Month: October 2018

Boston New Technology Startup Showcase #94: HealthTech Startups

Telapush‘s sign welcomes attendees to BNT94; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Boston New Technology Startup Showcase 94

October 16, 2018

This month’s BNT was hosted by Dassault Systemes in Waltham, MA on Tuesday, October 16th. The theme this month was healthtech startups.

Boston New Technology Startup Showcase 94: Dassault Systemes in Waltham, MA

Personal Remedies presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Boston New Technology’s Startup Showcase was back in the suburbs this month, easy for me to access again.

The event begins with about an hour of food and networking. Some of the event sponsors frequently have booths, as well. This month, most of the presenters also had booths, making for some interesting discussions even before the presentation portion.

Next up are the presentations. First, the sponsors are given a minute or two each to talk. Then the startups present. Each presentation is 5 minutes, with another 5 minutes allocated to Q&A.

Pilleve presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Following, I’ll write a little about each of the presenters at this month’s event. I’ll explain, as well as I can understand from their quick presentations, who they are and what they do. As always, if something intrigues you, don’t rely on the accuracy of my description. Instead, check out the websites and contact the companies for yourself. Because if you’re interested, you’re probably a much bigger expert in that product area than I am, so you’ll know better which questions to ask.

Conscioux presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Personal Remedies has a website and series of 36 mobile apps in a “choose this, not that” format that provide dietary information for people with chronic health conditions. Its corporate tagline is “individualized help for chronic conditions.” The company was at the event promoting its API (application program interface, for non-techies) that connects to a comprehensive database of health and medical information.

Pilleve is an integrated pill bottle that monitors prescription opioid use for high-risk patients to help prevent abuse and addiction. Based on the patient’s pain level, it metes out the correct amount of pills. It provides guidance and suggests, and, while it’s not tamper-resistant, it does register when it’s tampered with and alerts those who need to know. The goal of this device is to prevent an unintentional slide toward addiction and abuse in the first place by low-risk individuals, not to protect against it in high-risk individuals.

CareZooming presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Conscioux is a platform that promotes health by encouraging a plant-based diet. Designed to be used by corporations and insurance companies to encourage healthy eating, there is currently a free beta of the consumer version.

CareZooming connects clinicians and promotes innovation within the healthcare community. The path to profitability is via a subscription-based platform for clinicians to share information. There is also the opportunity for healthcare organizations to white-label it to encourage innovation within their clinician communities. You may recognize CareZooming from my review of Monday night’s Mass Innovation Nights event.

ModiBrace presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

ModiBrace, who I first spoke with at a Mass Innovation Nights event in March, has developed a new kind of 3D-printable, adjustable back brace for scoliosis treatment. By reducing production costs and making the brace adjustable, this would be a vast improvement over current braces, whose expense and inability to be adjusted cause children with scoliosis to suffer with ill-fitting braces for far too many years. This brace is currently in the prototyping stage, not yet in clinical trials.

iCareBetter presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

iCareBetter is a customizable platform designed to help medical professionals improve patient outcomes. Designed to allow patients to watch videos to better understand that which was likely explained hurriedly in the doctor’s office, this platform is also interactive, ensuring that the patients understand the videos they watch. Monetization is expected to occur by charging physicians on a per-client basis. A free version is supported by commercials.

KEVA Health presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

KEVA Health’s product, the KEVA Health Advisor, is a platform that helps connect patients with medical information. An AI/analytic-driven SaaS product, it’s designed for patients with chronic disease and is expected to be monetized as an employer-pays, tiered-pricing service.

As usual, it was another great BNT event. If my schedule permits, as always, I’ll see you at next month’s BNT, too; it’s scheduled for November 15th and will feature cleantech/greentech startups.

Mass Innovation Nights 115: 5th Annual Women Founders Event

Mass Innovation Nights 115; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Mass Innovation Nights 115

October 15, 2018

Mass Innovation Nights is a monthly startup showcase that features Massachusetts startup companies. This month’s Mass Innovation Nights was hosted by Boston Scientific and Brownmed and held at District Hall in the seaport district. Appropriately occurring during WE BOS Week, the theme for the evening was Women Founders.

Mass Innovation Nights 115: District Hall in Boston, MA

CareZooming booth; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Mass Innovation Nights begins with an hour to network, grab food from the buffet, and visit with exhibiting startups at their display tables, providing attendees with an opportunity to converse with the companies in attendance while snacking on food provided by the event sponsor. Then the presentations begin, featuring the evening’s host, the “Expert Corner” experts, and the four exhibitors who win a pre-event vote on the Mass Innovation Nights website. At this event, in addition to sponsors and experts from Boston Scientific, Brownmed, and Hidden Gems, a representative from the mayor’s office spoke, as the event helped kick off WE BOS week, celebrating women founders in Boston.

Folia Health presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Presenters as a result of the pre-event voting were Folia Health, IV SafeT, Aavia, and Astarte Medical Partners. Awards are also given based on at-event voting (during the networking hour) by attendees. At-event winners were Aavia, Folia, Allergy Amulet, and PionEar Technologies.

As usual, when I attend one of the startup showcase events, I’ll provide a quick overview of the featured companies based on information available through Mass Innovation Nights (website and handouts), the four presentations, and my conversations with some of the company representatives at the event. My observations will generally be very cursory. If you’re interested in additional detail about some of this month’s showcasing companies, you can follow the links I provide for more information.

IV SafeT presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Allergy Amulet is a device (that can be worn; hence: “amulet”) that can be use to test food for allergens at the point-of-consumption, within seconds.

Astarte Medical Partners has established a patient safety and compliance software solution, NICUtrition, via software and predictive analytics, that is designed to be used by hospitals to improve safety when feeding preterm infants. The company’s goal is to assemble information and provide solutions to promote gut health through a child’s first 1,000 days.

Mightywell‘s Might MedPlanner is a small, easy-to-carry-along case that discreetly organizes your medical supplies. This is the most recent product from Mightywell, as it continues to extend its line of medical products. Mightywell’s first product, the PICC Perfect PICC line cover, was showcased at MIN 81 nearly three years ago.

Aavia presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

CareZooming connects healthcare professionals to allow them to share knowledge, allowing new clinician discoveries and best practices to be duplicated elsewhere throughout the medical community.

Fluid-Screen‘s bacterial sorter uses system-on-a-chip technology to help identify bacteria within 30 minutes. Per my discussion at Fluid-Screen’s booth, a couple early uses for this technology would be in the pharmaceutical world to detect contaminants in food and drinking water supplies.

Folia Health has an app allows families to track health observations in three minutes per day. It can then be used as a resource for the community of families who need that information. Folia Health’s initial area of focus is cystic fibrosis.

Astarte Medical Partners presentation; photo by Geoff Wilbur

IV SafeT is an improved IV with an improved luer lock. If you’re in this field, please click through to look at the details yourself, but the website does note that this works especially well for preemies and infants because of its reduced size. (IV SafeT’s presentation did a great job of explaining the significant improvement, but I’m afraid I won’t do it justice via text.)

DocFlight is a company that connects Chinese patients with custom, personalized treatment from American doctors, including nutrition plans, telemedicine, a personalized drug prescriptions.

PionEar Technologies‘ tympanostomy tube is designed to reduce the risk of unnecessary surgeries and repeated ear infections in children.

MightyWell booth; photo by Geoff Wilbur

Aavia is a pocket-size smart device and accompanying app to help ensure birth control pills are taken “on time, every time,” as the company’s slogan says. The device automatically detects which pills have been taken (or not) from the typical blister pack and connects via Bluetooth to a phone app.

The WatchRx Smartwatch for Seniors helps seniors manage their prescriptions, while also giving caregivers and healthcare providers access to this information. I first encountered WatchRx at a Boston New Technology showcase in May 2017.

Also at the event was Microscopic Art, a company that sells (“cells”?) cool science-themed décor, apparel, and accessories.

Conclusion

At-event voting winners; ; photo by Geoff Wilbur

As always, I’ve done my best to accurately portray the exhibiting companies and their products based upon the pre-event materials and the conversations I had with attendees. You can find company information also by following this link and then clicking on the “Vote Here” tab of the MIN 115 web page. I’ve also included hotlinks to the each of the exhibiting companies’ websites so you can get information beyond my brief introductions.

It was, as always, a pleasure to see some of the emerging companies on the Boston area’s startup scene. I’m already looking forward to next month’s event.