Admetsys: A combined insulin pump/glucometer Admetsys’s technology looks to streamline care of diabetic patients in the hospital setting. When diabetic patient’s are in the hospital their insulin is usually checked four times a day, after meals and before bed. This value is then used to adjust the subcutaneous insulin dose they receive. The process is labor intensive and somewhat inexact. Admetsys’s system connects to a patient’s IV and continuously detects blood glucose levels while delivering appropriate levels of insulin.
AMP3D: Short for Adult Medical Predictive Devices, Diagnostics and Displays, AMP3D has developed a proprietary algorithm that can plug into existing electronic health record and bedside monitoring systems to predict adverse events. These events include emergent intubation, hemorrhage and severe sepsis. The algorithm uses big data analytics to predict these catastrophic events. If these events can be avoided it can save hospitals significant cost and improve patient outcomes.
Aperture Medical: A common method of dialysis access is the creation of an AV fistula. Unfortunately, these access sites slowly narrow within a year requiring frequent procedures to restore access. Aperture Medical has designed a one time use device that eliminates the cells involved in the blockage of dialysis access sites
Bloom Technologies: Bloom technologies provides a proprietary prenatal sensor for home use that collects unspecified data. This data is then analyzed to reassure or alert expectant mothers. Eventually they anticipate that their massive dataset from their users can be combined and analyzed to better develop methods of predicting outcomes.
Briteseed: Briteseed is back with their SafeSnips technology. They were featured in our report on the 2014 MedTech innovator semifinalists. Their technology is able to detect and alert laparoscopic surgeons before blood vessels are accidentally transected without requiring the use of special contrast or imaging.
Cognition Medical: A stroke usually takes place when a major blood vessel to the brain has clotted off. Removal of this clot is becoming an increasingly common procedure. Unfortunately, the sudden return of blood-flow can cause a condition known as re-perfusion injury. Cognition Medical’s device regulates the return of oxygen to the brain, theoretically minimizing re-perfusion injury and improving outcomes for stroke patients.
CytoChip: Blood tests such as the Complete Blood Count (CBC) can be cumbersome to perform in remote clinical settings. CytoChip looks to streamline the process and lower costs by providing a low cost lab-on-a-chip device that can perform routine blood tests with a single drop of blood without requiring transport to a central lab.
Disease Diagnostic Group: DDG has developed a low cost and highly accurate device to detect malaria. Their device detects magnetic nanoparticles created by the parasite in a single drop of blood with magneto-optical technology. This is reportedly 1/10th the cost of ELISA and 100x more sensitive than Rapid Diagnostic Tests. They are also looking to expand the technology to other infectious diseases.
Emmetrope: Cataract surgery involves the replacement of the natural lens with an artificial version. While highly successful, the artificial lens is somewhat limited in its ability to accommodate for near vision. Emmetrope has designed a new type of lens that outperforms currently existing lens technology in terms of anterior movement with accomodation.
Fosmomed: We previously reported on Fosmomed’s technology in 2013. Their device is an empty IV bag that can be shipped to remote areas for extremely low cost. The bag can be filled with any water source and is sterile and ready for patient use within hours with no requirement for external power.
InBrace: InBrace utilizes shape memory alloy behind the teeth to offer a novel form of orthodontic treatment. The device is reportedly more efficient than the popular invisalign and more cosmetically appealing than conventional orthodontic braces.
Lightpoint Medical: Inadequate surgical resection of cancer is common and a significant cause of recurrence. Lightpoint Medical has developed a device that takes advantage of a phenomenon known as Cerenkov Luminescence. Their product, LightPath, can detect the optical signal released from PET imaging agents to detect residual cancer cells intra-operatively and in real-time to hopefully decrease the incidence of positive margins.
MedAware: Prescription errors are still a major issue despite the increasingly ubiquitous use of electronic medical record systems. MedAware looks to address this problem utilizing big data techonology and proprietary algorithms. They claim that their system is able to flag inappropriate prescriptions with high specificity and low “alert fatigue.”
MiNDERA: A skin biopsy can be an uncomfortable procedure. MiNDERA looks to circumvent this with their proprietary microneedle based solution. Their technology utilizes an array of microneedles to extract mRNA and other biomarkers from the skin which can then be analyzed for various pathology. While not equivalent to a skin biopsy, currently these types of biomarker assays could replace the need for the procedure in the future.
MobileODT: Cervical cancer is a treatable disease, however successful treatment requires timely detection. MobileODT’s technology uses smartphones to create a mobile colposcope. This can be used to detect cervical cancer in low-resource settings and may one day even be able to replace pap smear and HPV testing.
PixelEXX Systems: PixelEXX has created an impressively small camera for medical endoscopy. The camera is a size of a grain of sand (0.5 mm), with 80,000 pixels. The camera may be able to used to access previously inaccessible areas endoscopically.
Spinal Singularity: Paraplegic patients with spinal cord injury often have to self-catheterize multiple times a day to empty their bladder of urine. This carries an infectious risk, is costly and also inconvenient. Spinal Singularity looks to disrupt this standard with a smart catheter system that can detect when the bladder is full, alert the user and drain the bladder of urine in a controlled manner without requiring self-catheterization.
uBiome: We briefly reported on uBiome during our coverage of Exponential Medicine in 2014. The human microbiome is a phenomenally complex interaction of microorganisms that is still poorly understood. uBiome looks to unravel the mystery by combining big data analysis with crowd sourcing. “Citizen scientists” can contribute to uBiome by submitting sample swabs of themselves. Analyzing this massive dataset may unlock unforeseen medical breakthroughs.
Vixiar: The readmission of patients with congestive heart failure is a major problem that has not yet been adequately addressed. One method for adjusting the medication dosage for these patient’s is the detection of left ventricle end diastolic pressure. Vixiar has developed a low cost and novel method of the detection of LVEDP that can be used without any special training in under 10 seconds. The technology works by blowing into a battery powered handpiece while wearing a finger probe.
Vynca: Few patients want aggressive end of life care, however many patients never fill out advanced healthcare directives or they are lost, leading to a significant healthcare expenditure and emotional difficulty for families. Vynca’s system streamlines documentation of advanced healthcare directives and integrates with existing EHR to ensure that patients’ wishes for their end-of-life care are documented and tracked accurately and easily.
