The Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children's National Health System is now accepting proposals for its "Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!" competition. Two top prizes of $50,000 each will be awarded to the winning presentations at the Third Annual Pediatric Surgical Innovation Symposium in October.

The competition invites proposals from innovators – researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, and patient families – who have identified a significant, yet unmet medical device need within the pediatric population. For competition details, click here.

Proteus Digital Health won FDA approval for what the company calls “the only device with an FDA-sanctioned claim for measuring medication adherence.” Proteus technology, the development of which we’ve been covering for a number of years now, uses tiny injestible sensors attached to drug tablets and a patch that can detect when they’ve been swallowed. The patch then uses its built-in Bluetooth antenna to share when every pill was swallowed with the matching smartphone app, which in turn passes the readings to family, caretakers, and the patient’s physician.

Innovator of the Year was created in 2002 to honor Maryland businesses and/or individuals who have had a positive effect and tremendous impact in Maryland.

To nominate someone for this prestigious award, please submit a short description addressing how your nominee meets the criteria.

Nominations are due July 10, 2015.

Has your lab had a successful technology partnership or program experience with its state or local government office? If so, we want to hear about it! The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) is now accepting submissions for its 2015 edition of the Federal Laboratories & State and Local Governments: Partners for Technology Transfer Success publication.

The goal of this publication is to highlight the value that state and local government entities can obtain for their regions by forming strategic partnerships with federal laboratories. Federal labs play a significant role in creating technology-based regional economic development. The State & Local Government (S&LG) publication works to raise awareness about the impact federal labs can have on their surrounding areas.

Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland, College Park, will this month open a shared $30 million high-power data center.

The 3,786-square-foot facility, called Maryland Advanced Research Computing Center (MARCC) will be used by researchers from the two universities for work involving big data and is expected to be fully functional by the end of July. The facility, located near Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, was paid for with $30 million in state funding. Hopkins and University of Maryland will share ongoing costs for maintenance, staffing and power.

The University of Maryland is part of the reason that Maryland, as a state, is producing some really innovative entrepreneurial talent. Their student-run incubator and co-working space Startup Shell (shell, because the UMD mascot is the Terrapin -very clever, guys), which opened in 2012, is home to a lot of really interesting student-led projects. Most of the startups focus on students’ issues or problems related to fields that students are studying.

When Milton Wright III got his third cancer diagnosis, he cried until he laughed. He was 20 and had survived leukemia twice before, first when he was eight and again as a teen. Each time he’d suffered through years of punishing chemotherapy.

But now he had checked himself in to Seattle Children’s Hospital. An aspiring model, he had taken a fall before a photo shoot and found he couldn’t shake off the pain in his ribs. When the doctors started preparing him for a spinal tap, he knew the cancer was back. “I said, Oh, man, they are going to tell me I relapsed again,” he recalls. “They’re going to give me my six months.”

MedCity ENGAGE has quickly become a destination for fresh thinking and the latest solutions for patient engagement and healthcare delivery. That’s due in large part to speakers who are both established and up-and-coming leaders, and includes those in the trenches of healthcare.

Here are just some of the ENGAGE speakers, who will cover an array of topics that will make you better able to implement your own patient engagement solutions.

The State Entrepreneurship Index tracks core trends and reflects states’ entrepreneurship environments, growth in business formation and technological innovation. Each state index is calculated by comparing five key economic components and determining how much their performance deviate above or below the “median state,” which is assigned a value of 1.0.

Chinese investment in the Puget Sound region is about to go beyond real estate.

A Chinese venture capital group wants to open an office in the Seattle area so it can invest in the region’s tech and biotech industries, the director of the city of Seattle’s economic development office Brian Surratt confirmed Wednesday.

Medicare and Medicaid, the two mainstays of government health insurance, turn 50 this month, having made it possible for most Americans in poverty and old age to get medical care. While the Affordable Care Act fills the gap for people who don’t qualify for help from those two programs, there are important improvements still needed in both Medicare and Medicaid.

At the time the two programs were enacted in July 1965, advocates of Medicare, which today covers 46 million Americans over the age of 65 and nine million younger disabled people, expected that it would expand to cover virtually all Americans. Although polls between 1999 and 2009 showed consistent majorities in favor of expanding Medicare to people between the ages of 55 and 64 to cover more of the uninsured, it never happened.

Scientists may apply online until September 22, 2015 at http://www.openinnovationinscience.at for the 'Lab for Open Innovation in Science' continuing studies programme taking place in Vienna. 

Health sciences' two greatest challenges are the lack of incentives for investigating new research questions and the complexity of current research findings, according to a recent survey of international researchers and scientists conducted by the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG). These findings provided the impetus for launching the LBG's  Tell us! crowdsourcing project in their Open Innovation in Science initiative. This initiative invites patients, families, and professionals to actively contribute to the development of scientific research questions in the field of mental illness. Findings from this unique research approach will impact the world's first educational programme for the application of Open Innovation in science, known as 'Lab for Open Innovation in Science' (LOIS).

