What You Should Know:

• Healthcare providers face the difficult challenge of coping with an ever-increasing workload while still providing high-quality patient care and trying to retain their staff. 
• As the CEO of CalmWave, Inc., Ophir Ronen is an expert in both patient outcomes and staff retention who understands the importance of leveraging AI technologies to reduce alarm fatigue and deliver more efficient quiet care. 

Delivering Efficient Care by Reducing Alarm Fatigue

Alarm fatigue is a critical issue that plagues the healthcare industry, particularly in intensive care units (ICUs) and critical care settings. It occurs when healthcare professionals become desensitized to the constant barrage of beeping alarms from medical equipment, which can lead to missed or delayed responses to life-threatening situations. The over-reliance on alarms often results in false alarms, creating a sense of mistrust and a potentially hazardous environment for patients and clinicians. This problem has been exacerbated by the increasing complexity of medical technology and the consequent proliferation of alarms.

 CalmWave, Inc., is an innovative solution that addresses the alarm fatigue problem. By leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, CalmWave, Inc., filters out unnecessary alarms and alerts healthcare providers only when it detects critical events, thereby enhancing patient safety and improving clinical outcomes. CalmWave, Inc.’s, technology is highly relevant as it enables clinicians to focus on the most critical patient needs and make more informed decisions, improving the overall quality of care delivered in healthcare settings.

In an interview with HIT Consultant, Mr. Ophir Ronen (CEO CalmWave, Inc.) talks about the importance of AI-driven solutions to alarm fatigue.

How can digital health help healthcare providers balance workloads while still delivering quality care? 

Ophir Ronen, CEO of CalmWave, Inc.: Digital health can revolutionize healthcare by optimizing operations health and streamlining workflows, allowing healthcare providers to balance workloads while maintaining high-quality care. One of the critical aspects of digital health is the ability to leverage and activate the vast amounts of data generated by various systems, such as electronic health records (EHR) and connected devices.

By aggregating medical data from multiple sources, including vital signs, EHR, and clinician attrition data, digital health solutions can help identify optimal clinical workloads. Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a crucial role in analyzing this data to generate objective measures to enhance staffing and workflow efficiency.

Furthermore, digital health can alleviate the burden of non-clinical tasks on healthcare providers by automating these processes. This automation allows clinicians to focus on patient care, ensuring the highest quality outcomes. By optimizing workloads and streamlining processes, digital health enables healthcare providers to work at the top of their licenses, benefiting patients and healthcare systems.

How can AI improve nurse retention and patient outcomes? 

Ronen: AI has the potential to significantly improve nurse retention and patient outcomes by addressing critical challenges faced by healthcare professionals, such as alarm fatigue and non-value-added work. By optimizing medical alarm systems and reducing non-actionable alarms, AI can create a more manageable work environment for nurses, increasing job satisfaction and reducing turnover.

In Intensive Care Units (ICUs) around the world, an overwhelming number of alarms (85-99%) are non-actionable, contributing to alarm fatigue, stress, and patient disturbance. AI can aggregate alarm data from various sources, such as pulse oximeters and blood pressure cuffs, to identify optimal thresholds that minimize non-actionable alarms. As a result, the clinical work environment improves, leading to higher nurse retention, and patients can rest more effectively, enhancing their recovery.

Moreover, AI can help alleviate the burden of non-value-added tasks that clinicians face daily. Nurses often spend a significant portion of their time on non-clinical work, which can contribute to burnout and attrition. By automating these tasks, AI allows nurses to focus on patient care, leading to better job satisfaction and patient outcomes.

An example of AI in action is the CalmWave Operations Health AI Platform. This platform analyzes the constant flow of data from vital signs monitors to provide objective measures of clinical workload. It identifies clinicians at risk of burnout, enabling healthcare leaders to make informed decisions and implement strategies to improve nurse retention.

Given the concerns about clinician burnout, what role does reducing alarm fatigue with data-driven insights have in combating burnout? 

Ronen: Reducing alarm fatigue through data-driven insights is essential in combating clinician burnout and improving patient care. As a significant contributor to stress and cognitive overload, alarm fatigue can negatively impact healthcare providers’ mental well-being and job satisfaction.

AI-based solutions, such as CalmWave, can identify the sources of non-actionable alarms and provide data-driven recommendations for clinicians to make informed decisions. By offering real-time insights, these AI platforms enable healthcare professionals to adjust alarm settings efficiently, ultimately reducing false alarms and creating a more manageable work environment.

Reducing alarm fatigue benefits not only clinicians but also patients. Quieter environments allow patients to rest more comfortably, contributing to faster healing and better overall outcomes. By addressing alarm fatigue, AI solutions can significantly enhance the quality of care and support healthcare providers in their mission to provide the best possible patient care.

What are some of the barriers to implementing AI-driven solutions aimed at combating alarm fatigue and clinician burnout in healthcare settings? 

Ronen: Implementing AI-driven solutions to combat alarm fatigue and clinician burnout in healthcare settings faces several barriers, including organizational complexity, risk aversion, cost, data privacy, and clinical risk concerns. Hospitals, being highly complex systems with multiple stakeholders and priorities, often need extensive testing and proven effectiveness to adopt new technologies.

Despite these challenges, AI-driven solutions like CalmWave’s Operations Health Platform can offer significant benefits in reducing costs, maintaining data security, and improving patient care. By providing objective measures of clinician workload, the platform helps to enhance nurse retention, reducing the financial burden of nurse attrition in hospitals.

CalmWave’s platform is also SOC2 Type II certified, ensuring that data remains secure and protected. Regarding patient care, the platform reduces non-actionable alarms, alleviating alarm fatigue for healthcare providers and creating a more conducive environment for patients to rest and recover.

Current healthcare systems are overwhelmed, understaffed, and under-resourced, making it difficult for clinicians and leadership to explore new solutions. Some AI implementations require lengthy integration processes and extensive training, adding to this challenge. However, CalmWave’s human-centric design philosophy focuses on minimizing implementation complexity, providing just-in-time training, and enabling clinicians to use the platform to optimize care readily. Overcoming these barriers and embracing AI-driven solutions like CalmWave can significantly enhance healthcare delivery and benefit both patients and providers.

What are other promising implementations of AI that can help alleviate clinician burnout? 

Ronen: Several promising AI implementations under development aim to alleviate clinician burnout. One such development involves integrating patient bedside monitoring equipment, allowing AI-driven platforms like CalmWave to analyze data more effectively and ensure better alarm management.

