Some hospitals are turning to technology entrepreneurs to reduce readmission rates and avoid penalties imposed under the Affordable Care Act, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Background
Last year, an ACA provision went into effect that allows CMS to penalize hospitals for excess readmissions of Medicare patients.
The penalties are based on the number of heart failure, heart attack or pneumonia patients above the national average who are readmitted within 30 days to an acute-care hospital.
Kleiner Perkins, the investor behind Google and Amazon, and Accel Partners, best known for its investment in Facebook, are putting $18 million into MyFitnessPal, a little-known digital-health startup that has helped its 40 million-plus users shed a collective 100 million pounds.
Despite those accomplishments, this is the first time MyFitnessPal has raised money from professional investors, which raises the question: Do venture capitalists have any idea what they’re doing in the networked fitness market?
For most of us, the blister packs our medicines come in are just temporary barriers to be scratched open with our fingernails or popped open like Chiclets. We usually don’t even pay attention to the tiny, vaguely printed expiration dates tattooed on the silver skin of our aspirin or cough medicine’s packaging; we take for granted that it’s in date.
Yet around the world, billions of people can’t take the expiration dates of their medication for granted. Doing so can, and often is, fatal. A new concept could put an end to that by encapsulating our medicines in strips that change color as they expire, transforming the packaging of dangerously out-of-date medication into a chromatic warning. But will big pharma bring it to market?
The University of Maryland announced Monday that long-time finance professor Alexander J. Triantis has been appointed dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Triantis, 49, succeeds G. “Anand” Anandalingam, who left the post at the end of June to take a position in London as dean of the Imperial College Business School. Triantis will assume the position Sept. 1.
Money may not make the world go round, but it does keep companies innovating. The Small Business & Technology Development Center has made formal a longstanding relationship with BBCetc., an Ann Arbor-based development consulting company with a specialty in helping businesses secure federal grant funding for commercialization and growth.
The partnership will utilize BBCetc.’s extensive background in federal research grant proposals with the SBTDC’s statewide organization and presence to assist companies with writing proposals specifically for the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer federal research grants.
by Joseph P. Allen and Diane Palmintera
The Final ReportOn May 20, 2013, the White House Lab-To-Market Inter-Agency Summit was held in Washington, D.C. The Summit was organized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The purpose of the meeting was extraordinary: asking national experts outside of the federal agency system to recommend ways to increase the return-on-investment for the $140 billion annual taxpayer expenditure on federally-funded research and development.
The format for the meeting also was unusual. Research agencies nominated 20 national experts experienced in various phases of technology commercialization to participate in the Summit. The Administration placed no preconditions or limitations on the expert Panel and asked it to focus on “transformative” ideas. We were privileged to be asked to serve as the Summit’s co-chairs.
The Administration requested that the Panel address several overarching questions:
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notice:
NIH will require electronic submission for all P01, P20, P50 and U19 applications intended for due dates on or after September 25, 2013.
Over the next year the NIH will start requiring an eRA Commons ID for all individuals in graduate and undergraduate student roles who participate in NIH-funded projects for at least one person month or more.
The NHLBI, along with other NIH Institutes and Centers, intends to promote a new initiative by publishing a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to solicit applications to plan and conduct low cost, pragmatic, randomized clinical trials that are integrated into existing clinical practice settings and/or leverage existing electronic patient care resources.
Program Announcement (PA):
PA-13-302: Research Project Grant (Parent R01) (expires September 8, 2016)
The Research Project Grant (R01) supports a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in areas representing the specific interests and competencies of the investigator(s). The proposed project must be related to the programmatic interests of one or more of the participating NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) based on descriptions of their programs.
The purpose of this FOA is to encourage behavioral and social science research on the causes and solutions to health and disabilities disparities in the U. S. population.
GlaxoSmithKline’s new $50 million venture capital fund will be based out of the One Broadway building in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, inside an office of SR One, the drug giant’s corporate VC arm, a GSK spokesperson said.
The 16-floor One Broadway building also houses the Cambridge Innovation Center startup offices across a number of its floors, as well as venture capital firms Charles River Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.
About one year ago GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) set up a division to study the electrical impulses along the peripheral nervous system and develop technologies to read, change, or manipulate these impulses to treat acute and chronic diseases. Now it’s launched a $50 million venture capital fund to invest in companies with pioneering technology in this emerging field of bioelectronics, according to a company statement.
The Action Potential Venture Capital fund, which will be based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, takes its name from the electrical signals that pass along the nerves in the body. Problems with the patterns of these impulses are associated with a broad range of diseases.
Proof of Concept grants are intended to enhance the commercial viability of health-related technologies or concepts developed by non-profit organizations or enhance the competitiveness of early-stage companies for private equity investment. The maximum award is $250,000 in total costs.
Submission and review process:
