation.
Just how big a game-changer is this? The bone is grown in the precise anatomical shape and size the patient needs, without having to cut a bone from his or her body, and the implanted bone graft is alive, so it has a potential to continue growing and remodeling. Amazing stuff!
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Flatiron
After seeing friends and family battle cancer, founders Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg decided to sell their adtech startup, Invite Media, to Google for $81 million and launch Flatiron, a company that has taken on cancer by organizing the world’s oncology information and making it useful for patients, physicians, life sciences and researchers, collects data from cancer patients to help inform other patients, researchers, and doctors.
Through their OncologyCloud™ platform, Flatiron is building the most comprehensive system of oncology data intelligence in the US, by aggregating and transforming clinical and financial data from EMR and billing systems in real-time, resulting in a data platform that provides the most comprehensive view of a patient’s experience in the oncology office in real-time. And when it comes to health care and cancer, timing is always critical.
AiCure
AiCure is tracking medical adherence through artificial intelligence, using its patented software, including advanced facial recognition and motion-sensing software, to automate the process of DOT (directly observed therapy). AiCure’s smartphone app (along with the webcam/camera for visual confirmation) uses computer-vision algorithms to determine whether a person taking a pill is the person who’s supposed to be taking it; is taking the proper dosage; and is actually swallowing the medication.
No human supervision is necessary. Automated DOT® takes just a few seconds to use, adapts to different patient behaviors, cognitive skills and language requirements, and interactively walks the patient through the correct self-administration of oral, inhalable, injectable, and sublingual medications.
The winner factor: AiCure is the recipient of over $3.4 million in innovation awards from the National Institutes of Health.
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Cipher Health
CipherHealth is a SaaS platform that develops and implements analytical healthcare IT solutions that utilize clinical data to improve quality of care and increase efficiency in the health care system, while delivering real value to healthcare providers, payors and patients.
In other words, via discharge instructions, follow-up calls, monitoring through mobile devices, and a platform that gives everyone on the care team access to information, Cipher Health is a 360 degree approach to health care and patient care – which makes all the difference to the patients’ health and recovery, while increasing efficiency and value in the system. And just knowing that someone’s out there keeping an eye out can be a game-changer.
Immunovent
Over $1.2 billion is spent on annual allergy testing – and up to 20% of people with allergy symptoms are misdiagnosed. Immunovent is changing allergy diagnosis with their patented Local Antibody Mucosal Brush Diagnostic (LAMB-Dx), a platform technology that allows for accurate detection and diagnosis of diseases, including airborne and food allergies, using a small sample of cells that are painlessly collected with a soft brush from the inside of the nose or mouth. LAMB-Dx is designed to correctly diagnose the many patients who have results from blood or skin testing which are inaccurate or inconsistent with their symptoms, and since it’s needle-free, it’s ideal for the pediatric population. Coming soon, allergy sufferers, and it won’t be long now…
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Medidata Solutions
We all know how critical clinical trials are in the testing and approvals process. Medidata Solutions helps clinical researchers reduce trial cycle times, achieve early visibility to reliable clinical data, and maintain strict fiscal responsibility, by delivering innovative technology to safety accelerate the process of bringing life-enhancing treatments to market. Because it’s SaaS, the Medidata’s Clinical Cloud has been proven to scale from small biotechs conducting one study, to major pharmas conducting dozens. It also allows researchers to cut clinical development costs, mitigate clinical development risks, and deliver drugs and devices to market faster. It’s a potential life-saver – and a game-changer.
Cureatr
Group texting certainly helps friends better coordinate their activities, but when health care providers are doing it, it’s a game changer.
Cureatr provides group messaging apps for healthcare providers, in order to overcome all of those care-coordination challenges that result in delays and errors.
Founded by a group of physicians in New York City, who’ve been there, done that, Cureatr helps accountable care organizations, hospitals and health systems, specialty care providers, and physician group practices improve care coordination through a mobile-first solution that leverages real-time Care Transition Notifications with secure messaging and clinical workflow tools, to ensure that providers deliver healthcare that goes uninterrupted. And can communicate with each other to make sure that everyone’s on the same page. (No pun intended.)