AI can also actively map individual alarms to specific incidents, generating alarms based on the overall incident rather than each individual alarm. This approach reduces alarm fatigue and cognitive overload, creating a more manageable work environment for healthcare professionals.

In addition to bedside monitoring integration, AI can help reduce paperwork burdens by automating documentation processes, freeing up more time for clinicians to focus on patient care. Increasing efficiency in administrative tasks further lowers the risk of burnout among healthcare providers.

AI can also assist in clinical decision support by analyzing large amounts of patient data and providing healthcare professionals with accurate and timely insights for informed decision-making. This enhancement of care quality reduces the cognitive load on clinicians and contributes to decreased burnout and improved job satisfaction.

What impact does ‘quiet care’ have on the patient? 

Ronen: Quiet care promises to revolutionize care for critically ill patients by providing a truly quiet, peaceful, and restful environment in the ICU, something that has been missing since the beginning of continuous patient monitoring. Clinicians once believed that they and their patients had no choice but to tolerate the noise from monitors, but CalmWave technology is changing that perspective.

Other patient populations, such as those in Neonatal Intensive Care Units and Pediatric Intensive Care Units, have already benefited from noise reduction efforts, recognizing the harm noxious stimuli can cause premature infants, newborns, and children. Studies on Labor & Delivery patients have shown that quieter, peaceful laboring environments lead to more relaxed mothers with lower blood pressure, less labor pain, and calmer babies.

Research also indicates that high noise levels, including alarm noise, in ICUs can negatively affect patients’ sleep quality and duration. Insufficient sleep can increase the risk of developing delirium, an altered mental state, with potential long-term effects. Reducing non-actionable noise in ICUs significantly improves patients’ ability to recover, as they can rest and heal properly. Quiet care allows clinicians to provide the best care to patients without distractions from non-actionable alarms, ultimately optimizing patient recovery and outcomes.

What You Should Know:

– Today, Accenture Ventures announced it has made a strategic investment in Virtonomy, a provider of data-driven simulations that use existing patient data and digital twin technology to bring life-saving medical devices to market more quickly. 

– Virtonomy’s digital twin simulation solution enables medical device manufacturers to build model patient virtual environments for device testing at a reduced cost and with less regulatory complexity. The solution is based on an ever-expanding database of real clinical data that reflects factors such as anatomical variability, demographic diversity, and pathological conditions.

Virtonomy plans to use the strategic investment to extend its capabilities to medical technology companies across the globe and power the future of medical device design. The strategic investment is part of Accenture Venture’s Project Spotlight, an engagement and investment program that targets emerging technology software companies that can help fill strategic innovation gaps for the Global 2000.

What You Should Know:

– Elucid, Inc., a medical technology company providing physicians with AI-powered imaging analysis software to assess cardiovascular disease, has hired Andrew Miller as its chief technology officer (CTO).

– As CTO, Andrew will lead the technology strategy and oversee the engineering team’s execution. Elucid’s software is the only FDA-cleared non-invasive tool able to accurately characterize arterial plaque, simulating what pathologists would see under a microscope and establishing a histologic ground truth. Elucid is also pursuing an indication for FFRCT, uniquely derived from its PlaqueIQ technology, to non-invasively measure coronary blockages and the extent of ischemia.

Andrew Miller Bio

Miller is a health technology veteran with an acumen for transforming startups and growth-stage companies into mature organizations. His proven history of building diverse, high-performing organizations has led to profitable business and acquisition. He joins Elucid from Engooden Health, where he served as CTO and chief information security officer, responsible for delivery of technology solutions and infrastructure supporting the SaaS and service-based organization in its mission to redefine chronic care management. Prior to his leadership role at Engooden, Miller served as vice president of engineering for Curaspan, a naviHealth company. Previously, he held roles at Oracle as a senior leader in its Health Sciences division, and Phase Forward, among others.

Transcarent appoints Dr. Randy Hawkins as Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and will report to Transcarent Chief Executive Officer, Glen Tullman. As CMO, Dr. Hawkins will oversee the organization’s clinical quality initiatives and support the organization’s health analytics strategy.

Swift Medical has appointed Brian Litten as its new Chief Executive Officer effective immediately. Litten brings decades of healthcare leadership experience across health plans, provider organizations, regulatory agencies, and technology solution providers, with a proven track record of transforming and growing health technology pioneers. Previously, Litten held various leadership positions in transformational, value-based healthcare companies, including Tabula Rasa HealthCare (clinical pharmacy), StationMD (emergency telehealth), Pearl Health (risk-based primary care), PathForward (medical oncology), and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

GoCheck Kids, the leading digital vision screening platform for children, has named Naveen Kathuria as its new Chief Executive Officer. Kathuria brings deep experience leading healthcare organizations that serve vulnerable populations to his leadership role at GoCheck Kids, which is helping children thrive and pediatricians succeed by streamlining vision screenings into one efficient solution.

Carium, a Care Experience Platform (CXP) appoints David McCormick as Chief Operating Officer (COO) effective Feb. 2023. As newly appointed COO, David McCormick will provide leadership and insights into company operations, leading the sales and customer success teams.

In addition to this appointment, the company also announced the promotion within its leadership team of Julie Wolk to Chief Marketing Officer and Jessica Shandrowski to Vice President of Product & Customer Success.

Dr. Bill Roberts ACSM Chief Medical Officer

The American College of Sports Medicine® (ACSM) has named William Roberts, M.D., FACSM, as the organization’s new chief medical officer. In his new role, Roberts will develop strategy, provide guidance and lead collaborative efforts that address the professional needs of ACSM’s clinical membership and help grow, engage and cultivate clinical members and leaders. He also will provide clinical guidance on a variety of member and industry stakeholder issues related to ACSM’s sports medicine and clinical activities. 

Healthcare technology consulting and services firm Tegria appoints Raymond A. Gensinger, Jr., MD, FHIMSS as senior vice president and chief medical officer. A former chief information officer (CIO) and recognized expert on healthcare data analytics, Dr. Gensinger will take a leadership role in Tegria’s work to help provider and payer clients optimize and advance care through clinical transformation initiatives.

HHAeXchange has named Scott Schwartz as Chief Revenue Officer. After serving as Vice President and Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing at HHAeXchange for six years, Schwartz’s next role will be instrumental in driving the company’s continued growth in the homecare market. 

In his new role as Chief Revenue Officer, Schwartz will lead HHAeXchange’s provider sales, business development, and marketing organizations. He will also continue to lead the company’s innovative Partner Connect program, enabling customers to directly connect their HHAeXchange platform with complementary solutions that drive efficiency and visibility.

Verato names Avi Mukherjee as chief product officer. Avi comes to Verato from Alphabet’s Verily where he served as head of customer solutions. He’s held positions across the healthcare and technology ecosystem including chief product officer at HealthGrades (acquired by WebMD), CTO at MAP Health Management and advisor at Redesign Health.  

CentralReach appoints SaaS finance expert, Rick Russo, as Chief Financial Officer. With over 30 years of experience in the technology space, Rick will be leading the company’s financial operations during this time of growth and will be a strategic thought partner to the leadership team as the company continues to meet the unprecedented demand for its market-leading Autism and IDD Care Platform. 

Tactile Systems Technology, Inc. (“Tactile Medical”; the “Company”) (Nasdaq: TCMD), a medical technology company providing therapies for people with chronic disorders appoints Elaine Birkemeyer as Chief Financial Officer, effective March 20, 2023. Ms. Birkemeyer will succeed Brent Moen, who is retiring.

AI-powered Patient Experience & Growth platform Steer Health announces two new team members: Greg Silvey as SVP of Growth and Beth Fleming as the VP of Customer Success. Greg has a successful career as a healthcare executive with leadership roles in start-ups and large multinational organizations. Beth is a seasoned healthcare executive with over 25 years of experience working in management teams of healthcare organizations and health tech startups. In their new roles, both will help Steer Health expand and deepen its partnerships with healthcare organizations across the U.S.

OFFOR Health appoints Shawn Nason as CEO, replacing CEO Saket Agrawal. Nason brings more than 25 years of experience in executive management, customer service and healthcare innovation to his role as CEO, including direct experience improving healthcare access and outcomes in rural communities.

Clinical-stage biopharma company Clene, Inc. (Nasdaq: CLNN) along with its subsidiaries “Clene” and its wholly owned subsidiary Clene Nanomedicine, Inc. appoints Benjamin Greenberg, M.D., M.H.S. as Head of Medical. An internationally recognized expert in treating disorders of the central nervous system, Dr. Greenberg brings extensive clinical and research experience to Clene as the company continues its development of CNM-Au8® as a potential treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Gemini BioProducts Holding, Inc. (“GeminiBio” or the “Company”), a portfolio company of BelHealth Investment Partners, LLC (“BelHealth”), a Florida-based healthcare private equity firm appoints Cory Stevenson as Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors

It’s often said that the National Health Service is the closest thing Britain has to a unifying religion. If that is the case, then the faith of the population is being tested like never before,

With budgets already stretched before the COVID pandemic, additional cost pressures since heaped on health boards across the country by double-digit inflation have brought the NHS closer to breaking point than at any time in its history.

Every passing day seems to bring bleaker news for the beleaguered service, with a seemingly endless roll call of damning statistics and publication of official reports charting yet higher levels of institutional failure. 

If anything, the relentless flow of anecdotes of patient betrayal, breathlessly reported in the pages of the local press, is more shocking.

In the past few weeks we learned that four patients had waited more than 20 hours in the back of ambulances outside Royal Shrewsbury Hospital in England; that GPs in Peterborough are now responsible for the care of more than 2,000 patients each; and that Stockport NHS Foundation Trust is offering food bank vouchers to hospital workers struggling to get by on poverty wages. 

In the same week, a British Medical Association (BMA) survey found that 44% of senior doctors are planning to leave their roles “in some capacity” over the next 12 months, while the Care Quality Commission (CQC) reported 132,000 NHS and 165,000 social care vacancies, meaning a workforce the size of the population of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne is needed to fix the logjam. 

Meanwhile, the average wait for category two, 999 calls for an ambulance — including for chest pains and strokes — in England and Wales is now 60 minutes, compared with a target of 18 minutes. And in Scotland, throughout August, one in ten operations was canceled due to a lack of resources.

Traditionally, the response of politicians to complaints of a ‘crisis’ in the NHS has been to throw more money at it, and right now there’s no money to spare.

While both Conservative and Labour governments have previously toyed with reform, none has dared challenge the universally free, taxpayer-funded model upon which the health service was founded – until now. 

This week it was reported that NHS chief executives in Scotland – one of four autonomous health service areas in the UK – have discussed abandoning its founding principles by having wealthier patients pay for treatment.

The prospect of the first ‘two-tier’ health service in the UK since its founding in 1948 is raised in draft minutes of a meeting of NHS Scotland health board leaders in September. They also discussed the possibility of curtailing some free prescriptions.

While Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s Health Secretary, sought to play down the reports – insisting NHS Scotland would stay publicly owned and operated and free at the point of delivery – the reports represent something of a watershed.

Yousaf’s comments were only to be expected. If there is a single, immutable reality of British political life it is that the NHS is an untouchable shibboleth, and any party that says otherwise risks courting electoral oblivion.

Even if there was a prime minister mad, or drunk, enough to suggest privatizing the service, they would surpass the ends of the earth several times over before finding a private operator madder, or drunker, enough to take on the job.

Yet, there is a dynamic to the latest spot in which the NHS finds itself, which appears materially different to anything in the past. Again, you need only scroll through some of the local press articles to discover that waits are longer, levels of basic care poorer and patient experiences grimmer than ever before.

Figures published by NHS Wales last week revealed more than 60,000 patients are waiting more than two years for treatment. Ian Hembrow, 53, from Maesteg, in Bridgend was told the waiting list for his urgent hip operation was four-and-a -half-years.

In Bonhill, West Dunbartonshire, 69-year-old grandmother Mary Travis has already lived in crippling pain for more than two years, waiting for a back operation to straighten her twisted spine.  Earlier this month she was told that, despite being at the top of a waiting list, she could face a further, two-year wait. 

The NHS has endured because there is an almost spiritual belief in its universality. People of all classes and backgrounds accept the same level of treatment as a right and consequence of being British. 

Those principles have survived because NHS care, as well as being universal, was also universally excellent. That can no longer be said to be the case. The withholding of treatment for years is worse than receiving poor treatment and those who can afford to pay privately for better service will inevitably opt to do so.

The most compelling argument against privatizing the NHS has always been that the provision of healthcare should not be left to the vagaries of market forces. The irony of the current crisis is that those very market forces may now compel its demise. 

No matter how strongly Britons support the NHS, few will be prepared to wait months or years to have an ingrowing toenail treated or a cyst removed if they can have it done privately the following week for a few hundred pounds.

And while we may be happy and willing to pay European levels of taxes in return for a European-style health service, we’re unlikely to do the same for a US-style system.

With the growing development of robotics and telemedicine, as well as an expansion of over-the-counter diagnostics, more people are now seeking remedies, for a greater range of treatments, from their local chemist or from a private therapist or practitioner.

By spending a small amount each month, they can have more or less unlimited telephone or video access to a private GP. 

More is being done online than was the case a few years ago. Much of it remains minor, but the direction of travel is such that, before long, more serious illnesses will be diagnosed remotely and by high street providers. 

If patients can be diagnosed with prostate or breast cancer sooner and treated more effectively, then the way in which the health service is configured and funded will no longer be as important.

We may end up with something approaching the German health service model where a private service handles minor and routine complaints, while accidents and serious illnesses are treated by a publicly funded service, similar to the NHS, which is free at the point of delivery.

It’s unlikely the NHS will ever be wholly privatized, but we could see – slowly and over time – some of its more routine functions being taken over by private companies. 

Even the most traditional religions are forced to adapt and evolve to remain relevant and the NHS is no different. How it responds to the current crisis will determine its role in treating the next generations of patients and whether they will hold it with the same reverence for another 70 years.

About Ivor Campbell

Ivor Campbell is the CEO of Snedden Campbell, a UK-based recruitment agency for the global medical technology industry. IvorIvor has been in a candidate search for more than 30 years. Prior to launching Snedden Campbell, in 2001, he held senior roles for some of the UK’s biggest recruitment companies. Fed up with men in grey suits, pointless KPIs and sharp practice, he decided to launch a new kind of retained medical technology search consultancy that would bring approachability to headhunting, where clients and candidates would be treated equally, and where nobody ever said ‘touching base’. He now spends his time meeting clients and delivering on projects around the UK, Europe and worldwide.

What You Should Know:

– The research is mounting to show that Anumana’s AI-ECG algorithms could dramatically improve screening for cardiovascular disease (CVD), providing early warnings of disease from just a standard electrocardiogram (ECG). Yesterday, a study was published in Nature Medicine that shows an Anumana AI algorithm applied to Apple Watch ECG recordings successfully identified a weak heart pump in patients.

– This follows other recent research findings, published in The Lancet, which showed an Anumana AI-ECG algorithm can indeed identify a subgroup of high-risk patients who would benefit more from further intensive heart monitoring to detect atrial fibrillation, supporting an AI-guided targeted screening strategy. Another study, published in Mayo Clinic Findings, showed high adopters of AI-enabled screening tool are more likely to diagnose left ventricular dysfunction than low adopters. That study also used an Anumana AI-ECG algorithm.

Research Background

A portfolio company of nference and Mayo Clinic Platform, Anumana is a medical technology company dedicated to transforming the detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease. The company is applying AI to unleash the hidden power of the electrocardiogram (ECG), a ubiquitous, 100-year-old test that will soon be able to detect risk for a range of cardiovascular conditions early – before symptoms start – including those undetectable to the human eye.

Mayo Clinic invented patient health records more than 100 years ago and is currently home to one of the world’s largest repositories of ECG and associated patient records. Anumana leverages nference’s proprietary AI-enabled software platform to make this rich longitudinal data computable. By pairing deep-learning AI techniques with large ECG and rich clinical datasets, the company has uncovered critical ECG signatures and patterns unrecognizable to the human eye. The result is a modernized ECG that can be used as a predictive tool and biomarker of disease.

What You Should Know:

– Heart Test Laboratories, a medical technology company focused on saving lives by making an ECG a far more valuable screening tool through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), announced that it has entered into a multi-year collaboration agreement with Rutgers University (Rutgers).

– HeartSciences and Rutgers will collaborate to develop AI-based ECG algorithms, which are expected to accelerate HeartSciences’ product development pipeline and further expand the clinical value of an ECG for low-cost detection of heart disease.

Collaboration Details

These collaboration efforts will be focused on leveraging the extensive clinical data compiled at Rutgers. The collaboration agreement follows HeartSciences’ recent participation and demonstration of the MyoVista® at the Inauguration Ceremony of the Center for Innovation at the Rutgers and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in September 2022. The new collaborative relationship will operate out of the new Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson, Center for Innovation. Partho P. Sengupta, MD, MBBS, FACC, Professor and the Chief of Division of Cardiology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, will serve as Rutgers’ Principal Investigator.

What You Should Know:

– Nuance Communications announced a series of strategic partnership announcements at RNSA 2022.

– Nuance announces that Kentucky-based Baptist Health and Pennsylvania-based Einstein Healthcare have joined the Nuance Precision Imaging Network (PIN). The addition of these healthcare systems will empower collaborative care teams with AI-powered insights from diagnostic imaging at the point-of-care.

– Perspectum, a global medical technology company, will enter a strategic collaboration with Nuance to scale access to AI-enabled integrated digital care platforms to improve patient care for metabolic disease. This collaboration will deliver Perspectum’s integrated digital platform suite for metabolic disease care management and will accelerate adoption of Perspectum’s non-invasive quantitative multiparametric magnetic resonance (MR) software services to over 12,000 U.S. healthcare facilities using Nuance PIN. This collaboration has the potential to serve ~100 million patients in the U.S. living with metabolic and other chronic diseases.

– Annalise.ai and Nuance Communications (a Microsoft company) today announced that the global medical imaging AI company has joined the Nuance Precision Imaging Network™ (PIN), connecting Annalise.ai workflow orchestration and diagnostic support solutions to over 12,000 healthcare facilities worldwide.

The early 2020s will be studied by historians as a time of global uncertainty when an unknown pathogen caused a public health emergency that brought the world to the brink.

It may also be remembered as a time of unparalleled cooperation and advancement in technologies, prompted by the Covid pandemic, that provided enduring benefits for generations to come.

Just as the two world wars of the 20^th Century were the deadliest and most attritional in history, they also triggered developments in medicine, jet propulsion and cryptology that ultimately led to the general prescribing of penicillin, mass air transit and the dawn of the computer age.

The quickest and most obvious legacy of Covid was mass vaccination programs around the world which has already led to a step change in public perceptions of diagnostics and population-wide inoculation.

The profile it gave to the industry has since led to greater investment in methods and devices for detecting a wide range of conditions, most notably for sexually transmitted infections.

In addition, we can expect established, over-the-counter tests for things like fertility and pregnancy to become more informative. Diagnosing serious illnesses, including cancers and heart disease, is likely to become simpler and quicker, because of advances in diagnostic technology created by interest in the sector generated by Covid.

Some people are now wearing wristwatches that tell them their blood pressure, average altitude, and their heart rate and the routine of carrying a test and being tested has become deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. 

Are we getting to the stage where people will regularly be testing themselves for cholesterol, blood pressure and heart rate? 

In the 1960s the medical profession promised there would be a pill for every ill. No matter what you got, they would be able to cure it. They quickly realized however that just because you could test patients for something didn’t mean they could do something about it. Far better not to have it in the first place. 

Also, by improving testing and diagnoses, we need to ensure that we are not widening health inequalities. Those who push for better and earlier treatment tend to be educated, middle-class people with a bit of money who are used to dealing with systems and being heard. There’s a whole other class of poorer, particularly older people, who are less likely to push and more likely to accept what they are told.       

So, what other than advances in diagnostic technology, has the experience of Covid given us? Here are just a few examples.

 1. Artificial Intelligence 

AI has changed the way disease outbreaks are monitored and managed, saving lives. During the pandemic, applications included tracking people with novel strains by detecting visual signs of the virus on computerized tomography (CT) lung scans and monitoring changes in body temperature through the use of wearable sensors.

AI has also been applied to open-source data to track the spread of the disease allowing public health planners to predict potential new case numbers by area as well as identify most at-risk populations.

Other applications include delivering medical supplies by drone, disinfecting patient rooms, and scanning approved drug databases for medicines that might work against the virus. 

2. Blockchain

Blockchain technology – normally associated with the production of cryptocurrencies – emerged as a key technology to help decision-makers produce fast, robust, transparent, and inexpensive solutions during an unprecedented public health emergency.

As well as helping to track the spread of the disease, it was also used to manage insurance payments and maintain medical supply chains and donation tracking pathways. 

Blockchain technology was particularly useful in monitoring outbreaks by creating ledgers that were both secure and could be updated hundreds of times per day. It also improved diagnostic accuracy and treatment effectiveness, streamlined isolation of outbreak clusters, tracked drug supply chains and supplies, managed clinical data, and identified patterns of symptoms.

3. Telehealth technologies

In the face of extraordinary restrictions on population movement and contact, new and more creative uses of existing telehealth technologies were required to permit clinicians to continue treating patients while complying with contact and travel rules and stay-at-home orders.    

Because of the high virulence of the disease, especially within hospitals, telehealth technologies became a cost-effective means of slowing transmission rates, reducing pressures on hospital capacity by filtering out those with moderate symptoms and keeping them at home.

Telehealth technologies permitted physicians to continue consulting by using audio-visual, real-time, two-way interactive communications including video ‘visits’ through webcam-enabled computers, tablets, and smartphones, chatbots and automated algorithms. 

Remote delivery of clinical care services continued through audio-visual conferencing technology that allowed hospitals to be kept clear of confirmed cases.

4. 3D Printing

Travel and contact restrictions coupled with a need for new and previously little-used medical hardware – including ventilator valves, breathing filters, test kits and face mask clasps – to help treat Covid-19 also posed a novel, logistical problem.

The use of 3D printing as a disruptive technology came into its own, keeping costs down and saving lives.

It allowed hospitals and public health authorities to use computer-aided design (CAD) and locally sourced materials to produce often small numbers of critical products. One area in which 3D printing was crucial was in the development of entirely new products, including plastic door handle adaptors that enable easy elbow opening to prevent the further spread of the virus.

5. Gene-editing technologies

From public health officials reporting the Covid outbreak to the World Health Organization (WHO), it took scientists only a fortnight to isolate the virus and figure out the full sequence of its genetic material. 

The disclosure of the genetic code went a long way to pinpointing the origins and the spread of the disease, and also to pharmaceutical targets for drug development. 

Advancements in gene-editing technologies – in particular of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)-Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein 9) – was instrumental in developing a vaccine.

6. Nanotechnology
Νano-based products were developed and deployed to assist in the containment,
diagnosis and treatment of Covid-19. Nanotechnology is a multi-disciplinary field that utilizes nano-sized particles and devices for different applications, including diagnostics, targeted drug delivery and the production of therapeutic materials. 

Nanoparticles of gold and silver have been used in biomedical and diagnostic applications, for the detection of viral particles. Nanotechnology has been shown to help treat viral infections through various mechanisms. Nanoparticles can act as antiviral drug delivery systems, interacting and binding to a virus, thereby preventing it from attaching and entering a host cell.

7. Synthetic biology

Covid presented an ideal, real-world test case for scientists to use biology, engineering, genetics, chemistry, and computer science to substantially alter the genotype of the virus.  In the context of the pandemic, synthetic biology is seen as the next phase in the progress of vaccination development. Because it is being utilized as a design tool, it is helping to make vaccines more effective than ever.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health invested in synthetic biology to help engineer vaccines that would be scalable to a level of billions as well as being able to work without refrigeration.

The synthetic biology body Ginkgo Bioworks gifted $25m of resources to public and private teams to help cure, prevent and treat novel coronaviruses. In addition, several companies worked to develop experimental vaccines containing synthetic strands of RNA or DNA that code for protein molecules on the surface of the virus. 

8. Drones
Throughout the pandemic, drones have been deployed on the front line to help contain the spread of Covid.

As well as being used for purposes of disinfection, street patrols and food and medicine delivery in quarantined districts, the Chinese government adopted and co-opted industrial drones to help improve disease detection and crowd management.

Devices were used to monitor quarantine measures, facilitate aerial broadcasting, conduct aerial thermal sensing, monitor traffic, and deliver medical supplies in infected areas, often replacing helicopter patrols for law enforcement and transportation.

9. Robots

Robots were also used to help contain the spread of Covid, including disinfecting hospitals, decontaminating public and private spaces and handling biohazardous waste as well as delivering food and medication.

Robots continue to be used for a range of clinical functions, including taking patients’ temperatures and substituting as medical assistants to help minimize person-to-person transmission.

Self-navigating, ultraviolet, disinfection autonomous robots were deployed to decontaminate hospitals, isolation wards, intensive care units and operating rooms by spreading UV light to destroy pathogens. 

In China, robots were adapted to provide security, inspection, and delivery services. In Hong Kong and South Korea, the Israeli Temi robot was used in nursing homes to allow families to communicate with quarantined residents through video calls, as well as being utilized in hospitals, airports, and offices.

About Ivor Campbell
Ivor Campbell is the CEO of Snedden Campbell, a UK-based recruitment agency for the global medical technology industry. IvorIvor has been in candidate search for more than 30 years. Prior to launching Snedden Campbell, in 2001, he held senior roles for some of the UK’s biggest recruitment companies. Fed up with men in grey suits, pointless KPIs and sharp practice, he decided to launch a new kind of retained medical technology search consultancy that would bring approachability to headhunting, where clients and candidates would be treated equally, and where nobody ever said ‘touching base’. He now spends his time meeting clients and delivering on projects around the UK, Europe and worldwide.

What You Should Know:

– Today Accenture published Digital Health and MedTech – New Signals for Transformation to understand the impact consumers, patients and healthcare professionals’ experiences and expanding care settings will have on the medtech industry.

– In a global survey of Medtech executives, five key trends were identified, including Care Anywhere and Everywhere with over 75% of executives saying that the expanding care settings and models will significantly reorient their firm’s long-term strategy and change business models.

5 Trends Driving the Future Growth of Digital Health & MedTech

“Healthcare is at a crossroads, facing unprecedented pressure and disruption — including affordability challenges, shifting patient expectations, and an increasing deluge of health data,” said Tim Durst, a managing director at Accenture who leads the global medical technology sector in the company’s Life Sciences practice. “With a unique understanding of therapeutics, patients and providers, as well as insights gained from digital devices in the hands of patients, MedTech companies are well-positioned to lead the transformation to digital health. However, companies will need the proper digital foundation to leverage the necessary insights and create a comprehensive digital health solution.”

The report identifies five key trends driving the future growth of MedTech:

1. The Consumer Patient

Healthcare is no longer a one-way interaction with the patient only on the receiving end; it now requires continuous engagement between the patient, provider and payer. Two-thirds (70%) of executives said that the Consumer Patient phenomenon is very relevant and expect it to significantly affect their firm’s long-term strategy.

2. Care Anywhere, Everywhere

As consumers increasingly expect to receive care how, where and when they want, healthcare is increasingly expanding from hospitals to ambulatory and at-home care locations. The MedTech executives interviewed for the report said that while traditional products continue to drive revenues, the expansion of care to new settings is a key part of their growth strategies.

3. The Rise of Digital Health

MedTech company leaders are prioritizing digital health by building capabilities in-house through investments in R&D, technology, digital and new business models; and by making asset acquisitions to expand their pipeline across therapeutic areas and add new capabilities to innovate faster or reach customers in new ways. Nearly all (99%) executives indicated that development and commercialization of Digital Health solutions has accelerated in the past two years.

4. Converging Sectors

The rise of digital in healthcare is also fueling non-traditional deals, with future success dependent upon various sectors converging to develop products and services across the entire care continuum, according to nearly nine out of 10 (86%) executives.

5. New Regulatory Pathways

Digital Health may fall outside the bounds of established regulatory pathways for untested technologies, requiring new approaches from the sector. Most executives (87%) identified government regulations as a threat and disruptor to their business. This may be due to the shifting nature of regulatory guidelines, as regulatory bodies work to keep up with the rate of new and emerging technologies and ensure they are safe and effective.

What You Should Know:

– Google Cloud launches Medical Imaging Suite that addresses common pain points organizations face in developing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models.

– Google Cloud enables the development of AI for imaging to support faster, more accurate diagnosis of images, increased productivity for healthcare workers, and improved care access and outcomes for patients.

Google Cloud’s Medical Imaging Suite Key Features

Key features of the Medical Imaging Suite include:

Imaging Storage: Cloud Healthcare API, part of the Medical Imaging Suite, allows easy and secure data exchange using the international DICOMweb standard for imaging. Cloud Healthcare API provides a fully managed, highly scalable, enterprise-grade development environment and includes automated DICOM de-identification. Imaging technology partners include NetApp for seamless on-prem to cloud data management, and Change Healthcare, a cloud-native enterprise imaging PACS in clinical use by radiologists.

Imaging Lab: AI-assisted annotation tools from NVIDIA and MONAI help automate the highly manual and repetitive task of labeling medical images, and Google Cloud also offers native integration with any DICOMweb viewer.

Imaging Datasets & Dashboards: Organizations can use BigQuery and Looker to view and search petabytes of imaging data to perform advanced analytics and create training datasets with zero operational overhead.

Imaging AI Pipelines: Using Vertex AI on Google Cloud can accelerate development of AI pipelines to build scalable machine learning models, with 80 percent fewer lines of code required for custom modeling.

Imaging Deployment: Finally, the Medical Imaging Suite offers flexible options for cloud, on-prem, or edge deployment to allow organizations to meet diverse sovereignty, data security, and privacy requirements—while providing centralized management and policy enforcement with Google Distributed Cloud, enabled by Anthos.

Medical Imaging Suite Partners

Medical Imaging Suite has been adopted by:

– Hackensack Meridian Health, a network of healthcare providers in New Jersey, is beginning to use the Medical Imaging Suite to de-identify petabytes of images with future plans to build AI algorithms to predict metastasis in patients with prostate cancer, a life-threatening outcome disproportionately affecting Black men in the U.S.

– Hologic, a global medical technology company, developed the first CE-marked digital cytology platform for laboratories, which combines a new AI algorithm for cervical cancer screening with advanced volumetric imaging technology. The platform helps cytologists and pathologists identify precancerous lesions and cervical cancer cells in women. Next, Hologic plans on expanding the platform’s capabilities using the Medical Imaging Suite.

With recent statistics suggesting that 70% of all projects fail, it’s vital that we do all we can to set ourselves up for success when we set out on a new design or development of a product. Every day, we are surrounded by products and services that don’t work as we expect them to. Whether it is a hard-to-follow set of instructions for a new medical device or a convoluted setup process, people are constantly forced to develop workarounds to compensate for poor design.

