Health Care : Innovation + Job News

CoverMyMeds, a web-based prior authorization (PA) service for pharmacies and physician offices, is reporting record growth since receiving a $250,000 investment from JumpStart in 2010.
 
Co-founder Matt Scantland says the company “had around 10 employees and under a million in revenue” three years prior. “Today we are at about 50 employees and 20 million in gross revenue.
 
Scantland launched CoverMyMeds in 2008 with Sam Rajan who had previously headed MemberHealth’s clinical operations. The two met through a business collaboration with Scantland’s then-health care technology company, Innova Partners. “At the time, we were building a Medicare Part D plan,” he recalls. “We learned that patients were having trouble getting the medications they needed due to problems associated with the prior authorization process.” Scantland describes a PA as a permission slip the doctor has to send to your insurance company before they will cover the drug.
 
Scantland credits the company’s success and introduction to JumpStart to their two homes – Northeast Ohio and Columbus. “When we started the business, the environment for the startup community in Northeast Ohio was perfect,” he boasts. “So we started introducing ourselves around the area and learned about Jumpstart. They helped us by not only awarding us for the grant monies, but also with connections and building relationships for expeditious growth to our business.”
 
Now, CoverMyMeds' service is used by “well over half of all the pharmacies in the country, and is used by more than 100,000 physicians,” helping more than two million patients receive the drugs they need. Scantland estimates reaching more than four million patients this year alone.
 
“It’s a really important time in healthcare, and I think we’ll see more change in the next decade than we saw in the last 30-years,” he predicts. “The challenge facing this country is really how we continue to create great clinical innovations while stopping the rapid expansion of expenses.”
 
 
Source: Matt Scantland
Writer: Joe Baur

A team of Cleveland Clinic researchers have found that regular screening for Lynch Syndrome, the top genetic cause of adult colon cancer, can significantly reduce the occurrence of subsequent cancers. Researchers screened all colorectal cancers surgically removed at the Clinic for Lynch Syndrome and referred those who tested positive to genetic counselors.

Lynch Syndrome affects patients at an early age and often leads to multiple colorectal cancers. Women are additionally more susceptible to uterine and ovarian cancers. By identifying the disease early, people with Lynch and their families can work with their doctors and counselors to keep an eye on signs of early cancers.
 
The research was led by Charis Eng, Hardis Chair and founding director of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute’s Genomic Medicine Institute. The findings were published in the online Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“This paper shows successful implementation of a rapid, cost-effective system-wide screening to detect potential Lynch syndrome,” says Eng. “Because of this research, we know how to catch these things early and how to prevent them. If you are positive for Lynch, cancer can occur as young as age 25 and you should get a colon screening every year, and women should also get uterine screenings.”
 
Eng says patients with Lynch Syndrome can then weigh the surgical options when they are diagnosed with colon cancer. Patients may opt to have the entire colon removed, and women may opt to have the uterus and ovaries removed as well, to prevent future cancers.
 
“Instituting high risk surveillance early routinely saves lives,” Eng says. "It is an extreme challenge to bring genomics research to successful implementation in genomic medicine practices,” says Eng. “Here, we have achieved 100 percent successful implementation of universal Lynch syndrome screening.”

 
Source: Charis Eng
Writer: Karin Connelly

Miami University junior Samuel Frith was on vacation three years ago, and spent a little too much time in the sun. Today, when the rays get a little too intense, he relives a painful part of that vacation.

"My lips are very sensitive when I'm out in the sun," he says. "I get really bad sun poisoning and blisters when I go out in the sun."

Frith went through all of the cosmetically available lip balms around, especially those with high SPF levels, but they just didn't work.

"I wasn't getting any relief," he says. "I even tried the brands that were SPF 30 or 40."

Last summer, he decided to take things into his own hands, and create The Ultimate Lip Balm. It's a balm that would help sun-sensitive people like Frith. Active outdoor types could also use it, and it even has medical applications—chemotherapy patients often get severely dry lips during cancer treatment, and they could benefit from Frith's balm as well.

Frith, a finance and entrepreneurship student, was one of the top winners during this month's Innov8 for Health business pitch event. He was one of four $1,000 prize winners in the student track.