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
NeoStem
NeoStem is a biopharmaceutical company – and the first company to provide adult stem cell collection and banking services to the general adult population. Their mission: pursuing the preservation and enhancement of human health globally through the development of novel cell-based personalized medicine therapeutics that prevent, treat or cure disease. It’s a new take on treatment, with the goal of reducing a lifetime dependency on pills in favor of a single dose of cells to help society reduce the burden of an unsustainable healthcare system.
And that’s a potential game-changer all around. And globally.
AllazoHealth
All patients are different and medication adherence programs are not one size fits all. And they’re prescribed medications for different ailments and reasons. AllazoHealth takes a different approach, with an analytics platform that’s addressing that problem – with very promising results. By using predictive analytics to identify high risk patients likely to miss a medication fill and predict which interventions will best influence individual patient behavior.
The AllazoEngine can also predict the amount that each intervention option will influence a specific patient’s behavior. And it’s self-learning, so within several months, it can learn to predict which patients will be more influenced by a novel intervention technology. This enables a more rapid cycle innovation and deployment of new intervention approaches in a rigorous data-driven manner.
Game-changer!
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
eCaring
The hospital is no patient’s favorite place – which doesn’t keep people from doing everything they can to avoid having to be admitted.
eCaring keeps people out of the hospital by generating essential real time health care data from the home via a web-based at-home care monitoring and management system that delivers real-time information to care providers. The company’s unique cloud-based system integrates significant behavioral, clinical and medication adherence data to manage and monitor seniors and people with chronic conditions. That information is disseminated to care managers and providers, hospitals and health plans, helping them to generate actionable alerts that enable timely interventions – which keep small problems in the home from leading to big ones in the hospital. The results are more efficient allocation of resources, improved information sharing, and reduced overAdd Mediaall cost of care.
Smart Vision Labs
Smart Vision Labs is a total game-changer for the one billion people around the world suffer from vision loss due to uncorrected refractive errors- and who don’t have access to the care they need. Smart Vision Labs has invented smartphone-based autorefraction technology to make eye exams accessible: one’s vision can be checked anywhere, any time, in seconds, by simply taking a picture of the eye using a smartphone. It’s a game-changer that’s revolutionizing the global vision care industry.
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Theranos
No one is overly fond of needles – getting stuck sucks! Theranos has developed a method to draw and test a small amount of blood through a single pinprick to a finger instead of needing to fill vials of the stuff via the long-standing and much more invasive needle in the arm method. The consumer healthcare technology company is absolutely changing the game by offering comprehensive laboratory tests from samples as small as a few drops of blood, and at unprecedented low prices.
Theranos’s mission is to make actionable health information accessible to people everywhere in the world at the time it matters – early on – enabling early detection and intervention of disease, and empowering individuals by giving them affordable access to the information they need. In fact, founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes left Stanford University’s School of Engineering to build Theranos around her vision for healthcare.
And wasn’t it about damned time someone reinvented the blood test?
OncoGenesis
OncoGenesis is all about detecting the presence and progression of cervical cancer and to provide women worldwide with access to point-of-care screening for this disease, which is the second most prevalent form of cancer found in women, with approximately half a million dying from it unnecessarily each year.
The company is in advanced development stages of a low cost test that will provide women worldwide access to screening, significantly improving early detection over the current Pap and adjunctive HPV tests.
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
New Inventions
You wouldn’t ordinarily consider sanitary napkins as being among New inventions, yet many women in rural areas do not have access to them and use clothes instead, which is highly unhygienic, and can cause vaginal infections, skin irritations and embarrassing stains in public. The market is virtually controlled by two companies, Procter and Gamble (makers of Whisper) and Johnson and Johnson (makers of Stayfree and Carefree), and they’re costly. Muruganandam Arunachalam designed a sanitary napkin-making machine which produces napkins at low cost, and it was a game-changer. The inventor has brought better hygiene – and jobs – to 14 states of India and is making the technology available in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya Uganda, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Embrace Warmer
Each year, more than 1 million babies die the day that they’re born – almost all occurring in the developing world – and the leading cause of these deaths is preventable and treatable complications related to prematurity, low birth weight, and hypothermia. The award-winning Embrace Warmer is designed for those hypothermic infants and costs a fraction of the price of a standard incubator, doesn’t require constant electricity, and is portable, hygienic, and reusable. It’s a small thing that has made a huge difference.
And it all started as a class project at Stanford University, when a group of graduate students were challenged to design an intervention for neonatal hypothermia that cost less than 1% of the price of a state-of-the-art incubator.
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Proteus Digital Health
Proteus Digital Health makes an ingestible sensor made entirely of edible ingredients that you take alongside your medications. Your body powers the sensor: your stomach fluids complete the power source and your body transmits the unique number generated by the sensor via a patch that you wear that detects heart rate, heart activity, and rest, and sends the information to your smartphone so that you can see what’s going on inside your body and get a clearer picture of the care you need – or how your body is reacting to medications your may be taking. The company is also working on a series of “digital medicines,” basically building a digital health platform.
The company calls it ‘Digital Medicines,’ which will be the same pharmaceuticals you take today, with one small change: each pill will also contain a tiny sensor that can communicate, via their digital health feedback system, vital information about your medication-taking behaviors and how your body is responding.
That’s a game-changer. Powered by people.
Smartphone Infectious Disease Testing
A team of researchers, led by Samuel K. Sia, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a low-cost smartphone accessory/dongle that can perform a point-of-care test that simultaneously detects three infectious disease markers in just 15 minutes – from a finger prick of blood. For the first time, here’s a device that replicates all mechanical, optical, and electronic functions of a lab-based blood test and performs a triplexed immunoassay not currently available in a single test format: HIV antibody, treponemal-specific antibody for syphilis, and non-treponemal antibody for active syphilis infection.
Specifically, it performs an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) without requiring any stored energy: all necessary power is drawn from the smartphone.
It’s another game-changer for developing countries in helping with the detection and treatment of mother-to-child diseases.
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
Bionic Pancreas
Diabetes is a killer and even with proper management, it can shorten one’s lifespan by 10-15 years. And if you’re a Type 1 diabetic whose life is ruled by pin pricks to test blood glucose levels and insulin injections, which have long been the go-to treatment, the times they are a-changing at long last. A group from Boston University and Massachusetts General Hospital are working together to make automated blood glucose control a reality with the Bionic Pancreas, which automatically make decisions about insulin and glucagon dosing every five minutes. “People with type 1 diabetes who used the bionic pancreas instead of manually monitoring glucose using fingerstick tests and delivering insulin using a pump were more likely to have blood glucose levels consistently within the normal range, with fewer dangerous lows or highs,” the National Institute of Health reported. The Bionic Pancreas can also be monitored remotely by a physician or caregiver. It’s a start – and it’s definitely a game-changer.
Nanobiosym
Nanobiosym is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company that is creating a new science that emerges from the holistic integration of physics, biomedicine, and nanotechnology. NBS focuses on incubating transformational technologies that have the potential for game-changing impact and commercializing and scaling up these technologies for deployment in developed and developing world markets. One of their devices – GENE-Radar – is a hand-held that can take a single drop of blood or saliva and accurately detect genetic fingerprints. So they can better diagnose HIV in under and hour and affordably, rather than the usual two weeks that it takes in the US and in developing countries, it can take months. This personalized nanomedicine is a game-changer for expectant mothers in third world countries: it can potentially help to stop the transmission of HIV to the next generation. Think of it this way: what the smartphone did for communications, NBS is doing for health care. And that’s a total game-changer.
30 HealthTech Startups with the Potential to Change the World is presented by HealthTech’15: Fueling Innovation in Westchester, an action-packed, two-day conference, brings together leading innovators in biotech, medtech, and health tech to showcase the innovation culture that has taken root in Westchester County, NY – a vital link in a thriving northeast health tech economic hub. Three keynoters, plus 50 experts, plus an Innovation Showcase, plus face time with CEOs, plus networking – it all adds up to an incomparable experience. The conference takes place May 18-19 at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Tarrytown, NY. Find out from the people who are driving and inspiring change what the future holds. Register today at here.
