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And then there were nine.

The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development has named three finalists in three separate categories of the final round of the InvestMaryland Challenge. The winning companies, to be announced April 15, will receive $100,000 in top prizes and $125,000 in cash and in-kind awards as part of the Maryland Venture Fund’s first business competition.

InvestMaryland is a state venture capital initiative managed by DBED and the state-run Maryland Venture Fund. The initiative raised $84 million through a tax credit auction in 2012 to invest in startup companies.

Monday, April 15th 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. at MICA’s Brown Center

After months of submitting business plans, scoring applications, developing special awards and partnering with us, it’s time to celebrate entrepreneurship! Please join us April 15th at Maryland Institute College of Art’s Brown Center as we announce the top three $100K winners. 

Congratulations to Elaine Amir! Elaine, executive director of the Montgomery County Campus of Johns Hopkins University, was named to The Daily Record’s 2013 list of Maryland’s Top 100 Women.

The announcement brought kudos from JHU interim provost Jonathan Bagger.

The following eight companies have joined our campus community within the past few months. Welcome! We look forward to hearing more about your work.

“Transformation” is the best description of what is happening in health care right now. We are seeing historic changes in how health care is administered in the United States—with increased focus on quality of care versus just paying for a service. We are seeing changes in how people can enroll in health insurance—with the upcoming establishment of a new market place that will help more people get insured in this country than ever before.  And, we are seeing changes in how people understand and make decisions about their own health—with an increasing number of tools and services becoming available to help individuals access health information and manage their own personal health data. 

As the CEO of Pulse8, John Criswell works with health insurance exchanges and long-term care facilities on big data and analytics, which gives him a purview into the back-end integration required for states and the federal government to setup HIXs. Yet, he’s optimistic that the gvoernment will meet the October 1, 2013 deadline.

Government Health IT Editor Tom Sullivan spoke with Criswell about the complexity of standing up HIXs, how the exchanges might fare come October, and the overarching opportunities that both HIX and health information exchanges will create as they amass mammoth data sets. 

No action is good action. At least for online investment platform the Funders Club that today received a ‘no-action letter’ from the SEC stating that it will not recommend enforcement action.

The letter is a green light for the FundersClub and validation that its investment model is legal. The news is significant for the venture capital and finance industries, as well as startups looking for more flexible methods of fundraising.

The Congressional hearings debating the regulatory framework for mobile health devices and apps made me think about how we view mobile health apps and the criteria we use to determine what makes some better than others.

And as we all think in terms of the NCAA college basketball tournament around this time, I thought we would do a mini tournament using mobile health apps.