Frith's past experience includes working on a cosmetic lotion project for GA Communications in Chicago, which helped him learn about the process of getting a facial care product to market.

"I did a lot of reading and research about the FDA and regulation of product claims," he says. "While I was there, I learned about SPF, sun care products and the facial care industry."

After doing further Internet research, Frith decided to work with a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, company—Raining Rose—to develop the lip balm. Raining Rose is a small, custom lip balm manufacturer known for using organic and natural ingredients. The company and Frith are working to develop a formula aimed at making the lip balm last longer, and therefore, be more effective, Frith says.

"After SPF 30, [sun protection quality] plateaus," Frith says. "You have to come up with other ingredients that will stick better on lips, or attributes other than SPF to make a higher quality lip balm."

Currently, he's working to raise $15,000 for product testing. He hopes to get The Ultimate Lip Balm onto lips by late fall.

By Feoshia H. Davis
Follow Feoshia on Twitter

Personalized stem cell therapy is in the forefront of medical advances. Using cultured clones of a patient’s own cells, medical scientists can develop personalized stem cell treatments, produce antibodies for vaccines and grow skin replacement patches and other types of human tissue for medical implants.
 
Two leading Central Ohio bioscience companies – Nanofiber Solutions and Celartia – have teamed up to develop a new cell culturing system – PetakaG3 NanoMatrix.  The system accelerates personalized stem cell therapies by enhancing stem cell expansion rates.
 
A petaka is a cell culture device with all the air space inside the chamber eliminated, which enables cells to grow on all internal surfaces. Nanofiber Solutions and Celartia added nanofibers to this closed, sterile environment to create PetakaG3 NanoMatrix.
 
“With regenerative medicine, the big issues are cell expansion rates and cell extraction rates – how quickly you can grow them and how many you can harvest,” explains Ross Kayuha, ceo of Nanofiber Solutions. “The PetakaG3 NanoMatrix is a significant first step in making personalized stem cell treatments possible in days versus weeks, as is the case now.”
 
He notes that there’s a growing trend in medicine and life science research to use three-dimensional cell culturing products to grow and study cells. “The body provides a 3-D environment for cells, but so much basic research in labs is performed on flat 2-D surfaces, which is a very unrealistic environment,” Kayuha says. “The PetakaG3 NanoMatrix is a tool at the intersection of personalized medicine and regenerative medicine that clinicians can use to perform cell-based analyses and develop stem-cell treatments.”
 
According to Emilio Barbera-Guillem, M.D., Ph.D., ceo of Celartia, “This PetakaG3-plus- nanofibers technology is important for direct applications for regenerative medicine and also new pharmaceutical discoveries and production.” Research centers, regenerative medicine centers and pharmaceutical companies will be primary purchasers of the new product, he notes.
 
PetakaG3 NanoMatrix was publicly introduced in December 2012 at the American Society for Cell Biology and will soon be available for worldwide distribution.
 
 
Sources:  Ross Kayuha, Nanofiber Solutions
               Dr. Emilio Barbera-Guillem, Celartia
Writer:     Lynne Meyer

Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies (GLNT), which creates biomedical technologies for the treatment of movement disorders, announced last week that they will be leading a study to improve algorithms for deep brain stimulation in treating Parkinson’s disease.

The study will use GLNT’s Kinesia technology and is funded by a $283,828 phase I Small Business Innovative Research grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. It will take place at the University of Alabama at Birmingham this spring.
 
Deep brain stimulation involves implanting an electrode in a certain area of the brain to treat the side effects of Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. But the technology has varied results. GLNT hopes to improve the outcomes.
 
“Implanting the electrode is more art than science right now,” says Dustin Heldman, biomedical researcher and principal investigator for GLNT, explaining that outcomes depend on amplitude and frequency -- leaving a lot of variables on the individual programmer.
 
“With the existing Kinesia system we’re trying to level the playing field for everyone by making an objective standard way of programming,” explains Heldman. “We’re taking the guesswork out of it.”
 
While phase I will just collect preliminary data, deep brain stimulation could be another application for GLNT’s Kinesia. “It’s great for us,” Heldman says. “We have this sensor technology now, it’s released and it’s FDA cleared. This is just another application. Assuming we get good results, we'll apply for a much larger study.”
 
GLNT grew from 15 to 23 employees last year, and is hiring three additional people now.

 
Source: Dustin Heldman
Writer: Karin Connelly

JumpStart recently invested $250,000 in Guided Interventions, a startup company that has developed technology to assess coronary artery blockages. The company was formed two years ago and has been mainly focused on developing its intellectual property and proof of concepts, says Guided Interventions CEO Matthew Pollman.

“The concept is revolutionary,” Pollman says. “It uses a pressurized guideline to measure fractional flow reserve (FFR). It facilitates assessing blockages in the coronary artery and determines whether to perform an intervention.”
 
Pollman cites a clinical study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that showed using technologies like Guided Interventions’ FFR product instead of traditional angiogram indicate that 37 percent of the time the blockage should be left alone. “Sometimes leaving it alone is actually the best thing for patients,” he says.
 
Pollman plans to use the JumpStart investment to build out operations at GLIDE and the SMART Commercialization Center for Microsystems at Lorain County Community College.
 
The money will also allow the company to hire as many as six employees in the next two years, in particular engineers, and then triple or even quadruple the number of employees in the next three to five years. Currently, Pollman and his partner, Reinhard Warnking, are the only two employees.
 
Pollman, who is in the process of moving to Northeast Ohio from California, says he is looking forward to moving to a region that is so supportive of startup biotechnology companies and research.

 
Source: Matthew Pollman
Writer: Karin Connelly

Milo Biotechnology, a BioEnterprise startup created to find therapies for neuromuscular diseases, received FDA orphan drug designation for its AAV1-FS344, a drug that increases muscle strength.
 
The drug is a myostatin inhibitor that produces the protein follistatin, which increases muscle strength. Milo is focused on using the drug for treatment of Becker and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In both types of the disease, patients have progressive muscle weakness and cardiac and respiratory degeneration. The drug also has potential uses in muscle degeneration in AIDS and cancer patients, but Milo's initial focus is on muscular dystrophy.
 
Orphan drug classification is given to therapies that treat diseases that affect less than 200,000 people nationwide. “Orphan says two things: One, it says this compound looks like it’s effective in some model of whatever disease it’s treating,” explains Al Hawkins, Milo CEO. “Second,  it means that the  target population is under 200,000 patients." The designation gives expedited regulatory review, seven years of post-market exclusivity and it qualifies for an FDA grant program in clinical trials.
 
Milo was founded about a year ago, after receiving a $250,000 investment  from JumpStart. The company also received funding from the North Coast Opportunities Technology fund.
 
Milo's drug is being used in clinical trials at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus with patients who have Becker muscular dystrophy and inclusion body myositis. Hawkins says the designation will expedite development of the therapy.
 
“There are no approved  drugs for muscular dystrophy, but there are a lot of promising therapies in development,” says Hawkins. “The community has banded together in supporting this, but we are still years away from getting to market.”


Source: Al Hawkins
Writer: Karin Connelly

This week BioEnterprise and Global Cleveland are hosting their fourth online biomedical job fair, hoping to attract top talent to the industry. “This is really driven by the growth in the biomedical sector in Northeast Ohio,” explains Aram Nerpouni, BioEnterprise interim CEO. “We’ve gone from 300 to 700 biomedical companies in the area. Cleveland is becoming a national hotbed for biomedical.”

The job fairs are an effective resource for employers. It is free for employers to post their listings and reach a wide population of qualified candidates. Arteriocyte, which does stem cell research for regenerating bones, has participated in three of the four job fairs this year. In each job fair the company has hired an employee.
 
“For us it’s appealing because it’s pretty easy as an employer,” explains Kolby Day, Arteriocyte‘s vice president and general manager of research and development. “We’ve seen really high caliber talent applying to the postings." Day says they’ve seen applicants from local schools as well as residents who left Cleveland and wish to return.
 
“We’ve interviewed a lot of people and, interestingly enough, they all want to be in Cleveland,” says Day. “A big part of that is how quickly the biotech industry is growing in Cleveland.”
 
Nerpouni points out that the online job fairs especially help the smaller employers. “For smaller companies that are growing rapidly and don’t have an HR staff, it helps them keep up with the pace of growth,” he says. “It’s much easier to hunt as a pack, so potential candidates aren’t looking at just one position.”
 
Close to 50 employers are participating in the job fair this week, posting 200 open positions. BioEnterprise plans to continue the biomedical jobs fairs on a quarterly basis.

 
Sources: Aram Nerpouni and Kolby Day
Writer: Karin Connelly

Hospitals are normally places for treating illnesses. For the past nine years, however, Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) in Columbus has also been actively researching and developing high-tech advances in the areas of digital pathology, biospecimen analysis and biorepository management. These complex, behind-the-scenes functions are important for effectively diagnosing and treating diseases. Funding was provided, in part, by the National Institutes of Health.
 
The result of NCH’s work is three new web-based biomedical tools that can have a significant impact on future diagnostic and research capabilities in hospitals, academic research centers and the pharmaceutical industry.
 
To market its innovations, NCH is partnering with Transformatix Technologies, Inc., of California to create BioLinQ, a new biomedical informatics company designed to supply advanced software solutions for disease diagnosis and medical research.

According to Dave Billiter, director, Informatics, The Research Institute at NCH, “These new tools provide best practices in biospecimen management through implementation, promoting collaboration in a team science platform via the web/cloud and providing advanced methods to validate the quality of data for research.”

Ken Murray, CEO of Transformatix, will serve as Chairman and CEO of BioLinQ. He states that, with the growth of molecular technology and the advent of personalized medicine, the three new software tools are very timely.
 
"BioLinQ's primary purpose will be to provide this new software suite, via the cloud, to commercial customers, including other hospitals, academic research centers, government agencies, contract research organizations and the pharmaceutical industry," he explains. Offering the software through the cloud will enhance accessibility, Murray notes. "In addition, we will use NCH’s laboratory facilities, as well as their expertise, to prepare and analyze tissue specimens customers send us."

BioLinQ will be located at the Dublin Entrepreneurial Center. The goal is to have the new company fully operational during the first quarter of 2013. Plans call for starting with eight key personnel and expanding to 20 employees and about 100 consultants.

Sources: Dave Billiter, Ken Murray
Writer: Lynne Meyer

Teenage diabetics often believe they are invulnerable to future health problems from their disease. That’s what Jennifer Shine Dyer, a pediatric endocrinologist and Founder and CEO of the Columbus-based startup EndoGoddess, LLC, discovered in her practice and through texting with her teenage patients.

“They block out that they have this disease,” Dyer explains. “Warning them they could be on dialysis when they’re 30 if they don’t monitor their glucose levels and take their medication simply doesn’t register. They can’t relate to potential dire future consequences.”
 
To address this problem, Dr. Dyer developed the EndoGoal app for iPhone and Android. EndoGoal makes tracking glucose levels easy and rewarding for teens.

“EndoGoal is a mobile software engagement program with rewards and a virtual pet named Cooper, the diabetes dog,” she says. “You check your blood sugar and record four glucose tests a day to earn points you can spend on Amazon. Every time you record your level, you get to feed Cooper, too.”

Dr. Dyer recently expanded the EndoGoal app to include adults as well. She’s contacting employers to subscribe to what she calls the EndoGoal Wellness Program, promoting the concept of rewarding health savings account contributions to diabetic employees who participate.
 
EndoGoal doesn’t cost users anything. “It’s all about positives, with nothing negative, like price, to interfere with use,” the physician notes. “It’s meant to increases people’s engagement with their health. We’re not telling you what to do or giving medical advice of any kind. Our goal is to encourage you to take care of yourself.”

The diabetes software program is being funded by investors, the ONE Fund of Ohio Third Frontier and Dr. Dyer. EndoGoal earns revenue through selling subscriptions to corporations who offer the program to their employees.
 

Source:   Jennifer Shine Dyer
Writer:  Lynne Meyer

Like all with an entrepreneurial spirit, Xavier University junior Anthony Breen is a problem solver.

While he was spending a few days at a local hospital visiting a friend, he met some young children who'd been diagnosed with illnesses. He immediately saw a challenge that he could meet.

"When kids are diagnosed, they are given pamphlets written for adults and by adults. It's not in any way engaging. It's scary," says Breen, a finance and entrepreneurship major, with a minor in accounting.

It was from that experience that Breen developed a web-based app that uses storytelling to teach diabetic children about their disease in an understandable way. It's aimed at ages 2 to 12.

The app, MyHealthyTale, follows a diabetic character through a 15-minute story where the child can answer questions about their chronic disease by following the character through the story. The story pulls from a database of questions, mixing them up. So each time children read the story, they get different questions.

"The can name a bear that goes through the story and customize it," Breen says. "It's a fun way to learn that's not scary."

MyHealthyTale is the inaugural offering of Breen's Minerva Health Learning Systems, one of the winning companies for the new Innov8 for health Startup Accelerator.

MyHealthyTale will soon be available at the iPhone App store, and available on Android in the next three months. In addition to the story book, there's also information and support resources for parents, including the ability to direct email caregivers and other parents with diabetic children.

Breen is working with Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and diabetic educators at Cincinnati Children's and The Christ hospitals. Eventually, he wants to expand the app, with stories that cover a range of illnesses.

"Really, this can be used for any medical condition," he says."Right now we're just entering the market, and we want to move this into asthma and obesity."

By Feoshia H. Davis
Follow Feoshia on Twitter.

Dawn Sheanshang, a pharmaceutical sales rep, became sick of medications one day. Despite her insider knowledge, she couldn’t handle the medication regimen of a loved one who’d recently been discharged from the hospital.

Determined to help, Sheanshang searched online for solutions but found no easy answers. Out of her frustration, MedaCheck was born. With the help of startup acceleration Innov8 for Health, and a partnership with Jeffrey Shepard, a self-described “serial entrepreneur with a Ph.D.,” this high-tech health startup – and its eponymous app – were born.

“More and more today, medication regimens are extremely complicated, with many different drugs and people’s changing presciriptions," Shepard says. “People are using mobile devices for a slew of different things. We wanted to target our product around medication adherence – ensuring they’re taking the right pill at the right time, in the right amount and having it set up with a system to ensure they’re actually doing it.” 

Instead of simply placing a reminder on your phone, this app works with the pharmacies, utilizing frequently updated, high-resolution images of the approximately 16,000 medications catalogued by the National Library of Medicine. 

When it’s time to take a medication, a user can click on the pill box to open it, then view their medications using photos and bulleted lists of pertinent details: medication name, dosage, etc. Reminders, including a phone-call reminder if a dose is missed, are also built in.

The challenges of developing such an app include the necessity of HIPAA compliance and generics that constantly change. 

“The challenge is making sure that you’re not making specific claims around medication consumption,” says Shepard. “We don’t give anybody advice or share any information about any specific individual.”

The company is running a pilot of the app in November in collaboration with Cincinnati-based Kroger, with the hopes of making the app public in mid-November. Users will pay a small fee to download the app, which will be available through their pharmacy.

A web-based app as well as native apps for mobile devices is available.
 
By Robin Donovan

After Robert Knighton’s grandmother had a stroke, she could only use the right side of her body. It made keeping clean in the hospital difficult. Knight’s wife Nina, a nurse at the VA Medical Center, noticed the same problem with some of her patients.

“The bed-bound patient population can’t get up to wash their hands,” explains Nina. “If a nurse comes in and she’s contaminated and touches the bedrails, the patients have nothing to wash their hands.”
 
The problem gave Nina an idea. “After working at St. Vincent Charity Hospital and then the VA she noticed it more in conjunction with the spread of hospital-acquired infections,” says Robert. “One day she was driving and it just came to her that patients needed a personal convenient device.” So Robert and Nina formed RKN Corporation in 2010 and started to develop the Bedside Sani-Holder, a bedside hand sanitizer dispenser. “This is a smart dispenser that helps with compliance, reminds patients if they haven’t used it and tracks usage,” says Robert.
 
Working with agencies like MAGNET and NorTech, RKN is working on a prototype of the Bedside Sani-Holder. They expect to hit the market by the second quarter of 2013. The Sani-Holder is part of NorTech’s Speed to Market Accelerator.
 
“We’ve really been able to use Northeast Ohio to launch our product,” says Robert. “Cleveland is known for healthcare and technology. It kind of feels like we’re entering the market at the right time.”
 
Robert and Nina are targeting hospitals and nursing homes with the Bedside Sani-Holder. So far, interest has been high. “We have spoken with quite a few hospitals in Northeast Ohio and have received welcoming feedback and interest,” says Robert. “Humility of Mary’s purchasing department said they would be interested in trialing our product once we are ready to go to market.”
 
When their product hits the market, RKN will be hiring IT staff, customer service, sales reps and operations staff. Two people that have been helping with management tasks will also join RKN working in permanent project management and operations.

 
Sources: Robert and Nina Knighton
Writer: Karin Connelly

Steve Deal has one problem with the infusion of technology into today’s healthcare model: it leaves out the patient. “We have the government pouring money into health IT on the providers’ side, but patients don’t have anything,” he says.

Along with co-founders Rene Raphael Vogt-Lowell and David Pingleton, Deal launched IFG Health, which is now in the beginning stages of launching a host of apps aimed at helping patients and families work more efficiently with their physicians and other healthcare providers.

Their first app, the IFG Provider Journal is available in web and mobile versions, and has a Facebook-like interface that allows users to track vital statistics, such as height, weight or blood pressure, record details of care plans during appointments and note progress via text and photos.

In many ways, the app is an electronic version of the notebook many people take to their physician’s office, and may be especially useful for caregivers who help a loved one manage complex conditions. 

Unlike a physical notebook, the app has search and sort functions for ease. Deal says that having information available – even basics that should be in a provider’s electronic medical record – helps appointments flow smoothly when time is limited. Also, not every physician or nurse is comfortable with EMRs, Deal points out.

A video on the company’s website says physicians wait an average of 10 to 15 seconds for the answer to a question before they move on, with or without the necessary information. 

Deal has experienced this firsthand as a caregiver for his father and mother-in-law, but doesn’t fault physicians. Today’s primary care providers, he points out, “go from one life crisis to another every 15 minutes,” facing burnout along the way. 

He hopes that organized patients will be able to partner better with their doctors, and plans to unveil a host of new web and mobile apps to help.

By Robin Donovan

The Ohio State University’s Technology Commercialization and Knowledge Transfer Office (TCO) and Cleveland Clinic Innovations recently formed a special alliance with the goal of helping move Ohio into the forefront of medical innovation and enhance job creation in the state.

“Nationally, this is one of the few alliances of this kind between prominent academic medical centers, putting Ohio in a leadership position for the commercialization of medical technology,” according to Brian Cummings, OSU’s vice president of technology commercialization.

Efforts will focus on improving and extending the lives of patients, and innovations will come in many forms, such as medical devices, patient services, new medical software systems, consumer products and startup companies, Cummings explains.
 
“This partnership holds enormous potential for Ohio to reshape the future of medicine,” says Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee in a news release.

The two organizations will be sharing and using their comprehensive technology and commercialization service infrastructures to develop and deploy new medical innovations generated by researchers, physicians, faculty and administrative staff at both institutions.

“Our first step going forward is to assess each other’s assets, available resources, unique programs and intellectual property portfolios and to begin to analyze the overlaps and gaps where we can assist each other,” Cummings says.

Cummings cites neuromodulation as an important innovation for the new partnership to explore. “Neuromodulation is one of the hottest areas of research and breakthrough innovation in current medical practice,” he says. "It has the potential through electrical stimulation to literally turn diseases off and on."

"Dr. Ali Rezai is a leader in this field and currently works at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center but started his work at the Cleveland Clinic, where he has built up a large portfolio of high-value companies and patents," Cummings adds. "Using the Clinic’s existing intellectual property and the clinical capabilities of Dr. Rezai’s current work at Ohio State should lead to a string of joint innovations and a host of new companies."


Source: Brian Cummings
Writer: Lynne Meyer