DreamIt demo day highlights disruptive care technologies

DreamIt Health Philadelphia held a demonstration day Oct. 30 when start-up companies pitched their products that aim to disrupt healthcare.

Teams spent the last four months participating in the DreamIt accelerator program where they received hands-on support and resources to develop their ideas into scalable companies with high-growth potential.

The companies each spent a few minutes presenting their technology and its potential in the healthcare market.

TrueClaim helps health plans engage their members to substantiate claims and prevent billing errors, waste, fraud and abuse. With more and more people having high-deductible plans—25 million today—individuals are directly responsible for the cost of billing errors. TrueClaim’s software flags suspicious claims and asks patients simple, quick questions to validate the claims. “In some cases, we stop improper payment before it’s made or help the plan recover the payment,” said founder Kasey Sousa.

He said he got the idea for the software working on practice management software. “Over two years, we identified tens of thousands of dollars in errors.” For his own family members, he generated savings of $12,000.

Tissue Analytics turns the smartphone into a sophisticated medical imaging and diagnostic platform for chronic wounds. Founder Kevin Keenahan said healthcare spends $30 billion on chronic wound care and complications. He also noted that clinicians use rulers to track wound care which is crude to say the least. Estimating a $2 billion market, Keenahan said his company can do an immediate launch because the product is not subject to FDA approval. He has six committed pilot sites with 3,000 patients and $120,000 in revenue. “We expect to be managing more than 1 million wound care patients by the end of next year. Tissue Analytics will redesign how wound care is delivered.”

NarrativeDx provides healthcare administrators and clinicians with actionable insights from patient experiences to improve care and reduce the risk of losing millions of dollars in reimbursements. Founder Senem Guney, PhD, said “unhappy patients have become very, very expensive for hospitals.” The average facility has $6 million at risk per year when it comes to patient satisfaction scores. The company’s software uses patterns to help hospitals target their improvement efforts. She cited one hospital that got low scores for nurse listening. It turned out that the hospital ran out of blankets so when the nurses couldn’t provide them with blankets when they were cold, the patients felt ignored. Guney’s company aims to reveal the context behind the satisfaction scores, she said. The company has three paid implementations and is in the process of negotiating contracts with 15 institutions.

RegDesk connects mobile health, medical device and biopharmaceutical companies with a global network of on-demand compliance experts, eliminating delays and expense in launching their products. “We’re bringing speed and certainty to healthcare compliance,” said Founder Priya Bhutani. Organizations are spending $180 billion a year to meet regulatory compliance because they have to comply with the regulations in every country in which they operate. With her service, Bhutani said companies are “no longer limited by the size of their personal network.” Her network offers in-country experts who understand local requirements, speak the language and have access and credibility with local ministries of health. Bhutani said she has 225 consultants in 141 countries and has completed five projects.  

Drop Diagnostics enables rapid mobile disease detection using only a drop of blood. Co-founder Peter Bacas uses a small device to conduct rapid, reliable testing and then display and transmit results. “It’s a better way to move diagnostics into the modern age.”

BioBots offers plug-and-play desktop 3D bioprinters that enable users to create functional biological structures. “The future is closer than you realize,” said Daniel Cabrera. His company already is printing and implanting simple organs and there is the option of organs constructed from a person’s own cells.  The printer comes with an easy-to-use cartridge system and there is no limitations on the range of biomaterials that can be used. The next generation device will come with a disposable cartridge that comes preloaded with biomaterial that should last about one month. “We have left the realm of science fiction. We have real customers. The future is where custom organs are built on demand.”

RistCall helps hospitals improve patient safety by replacing traditional wall-mounted nurse call bell systems with wearable, connected devices. Founder Srinath Vaddepally got the idea when he was a patient and fell out of bed reaching for the call button. If that could happen to a relatively young, healthy patient what about the elderly? Statistics show that 1 in 7 inpatients fall every year and nearly 70 percent of those happen in rooms where the call button is attached to the wall. With RistCall, the nurse wears one wristband and the patient wears another and communicate with a single tap using a smartphone. Vaddepally said there is an untapped market worth $400 million for the technology. And, turning one-way communication into two-way could allow hospitals to tackle a wider array of patient safety concerns.

TowerView Health offers payers and other risk-bearing entities a service that improves patient adherence to multiple medications using a next-generation connected pillbox. Co-founder Nick Vililis was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in 2012 and still takes seven different medications a day, each with its own dosing and schedule. “I struggled on nearly a daily basis to take my medications. It was overwhelming.” Other patients don’t take their medications correctly resulting in $100 million in costs, he said. Mobile apps are just reminders, he said.

Co-founder Rahul Jain said the pillbox senses when a patient misses a dose and automatically sends triggers a phone call or sends a text. Notifications augments to loved ones and a nurse. And, because insurance companies and hospitals are willing to pay for the service, patients get it for free.

Haystack develops analytics and monitoring solutions that help hospitals detect, investigate and report patient privacy breaches by insiders to improve patient privacy. The company resulted from OpenCanvas and work done at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Bemil Desai, the hospital’s CMIO is the chief medical officer for Haystack informatics. EHRs, he said, produce audit logs compromised of millions of rows of data but finding a breach event among the logs “is literally like finding a needle in a haystack.” Haystack’s tool uses a behavior analysis engine to look for patterns that indicates suspicious activity. “There is an addressable market of over $2 billion and we have a team ready to solve this problem.”