A process that accelerates the separation of bacteria could be the answer to the food industry’s prayers.

Food contamination, which refers to the presence of unwanted chemicals and bacteria in food, has been plastered across the news lately. Dozens of products have been recalled in the past 60 days. For example, Blue Bell Creameries had a massive recall of all ice cream products due to an April listeria outbreak, according to the FDA’s website.

Over the past two weeks, in their respective FY 2016 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies appropriations bills (known as Labor-H), House and Senate appropriators have shown support for biomedical research funding by recommending NIH budget levels higher than even the Administration had requested. But controversy still reigns over other parts of the bill, particularly patient-centered outcomes research associated with the Affordable Care Act.

REDI...SET...WATCH...5 Questions with Michael Stiefvater, Business Development Manager at Rockville REDI

While we’ve seen how 3D printing has dramatically revolutionized the medical industry by allowing surgeons to print replicas of organs and their surrounding areas in order to better understand them before an actual surgical procedure, the next evolutionary step is to look into 3D printing the organs themselves to replace a patient’s existing failing organ.

The University of Maryland's Startup Shell incubator is a conspicuous experiment in student-run startup incubation. Founded in 2012, the incubator has grown to include several dozen startups in its portfolio—and recently, Uber became interested enough in what might come out of the incubator to set aside $25,000 for it as part of a larger collaboration with UMd, including investor grants for student-built businesses. Notably, many of the startups focus on the issues that concern students or directly impact the field students are studying. We've picked out eight of the most intriguing and exciting startups to highlight here so that you can check out the types of innovation that UMd is fostering.

Chancellor of the University System of Maryland William "Brit" E. Kirwan is serving his last day of his 13-year tenure Tuesday before Robert L. Caret takes over on July 1.

Caret is returning to Maryland after serving as president of the University of Massachusetts system. He was president of Towson Univeristy from 2003 to 2011.

Montgomery County Department of Economic Development offers a program that provides free one-on-one business assistance to entrepreneurs, business owners, and start-ups.

A business development specialist will be available at locations throughout Montgomery County to meet directly with business owners.  Experts will provide information about county financial initiatives and other programs, make introductions and identify the connections your business needs. 

This program is open to any entrepreneur and/or business located within Montgomery County. Montgomery County works hard to support local businesses and has a variety of resources including industry sector experts in IT, cybersecurity, life sciences, green, international, government contracting, and more. Support is also available for navigating the county procurement and Local Small Business Reserve Program.

eHealth Initiatives's iTHRIVE Innovation Challenge, August 12-13 in Washington DC, is a competition and event that convenes business leaders, government officials, innovators, investors and promising entrepreneurs looking to shape how health technology can improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare. The Challenge invites startups from around the world to submit proposals that tackle healthcare system problems head-on, focusing on three critical areas of the eHealth Initiative 2020 Roadmap: consumer-oriented health IT; population health management; and interoperability between providers, payers and across the delivery system.

If you have an idea about how health technology can improve the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare, notice gaps in the system that offer easy fixes, or wish to share your vision for better healthcare delivery, join the competition and the conversation. 

External models of R&D innovation are the rage in Pharma today, as they should be – the future of our industry depends on a great deal more rather than less collaboration.

In a very healthy way, lots of experiments are being done across the ecosystem and the final scorecard for what worked and what didn’t is years from being tallied up; however, the early biomarkers are positive and it’s a widely-held belief that a critical element of exceptional R&D organizations in the future will be creative BD engagement. In short, great BD and R&D are becoming synonymous with each other.

Funding and Research Opportunities

The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:

Notices:

Notice of Correction to PAR-15-280 "Multidisciplinary Studies of HIV/AIDS and Aging (R01)"
(NOT-AG-15-009) National Institute on Aging

Notice of Correction to PAR-15-282 "Multidisciplinary Studies of HIV/AIDS and Aging (R21)"
(NOT-AG-15-011) National Institute on Aging

Program Announcements:

Pre-application: Opportunities for Collaborative Research at the NIH Clinical Center (X02)
(PAR-15-286)
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): December 15, 2015; December 15, 2016; December 15, 2017, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization.

Opportunities for Collaborative Research at the NIH Clinical Center (U01)
(PAR-15-287)
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): April 11, 2016; April 11, 2017; April 11, 2018, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization.
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.

AstraZeneca has joined forces with the University of Cambridge for three more joint schemes designed to develop the next generation of world-class scientists.

The schemes will support more than 80 PhD scholarships and eight clinical lectureships over the next five years spanning translational science, basic and clinical research.

