Tag: health

Employee wellness company Wellable acquired DailyEndorphin, which offers corporate wellness challenges in which employees can set up group fitness or nutrition programs and invite their colleagues to participate. 

DailyEndorphin offers challenges for exercise, step count, nutrition, weight and hydration.

Boston-based Wellable will add DailyEndorphins assets to its Wellable Wellness Platform, which also includes an incentive program and support model, a personal wellness assessment and clinical event verifications (where flu shots and preventative care are verified). The employee-focused company also has health content and on-demand classes.

“We are thrilled to support the next chapter for DailyEndorphin and welcome them to our thriving Wellable community. DailyEndorphin was a pioneer in the wellness challenge industry, and we look forward to delivering customizable, affordable and effective wellness programs for their customers,” Geoff Geredien, chief growth officer of Wellable, said in a statement.

THE LARGER TREND

In September, Wellable acquired Sweat Factor, a fitness

The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled Thursday that Apple Watches with ECG functionality violate two AliveCor patents, but the agency put an import ban on hold.

The ITC issued a limited exclusion order prohibiting further imports and a cease and desist order against Apple. It also set a bond of $2 per unit imported or sold during the Presidential review period. However, enforcement of those orders, including the bond, is suspended until the case before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board is resolved.

The decision comes weeks after the PTAB ruled three AliveCor patents regarding the detection of heart conditions like cardiac arrhythmias were not patentable, citing earlier advancements that made the technology “obvious.” AliveCor appealed that decision. 

The final determination by the ITC was set to come down earlier this month, but Apple petitioned to suspend or delay the order due to the PTAB

As 2022 comes to a close, MobiHealthNews asked executives from across the digital health industry about their biggest takeaways from the year. 

Check out their insights below on topics ranging from improving health equity to the continued use of virtual healthcare, especially for behavioral and mental health.

Chris Brickler, cofounder and CEO of MyndVR

“It’s important not to get comfortable. In early to mid-2022, there was a huge amount of speculation – in digital healthcare, unicorns became a little less rare. Towards the end of the year, things took a drastic shift. To be completely honest, over the last two years, a lot of companies, in digital health or otherwise, had unreasonable and unrealistic valuations, and we’re seeing the consequences of that now. In healthcare, you could put the word ‘digital’ in front of whatever product you were trying to sell and increase your valuation by a $100 million overnight.

Pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim and Click Therapeutics announced an expanded partnership to develop and commercialize another prescription digital therapeutic for patients with schizophrenia.

The deal will net Click up to $460 million, plus tiered royalties. It builds on an earlier collaboration announced in 2020 that developed CT-155, an initial therapeutic for schizophrenia.

The companies said CT-155 has met its development milestones to date, and it’s generated supportive evidence in clinical learning studies. They also noted that a pivotal registration study for the initial therapeutic is upcoming.

“Expanding our successful partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim enables our team to build on the experience and insights gathered with CT-155 and further expand the scope of our digital therapeutics platform,” Austin Speier, Click’s chief strategy officer, said in a statement. “This growing collaboration is a testament to the progress we have achieved so far working together and creates the inspiring opportunity to expand CT-155

As another year shaken by the lingering COVID-19 pandemic ends, stakeholders are still exploring how virtual care trends that accelerated in 2020 will affect the healthcare industry long term.

Though telehealth use spiked out of necessity during the early months and remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, utilization has slowed over the past two years. Meanwhile, big retail companies and pharmacies are offering more care options to patients.

Sanjula Jain, senior vice president of market strategy and chief research officer at Trilliant Health, sat down with MobiHealthNews to discuss the future of virtual care, how big retail entrants will affect the industry, and the importance of care coordination between traditional health systems and emerging retail players.

MobiHealthNews: What are some of your big takeaways from 2022 when you’re thinking about telehealth, digital health and other tech-enabled care?

Sanjula Jain: A big thing that I’m thinking a lot about is that patients

Texas-based MedCognetics received FDA 510(k) clearance for its AI-powered breast cancer screening software QmTRIAGE.

QmTRIAGE uses AI to analyze 2D full-field digital mammography screenings and flags those suggestive of abnormalities for radiologists’ review.

MedCognetics’ software uses datasets gathered from deidentified clinical data from UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and intellectual property from UT Dallas’ Quality of Life Technology Laboratory to improve early breast cancer detection.

UT Southwestern Medical Center and UT Dallas hold equity in the company. 

“MedCognetics is committed to leveraging our technology to help improve outcomes across a diverse group of patients and to do so, partnered with both University of Texas at Dallas and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW) to address these disparities. In addition to this, our software’s high detection accuracy enables reduced time for review by radiologists, another key component to improved outcomes. The FDA’s clearance is a very important first step

Headspace Health confirmed it has laid off 50 workers, or about 4% of its workforce.

First reported by Bloomberg, the cuts at the meditation and mental health company are the latest in a spate of layoffs at digital health and health tech companies this year. 

Calm, another meditation app that has been expanding with clinical mental health offerings,  laid off 20% of its staff in August. 

Click Therapeutics announced Friday it had received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for a prescription digital therapeutic for episodic migraine.

CT-132 is under development as an adjunctive preventive treatment for episodic migraine in adult patients. The Breakthrough Device Designation isn’t a marketing approval from the FDA, but it aims to accelerate review of products that could help treat debilitating or life-threatening conditions.

Click said it has completed or started three clinical studies on the migraine therapeutic. It will use the data from those trials

Memora Health, a virtual care delivery and management platform, announced its partnership with perinatal and prenatal health AI company, PeriGen, to provide coordinated women’s healthcare from childbirth to postpartum. 

Founded in 2000, PeriGen makes software products focused on childbirth. Its Early Warning System and Clinical Decision Support tool use AI to monitor patients in labor and find potential issues that need to be addressed.

Memora Heath is an AI-enabled ​platform for managing complex care needs, including messaging, automated reminders, metrics and scheduling. 

The collaboration will allow health systems nationally to perform continued care during labor and delivery to post-discharge monitoring for the same patient.

“Health systems offering robust maternal and fetal monitoring that supports new families during labor and throughout their transition home can gain tremendous lifetime loyalty from these investments,” Manav Sevak, cofounder and CEO of Memora Health, said in a statement. “We’re excited to partner with PeriGen to

Health data startup Komodo Health has laid off 9% of its staff as part of a larger restructuring of its business.

The COVID-19 pandemic created opportunities for the analytics company, Komodo’s cofounders Arif Nathoo and Web Sun wrote in a message to employees that was also posted on LinkedIn. But the current economic environment is forcing its customers to seriously consider their purchasing decisions. 

“As a business, we continue to be well positioned to weather these changes — we provide critical visibility into the healthcare system to support the strategic decisions enterprise healthcare leaders need to make,” they wrote. “That said, we have a responsibility to all of you — our team and shareholders — to invest responsibly in that growth. We have always prided ourselves on running a capital efficient business, and today we’re taking steps to ensure that we are well positioned for the current world around

Virtual and in-office healthcare provider Juno Medical raised $12 million in Series A funding round co-led by tennis star Serena Williams, managing partner at Serena Ventures, and Julian Eison, managing partner at NEXT VENTURES.

Vast Ventures, which led Juno’s seed round, also participated in the Series A funding alongside Empire State Development’s New York Ventures, Genius Guild, TXV Partners, Gaingels, and previous investors Humbition and Atento Capital.

The latest investment brings Juno Medical’s total raised to $28.4 million, according to Crunchbase.

WHAT IT DOES

Juno Medical is a healthcare service provider that offers on-site appointments with physicians at their two New York-based brick-and-mortar facilities and virtual services for patients in New York and Georgia. 

The company offers individual and family care, wellness, specialty care, and on-site labs and imaging services. 

The funds will be used to expand into new markets and hire new providers. The company plans to open