Health Startup Digest

Curated by R. Scott Munro, the latest news and information about startups and innovations in healthcare.

Startup Highlight: RaPID Medical Technologies

Retained foreign objects occur when a surgeon sows you back up, but leaves behind a little present. This can be a watch, some surgical gauze, an instrument, the list goes on… RaPID Medical has created a “computer assisted” image reading system that can scan images automatically for retained surgical items (RSIs). This may seem insignificant, but hospitals (rightly so) deem RSIs as so-called “never events” and build extensive processes to ensure surgeons never leave anything behind. So if RaPID can give hospitals another way to lower the number of possible RSIs, they’ll be excited. The company is also working on ways to identify patient implants using the same technology.

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Articles:

Rewriting the Script for Marketing in the Digital Age | Pharma3D

www.pharma3d.com

This is a collaboration between Google, The Wharton School, and McKinsey on marketing and engagement in life sciences in the digital age. I haven’t gone through the whole thing, but this is a must read for anyone commercializing technology in health care. Full of great nuggets and case studies.

Making Transparency Work: why we need new efforts to make data usable | An Ounce of Evidence

blogs.sph.harvard.edu

This is a great blog post from Dr. Ashish Jha on transparency and quality measurement in health care and how CMS’ Hospital Compare tool has fallen short. Hospital Compare is a CMS tool that gives patients a number of data points to compare various hospitals with. The thought behind the tool was that with more transparency, hospitals would improve their outcomes. The kicker: they did not. Dr. Jha goes into some specific ways CMS might improve the tool (usability, more stratified metrics, etc).

On a side note, I think we have a long way to go in terms of our understanding of what metrics actually matter to compare hospitals in terms of patient outcome, and many hospital driven quality assurance programs are still far from the mark (and many physicians I’ve spoken with would agree).

Plan to Fabricate a Genome Raises Questions on Designer Humans | MIT Tech Review

www.technologyreview.com

The future is here, while synthetic biology has been around for some time, no one has been able to fully synthesize the human genome. A group out of Harvard and and NYU (including infamous futurist/transhumanist, George Church) published a paper this week saying that they are on a mission to do just that. It’s no small task, but the end result of this sort of endeavor will scare some: artificially created humans. Note: this is different than genetically modified, this is from scratch created…

Our Experience With First-Time Biotech CEOs: Five Behaviors That Matter | Life Sci VC

lifescivc.com

Bruce Booth of Atlas Ventures runs some numbers on his portfolio this week in terms of first time CEOs. Interestingly, not only are most of their portfolio companies first time CEOs, they also did not, for the most part, have previous relationships with Atlas. He also, as the title suggests, goes into some detail about behaviors he notices that make these CEOs successful that I believe are applicable across industries (and functions, frankly).

Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant tested in Boston hospital | STAT News

www.statnews.com

One of Mary Meeker’s macro-trends in her mega-Internet Report was voice interactions realizing their potential. I don’t usually like putting in news stories in which the title tells it all, but I would recommend reading this story of how Boston Children’s envisions voice interactions and Alexa as changing the patient’s (and physician’s) experience. As the story highlights with Alexa’s use in the OR, there is clearly a long way to go before this is ubiquitous (and bug-free), but certainly there is a lot of benefit to “hands free” technologies in hospital settings.

Merck's Robert Plenge on Human Biology and Social Media | Tech Tonics

overcast.fm

I wasn’t really a huge fan of the first part of this podcast (during which they speak mostly about Dr. Plenge’s use of social media), but once he got into the process for drug discovery, why we see more precision medicine for oncology than cardiology, and tools for understanding causality in human biology, things got a lot more interesting. The interesting part (for me) starts around the 22 minute mark. He goes into some detail about drug discovery as the process of unpacking the differences between causal and correlative events, and the power of large, longitudinal data sets and genetics to determine the causal reasons for diseases.

Quote(s) of the Week:

“ But with nearly [every hospital] getting a passing grade on website that is difficult to navigate and doesn't differentiate between measures that matter and those that don't, improvement just isn't happening. We are being transparent so we can say we are being transparent. So, the bottom line is this – if transparency is worth doing, why not do it right? Who knows, it might even make care better and create greater trust in the healthcare system. And wouldn't that be worth the extra effort?”

- Ashish Jha, MD

This Digest is curated by:

R. Scott Munro - Utility Infielder @ DocMatter

www.startupdigest.com

I am a classical languages nerd turned digital health geek. I spend my days researching medical device, pharmaceutical, and biotech companies + helping clinicians efficiently collaborate.

I have a passion for the intersection of health and technology, and wholeheartedly believe we are at the beginning of the most exciting eras of health care.

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