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University of Maryland, Baltimore and MedImmune are pairing up for a five-year, $6 million collaboration on bioscience research.

The Gaithersburg-based drug company and the university will both put money and scientists toward joint research projects. The projects will focus on medical conditions and diseases in MedImmune’s wheelhouse, such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems and inflammation.

The success of MenAfriVac shows vaccines can be developed outside Big Pharma’s walls, but, in most cases, the cost of late-phase trials is too great for charities. Recognizing this, JPMorgan Chase and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have set up a Big Pharma-backed investment fund. 

GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK), Merck ($MRK) and Pfizer’s ($PFE) foundation are among the investors in the fund, which will back late-stage development of technologies to fight disease in low-income countries. Having raised $94 million from its initial backers, the Global Health Investment Fund (GHIF) will now start trying to give vaccines and other technologies the financial clout to navigate Phase III trials.

The National Institutes of Health has launched a major initiative to improve how basic science advances and discoveries are translated into commercially viable products that improve patient care and advance public health.

The NIH Centers for Accelerated Innovations (NCAIs), funded by the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), will target technologies to improve the diagnosis, treatment, management, and prevention of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders and diseases. 

Venture capital for early-stage medical device companies is drying up. At Advamed 2013, I was able to sit down and talk to Paul Grand, managing director at Research Corporation Technologies Ventures, a life sciences firm focused primarily on medical devices. When I asked him what the three main mistakes startups make when pitching him, he sighed. His first response: “Only three?”

Ouch. So be sure to avoid these blunders when pitching VCs, startup CEOs:

With the enforcement of the HIPAA Omnibus final rule starting this week, health IT companies face liability for breaches of patients’ protected health information that they may never have faced before. It’s also making issues like Bring Your Own Device even mores stressful for CIOs as they figure out how to make any instances of PHI on these devices secure enough to withstand an audit if the devices get lost or stolen. Although the strategy is not without risks, providers and payers are turning to cloud-based solutions from data security companies to ensure HIPAA compliance.

Here are a few health IT companies taking this approach. Their data security measures are designed to help providers serving as covered entities and HIT companies who are business associates comply with HIPAA.

Covidien President and CEO Joe Almeida said in a little more than a decade, sub-Saharan Africa could be the big opportunity for medical device companies’ solution investments.

“It is a 10- or 15-year play. . . . The middle class will rise and you will have an opportunity,” Almeida said during the CEOs Unplugged series at Advamed 2013.

At Rock Health, entrepreneurs are developing innovative products to keep us healthier, and lower medical care costs.

Ten health startups in Rock Health’s current accelerator class presented to a roomful of investors and the press today. Rock Health is a startup accelerator that focuses on health care technology.

The current class of startups are tackling huge challenges in health care, such as cancer treatment or eating disorders.

mHealth advocates are giving good early reviews to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s final guidance document on the regulation of mobile medical apps, with one expert calling it “an expansive document that truly seeks to deregulate our nimble and innovative industry, while ensuring patient safety.”

“The guidance goes much further than I thought it would,” said Robert Jarrin, senior director of government affairs for Qualcomm, who noted that the agency has taken a new and novel approach in launching a consumer-facing website with an adjoining list of regulated apps that may be updated on a regular basis. In addition, he said, the FDA is creating a team that will be tasked with answering public inquiries about mobile medical apps submitted through mobilemedicalapps@fda.hhs.gov.

October 1 and 2, 2013 8:00pm ET/5:00pm PT

Now on its eighth run, the NIH SBIR Phase I Program for First-Time Applicants is a very practical step-by-step, four-hour online “How-To” workshop over two evenings to help researchers, faculty members, graduate students, post-docs and entrepreneurs create a SBIR company and apply to the NIH SBIR program in December of 2013. This workshop includes a post-course review of the applicant’s proposed SBIR application by our experts before submission to the NIH. As an added benefit, your SBIR companies will be included on NCET2’s newsletters that is sent out to VCs, angel investors, Global 1000 companies, and government funders.

The NIH SBIR/STTR program is one of the federal government’s best mechanisms to continue funding innovative life science research after traditional research funding has been exhausted. The objective of the program is to dramatically increase the impact of innovations derived from original federally funded R&D, and as such is an ideal program to fund university commercialization of research through new university/faculty/student startup companies. Phase I can be for up to $150,000 for 6 months. Phase II can be for up to $1 million for 2 years. After Phase I and II, the company should have eliminated enough technical and scientific risk of the original research that the company is ready for outside investor funding or product sales in the company sustainability final Phase III of the SBIR program.