The practice of Human-Centered Design (HCD) was created to combat these issues and is now widely recognized as a tool to create products and experiences that work for their intended end-users and impact their lives in a positive way.

However, despite the acceleration of HCD and the broader general understanding of its benefits, trying to fully grasp what people really need remains a challenge, particularly when you are exploring something that hasn’t existed before and the end-user may not know what they’re missing.

Actions speak louder than words

Although market research techniques can help us explore a defined market segment or identify who might use a new product or service, it rarely delivers when evaluating innovation and realistic end-user implementation, especially in the healthcare space.

Asking people for their opinion about something they use on a daily basis doesn’t often turn into insightful outcomes. Asking them about something they have never seen or experienced in real life presents even bigger limitations.

When you ask someone what they need or how a product or service can be improved, they might talk about micro-changes – something small that they want, or that they think they want. Often, people find it difficult to express what they truly need, either because they cannot imagine doing anything differently from the current ‘norm’, or they accept a product’s flaw as something they have to live with to help with their condition. Through no fault of their own, most people lack the technical knowledge, insight and foresight needed to think up revolutionary concepts and better product solutions.

With this, we need to go beyond questions and observe and explore how people interact with the product or experience in a real-world setting. We need to look at not only how people use that product or service, and specific challenges patients might need addressing, but also their surrounding environment and how the product might fit into their lives. Only then will we be able to see what has not been saying, get under the skin of users and identify what they really need.

Human-Centered Design, or Design Research, opens levels of empathy to help us understand how people might interact with what doesn’t yet exist. Instead of surveys or focus groups, we use observations, ethnography, cultural safaris and a range of other tools to assemble a detailed, human-centered picture of the end-user, seeing each patient as a human as opposed to a statistic. Rather than relying solely on what people say, we use the tools of anthropology, psychology and sociology in order to understand why people behave in the way that they do. This enables us to get to the bottom of their unmet needs, define challenges to solve and establish paths for improvements and a better user experience.

Design Research focuses on the why, giving us true insights into who the users really are, what they do and why and how they do it. It is in this why that the opportunities for innovation lie.

Set up for success

The success of Human Centered Design relies heavily on the tools you use and is a highly-nuanced task where emotional and cognitive elements are equally important.

For example, when conducting research in the medical industry, you might end up talking to someone who has been through something highly emotional or traumatic, that has had a significant impact on their life. In those instances, you need to have a thorough understanding of how best to listen and empathize, whilst still guiding the research to ensure that goals are met and useful information is uncovered to inform the design going forward.

Alternatively, you might be connecting with someone whose condition has resulted in a significant physical or cognitive impairment. In these circumstances, you need to choose the right tools to meet the research aims, but also to make sure that the methodologies do not influence or bias the outcomes. Just as in physics, the ‘Observer Effect’ – the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation – is something we must consider and minimize as much as possible in Design Research.

Flexibility is also key, particularly in early-stage research. Being too prescriptive in the methodologies you use and the direction of the dialogue runs the risk of missing crucial information and results in a narrow or segmented picture of potential opportunities. Whilst it is important to have overarching aims for the research, following a flexible approach allows for greater spontaneity and the potential to adapt the interaction between the team conducting the research and the research subject. In those circumstances, whilst the dialogue is guided by a pre-defined script, it allows the facilitator to pick up on interesting threads of information or observations that arise naturally throughout the research session.

In research, selecting the right tools is important; but selecting the correct respondents is also key to ensuring holistic findings. A major component of successful research activities is the identification of stakeholders; those with a direct interest in the product, system, or service you are going to develop, from the patients themselves to family members, friends and colleagues.

Building confidence at a time of change

In a world where people have increasingly high expectations of what a product and service should do for them, and a right to have a medical device work efficiently and in a way that fits into their everyday lives, being rigorous and having a clear understanding of people’s needs and aspirations is more important than ever.

Innovation requires significant investment, both in terms of time and money and only by developing experiences that truly address people’s needs, can organizations gain a competitive advantage. In addition, they can also get a better return on their investment and stand out as drivers for change in the medical industry and more broadly.

Any piece of research should always deliver real-world value. Important questions we need to consider include how is specific research enables new opportunities, how can we act on the results and how will our work benefit our customers, our organizations, and our societies.

As designers, innovators and creators, we must never stop asking these all-important questions. Ultimately, research is there to give us and our clients confidence – the confidence that comes with knowing that a new product or experience will have a meaningful, lasting impact in people’s lives, delivering value and enhanced quality of life.

About Hollie Johnston

Hollie Johnston is a Principal – Human Factors & Research at PDD, a product and experience innovation consultancy. She is an expert in the usability of medical devices and a champion of the application of Human Factors methodologies in healthcare, to deliver meaningful innovations and better experiences for patients, carers and healthcare practitioners.

What You Should Know:

– Eko, a digital health company applying machine learning in the fight against heart and lung disease, today announced that it was awarded a $2.7M Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Direct Phase II grant by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

– The grant will fund the development of a machine learning algorithm that detects and stratifies pulmonary hypertension (PH) using phonocardiogram (PCG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) data provided by Eko’s smart stethoscopes.

Improving Clinical Decision-Making Through New Machine Learning Algorithm

Pulmonary hypertension is a severe condition that occurs when the pressure in the vessels that carry blood from the heart to the lungs is higher than normal, causing undo stress on the heart. PH affects up to 1% of the global population and is a marker of poor health outcomes.¹ PH can cause premature disability, heart failure, and death. Unfortunately, delays of over two years frequently occur between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis of severe kinds of PH.  The gold standards for diagnosing PH are echocardiography and right heart catheterization, which are costly, invasive, and require a heart specialist. ECG-based AI models have been clinically proven to improve the diagnosis of PH but are challenging to deploy.³ To address this challenge, Eko formed a research partnership with Lifespan Health System’s Cardiovascular Institute to collect real-world PCG and ECG data using the Eko DUO ECG + Digital Stethoscope. This data will help develop an algorithm that can detect PH and stratify its severity. This easy-to-deploy early identification tool aims to diagnose PH earlier and more accurately, leading to beneficial interventions that can save patients’ lives

“The major goal of this study is to determine whether an Eko algorithm based on phonocardiography coupled with electrocardiography can identify the presence and severity of pulmonary hypertension when compared to the current gold standard,” said Dr. Gaurav Choudhary, Principal Investigator and Ruth and Paul Levinger Professor of Cardiology and Director of Cardiovascular Research at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Lifespan Cardiovascular Institute. “This machine learning algorithm has the potential to be a low cost, easily implementable, and sustainable medical technology that assists healthcare professionals in identifying more patients with pulmonary hypertension.”

This award marks Eko’s fourth SBIR grant from the NIH, bringing their total funding to date from the NIH for cardiopulmonary machine learning development to $6M. A previous $2.7M grant, awarded to the company in July of 2020, funded the collaborative work with Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute to validate algorithms that help healthcare professionals (HCPs) identify pathologic heart murmurs and valvular heart disease (VHD) during routine office visits. That grant for VHD directly contributed to the FDA clearance and commercialization of Eko Murmur Analysis Software (EMAS) – the first and only machine learning algorithm to assist HCPs in identifying structural heart murmurs using a smart stethoscope.

Eko is advancing how healthcare professionals detect and monitor heart and lung disease with its innovative suite of digital tools, patient and provider software, and AI-powered analysis. Its FDA-cleared platform is used by hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals worldwide, allowing them to detect earlier and with higher accuracy, diagnose with more confidence, manage treatment effectively, and ultimately give their patients the best care possible.

What You Should Know: 

– Intuity Medical, Inc., a commercial-stage medical technology and digital health company focused on making life with diabetes easier, today announced that the POGO Automatic® Blood Glucose Monitoring System is now available at the more than 2,200 U.S. pharmacies of Kroger Health, the healthcare division of The Kroger Co. 

– With POGO Automatic Monitors and Cartridges now available at all Kroger Health pharmacy locations, the simplicity of One-Step testing is easily accessible to many people with diabetes.

Why It Matters

Many people with diabetes struggle with the burden of testing blood glucose with traditional glucose meters because it can be complicated, there’s a lot to carry around, and it can be very disruptive to everyday life.

“For people with diabetes, consistent blood glucose monitoring is essential for managing their disease, but the barriers presented by traditional meters can prevent them from testing regularly,” said Emory Anderson, president and CEO of Intuity Medical, Inc. “Intuity Medical is proud to share a joint commitment with Kroger Health pharmacies to make glucose testing simpler for customers with diabetes. We’ve done this by providing POGO Automatic’s One-Step™ testing, which automatically does the work of lancing and blood collection, freeing people with diabetes from the hassles of traditional glucose testing.”

POGO Blood Gllucose Monitoring: How It Works

POGO Automatic, from Intuity Medical, is the first and only FDA-cleared automatic blood glucose monitor with 10-test cartridge technology that automatically lances, collects blood, and produces a glucose result at the push of a button and doesn’t require people with diabetes to carry or load separate lancets and test strips.

Testing blood glucose with POGO Automatic is simple and automatic. With everything needed for 10 tests integrated into a single cartridge, users never again have to handle separate lancets or test strips. They can discreetly test and obtain an accurate glucose result in a matter of seconds, without everyone noticing.

Eligible, privately insured patients can now save by filling prescriptions at Kroger Health pharmacies for POGO Automatic Test Cartridges and/or a POGO Automatic Monitor through the POGO Automatic Prescription Savings Program. Participants will pay no more than $59 for up to 150 tests per prescription and can receive a no-cost POGO Automatic Monitor with a prescription. 

What You Should Know:

– Oncoustics, San Francisco, CA-based ultrasound-based tissue characterization solutions announces the initial close of a $5 million+ seed round of funding to advance its SaMD (software as a medical device) technology for the low-cost assessment of structural diseases at the point of care.

– Oncoustics’ first products will focus on liver disease, one of the fastest-growing causes of morbidity and mortality in the world. The round is co-led by Creative Ventures and Saltagen Ventures, and further includes NorthSpring Capital Partners, Fraser Kearney Capital Corp., Pallasite Ventures, and Dr. Chen Fong, a renowned radiologist, entrepreneur/investor and inductee into the Order of Canada for his contributions to medical technology innovation and philanthropy.

Acoustic Data Meets Ultrasound Imagery

Oncoustics’ patented approach utilizes both the ultrasound images as well as the acoustic data derived from the raw sound signals to automatically differentiate tissue types. Every different type of tissue in the body bounces back a unique acoustic signature and Oncoustics mines these signals to differentiate healthy versus diseased tissues. Oncoustics has been collecting ultrasound signal datasets and has amassed the largest RF signal data set in the world. This hardware-agnostic approach works on any ultrasound system, including new low-cost point-of-care ultrasound systems, making this an affordable and accessible diagnostic tool.

James Wang, partner at Creative Ventures who leads AI investments, leveraging his background in computer science specializing in AI/ML, shared, “Oncoustics’ approach is unique. They mine the raw data that is typically thrown away and can use this to go beyond what can be seen by the human eye. They’re basically creating a ‘virtual biopsy’ that has vast applications in healthcare. Innovations like Oncoustics are what will help change the trajectory of our currently unsustainable healthcare system and costs.”

Leveraging the rise of new point-of-care ultrasound systems, Oncoustics takes advantage of all the benefits of these systems, including their low cost, portability and ease of use, and builds on this by guiding the data acquisition and providing easy-to-read results via a smartphone app.

Oncoustics’ Liver Assessment Solution

Oncoustics’ first product, the OnX liver assessment solution, is focused on detecting structural liver diseases including fibrosis and steatosis (fat) that can occur in all types of chronic liver disease (CLD). CLD today affects more than 2 billion people globally and is rising dramatically, driven by a condition called Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).

“There’s a tsunami of need around detecting these types of liver diseases and our ultimate goal is to decrease or eliminate the need for high-end imaging or painful and invasive biopsies,” said Beth Rogozinski, CEO, Oncoustics. “With this new round of funding, we will accelerate our liver solutions and enable low-cost diagnostics for earlier interventions and better patient care.”

Milestones

The Oncoustics platform promises a whole new level of access to care with the benefits of ease of use, accessibility, affordability, and optimizing clinical workflow. Oncoustics applies AI to raw ultrasound signals to do tissue characterization at point of care for low-cost, noninvasive surveillance, diagnostics, and treatment monitoring of diseases with high unmet clinical need. The Oncousticssolutions for ultrasound will be submitted for regulatory approval in the United States (FDA 510(k)), Canada (Health Canada medical device license) and the European Union (CE Mark). The OnX Liver Assessment Solution has not been cleared for clinical use and is For Investigational Use Only.