Baltimore health IT startup Avhana Health has raised $750,000 to put toward continued development of its electronic medical record improvement software.

Investors in the seed round included SR One Limited, Boston Millennia Partners Founders Fund, TEDCO and DreamIt Ventures. Angel networks, such as Wilmington Investor Network and individual angel investors, also contributed.

Pieris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: PIRS), a biotechnology company advancing its proprietary Anticalin® biotherapeutic technologies, today announced the pricing of a public offering of 9,090,909 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $2.75 per share. All shares of common stock are being offered by the company. In addition, Pieris has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,363,636 shares of common stock at the same price to cover any over-allotments.

MedStar Health, the largest not-for-profit health system in Maryland and the Washington, D.C. region, has become the newest Founding Member of Project Catalyst|The Power of We. The program gives developers of popular and emerging products insight into how Americans 50-plus use technology, in order to identify ways to improve the devices for mature consumers. By aligning with the country's preeminent advocacy organization for older Americans, MedStar will help spur innovation in new and emerging digital technologies, products and experiences that can improve the lives of the rapidly growing 50-plus population.

Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt announced the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will be opening access to its voluminous federal healthcare data stores to entrepreneurs and other private-sector innovators – a move designed to spur innovation and effect transformation of healthcare. The new policy comes as part of the Administration’s “commitment to use of data and information to drive transformation of the healthcare delivery system.”

Slavitt made the announcement at Datapalooza, saying, “Today’s announcement is aimed directly at shaking up healthcare innovation and setting a new standard for data transparency. We expect a stream of new tools for beneficiaries and care providers that improve care and personalize decision-making.

The sun is just beginning to rise as Robyn Stoller sits busily typing at her computer. A steaming mug of coffee rests next to her, while she quickly and methodically scrolls through  he hundreds of emails waiting for a reply. Though dawn is just beginning to break, Stoller has already been at work for hours; fielding press inquiries, drafting blog posts and responding to heartfelt messages from cancer patients and their families. Running her nonprofit, CancerHawk, is constant work, but for Stoller it's all part of her journey. A journey that, despite its tragic nature, has projected her life into a single mission - to connect cancer patients to the critical resources and information they need.

Millennials now make up a larger part of the population than boomers, according to the latest Census Bureau data.

People who were born between 1982 and 2000, classified as millennials, now make up more than one quarter of the population, at 83.1 million. This is compared with the 75.4 million baby boomers, generally defined as being born between 1946 and 1964.

According to one survey, the average amount of time that some employees spend on personal activities at work is somewhere between 1.5 and three hours a day. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that employers are more concerned than ever about productivity statistics. Nowadays, with technology that allow employers quantify output more closely, it’s no longer the status quo just to show up to work. Managers want employees who are engaged.

In a new global survey, the U.S. and China are tied for having the most-engaged employees—engagement being measured by how much employees believed in their work’s purpose and in their own company’s future.

The corridor between NYC and Washington DC is rich in life science talent, technical know-how and business development expertise. Although many regions throughout the country vie to attract talent and capital, the unique ecosystems that exist in the east coast’s major metropolitan cities, including Washington DC, New York, and Boston, mean that health tech founders can immediately access resources and build the strategic partnerships to support their rapid growth.  

This event will focus on New York City and Washington, DC, two key areas offering a number of advantages for health tech founders. The event will be an opportunity to learn from people leading region-wide initiatives in NYC and Washington DC as well as network with peers building health technology startups. Come join us to learn more about unique opportunities and funding in the NYC and DC regions focused on supporting the transformation of healthcare.

Grotech Ventures is aiming to raise $200 million for its next fund, called Grotech Ventures III, according to an SEC filing. The Vienna firm is one of the most active venture capital investors in the area, along with firms like Revolution LLC, Columbia Capital and New Enterprise Associates. Here's a quick look at some of its more notable investments:

More than 140 Maryland companies, organizations participated in this year’s global life sciences gathering in Philadelphia

The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED) will be partnering with the Tech Council of Maryland (TCM) to promote the state’s life sciences industry at the 2016 BIO International Convention, June 6-9, 2016 in San Francisco. For nearly a decade, Maryland has had a significant presence at the convention, which is the largest worldwide gathering of the bioscience industry that attracts more than 15,000 attendees from 60 countries. DBED and TCM will partner on the state’s BioMaryland Pavilion, which features both Maryland companies and industry organizations, and work together to highlight Maryland companies at the convention.

At a recent workshop, more than 100 technical and business executives spoke with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Stanford University about their most pressing cybersecurity challenges. In this webcast, Nate Lesser, Deputy Director of the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) at NIST, will share with you the five major challenges identified in that workshop and how the NCCoE plans to address them. Topics include: