Biotech & Health

YouTube opens up certification program for health-related channels • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Apps, Biotech & Health, certification, Health, misinformation, YouTubeNo Comments

YouTube announced today that it will certify channels of licensed health professionals like doctors, nurses, or therapists who produce health-related content. Last year, the company introduced a label noting that the info on the channel is from a certified healthcare professional. Plus, it showed videos from these approved channels in a new carousel called “From health sources” that shows up atop search results. While these features were available to select institutions like educational institutions, public health departments, hospitals, and government entities at launch, the company is now expanding the program and inviting U.S-based health creators to apply for this program. Image Credits: YouTube YouTube follows guidelines set by the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, the National Academy of Medicine and the World Health Organization to build a framework around credible sources for health-related content on the platform. All institutions and health-related creators need to follow these rules while making videos on YouTube. The streaming platform has set a bunch of requirements for creators applying for this certification: they should primarily have health content on the channel; they must have more than 2,000 watch hours of public videos in the last 12 months; and they must attest that they are a licensed doctor, nurse or mental health professional. YouTube will review the channel against its guidelines and it will also check with authorities to verify that applicants have a valid medical license. Once the channels are approved, they will get a special label noting them as “a licensed healthcare professional” resource, and their videos will also surface on health content shelves on top of related search results. YouTube said that this covers search results in most conditions apart from rare diseases (it didn’t specify which ones). The caveat is that if a creator makes a video that’s not directly related to healthcare, the channel still retains the label and the video might also show up on the health content shelf if the creator uses keywords related to a medical condition. In a call with ZebethMedia, Dr. Garth Graham, Global Head of YouTube Health, said that the onus of making health-related videos lies on the creator. However, the company doesn’t provide any toggle if they want to demark an unrelated video. Notably, YouTube launched a program last month that surfaces personal stories from patients or their relatives in a separate panel when users search for ailments cancer, and mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. But there is a chance that a health creator’s personal story might show up in the health resources panel rather than the personal stories panel. Image Credits: YouTube There is also a concern about certified health-related channels spreading misinformation. Dr. Graham insisted that the company uses a combination of processes (AI) and people (reviewers) to measure them against YouTube’s guidelines. “If a channel that is eligible for these features receives a Community Guidelines strike or has content removed for violating our policies, they will lose their eligibility. Channels can reapply in 90 days if the Community Guidelines issues have been resolved. This is similar to how our YouTube Partner Program works, which many creators are familiar with,” he said. The company also reviews these channels annually to ensure that it is following YouTube’s rules for health-related content and remove them from the program if necessary. Apart from the U.S., YouTube is also opening up the application process for healthcare institutions and individuals in Germany. Users in that region will start seeing healthcare certification labels and the health content carousel early next year once the first set of channels is approved.

Flush with Series A funding, Daye unwraps the big gynae health mission • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, Daye, femtech, gynaecological health, Startups, Valentina Milanova, women's healthNo Comments

Talking to Valentina Milanova, the still just 28-year-old founder of U.K. femtech Daye, is best described as an exhilarating experience. During our interview, she talks in and around her topic — building a startup supporting women’s sexual and reproductive health — non-stop for the best part of an hour, barely pausing for breath and without needing to be prompted to unpack the detail (although an engaged listener will be forced to interject with exclamations and follow-on questions as she lays out her sharp takes) — dispensing, at times, part-fascinating, part-horrifying insights from the coal-face of a field that’s suffered from a chronic lack of research and innovation for far too long. The thrill comes in knowing she’s intent on being the change — and bringing positive change — to gynaecological health by working with clinicians to do the research and build out a platform that’s designed to open up an overlooked and neglected ‘Pandora’s Box’ of intimate female health issues and put women in the driving seat over choices affecting their bodies and lives. Daye’s first product — a CBD-infused cramp-fighting tampon, which launched back in 2019 — was just the start (although the startup has built up a user-base of some 60,000 subscribers thus far for that direct-to-consumer play, selling “fully sustainable” organic tampons which are also proudly touted as produced to “medical device standards” and feature eco innovations like a flushable, biodegradable wrapper and a non-plastic (sugarcane) applicator); Milanova has always had a wider “gynae” health mission in mind for Daye and is now rolling out the next pieces of the plan with the launch of a tampon-based at-home vaginal microbiome screening kit that it’s billing as a “world first”. The at-home testing experience is more convenient, private and less intrusive for women than the traditional option of going to see their doctor or attending a dedicated sexual health clinic where a health worker would need to take a swab. Instead, they just insert a tampon into their vagina and remove it. The test tampon then goes in the specimen bag provided — and they post it back to Daye’s lab for analysis, with their results delivered back digitally. And of course they don’t just get a bunch of raw medical data; the product mission is to offer an informative, accessible informational experience, with analysis of the screening data presented in language (and with graphics) that make it easy for anyone to understand. The analysis comprises a breakdown of certain good and bad bacteria that were detected (or not detected) in the user’s sample, along with explanations and recommendations for how they might want to act on the information — such as downloading a PDF to take with them to a doctor; or by the platform pointing them to where they can locate a local sexual health clinic if an analysis suggests the user should get checked for infections. Image credits: Daye “This was actually always part of the original vision for Daye. From the earliest pitch decks I had ever created. The intention for us was always to deliver on a number of different areas of gynaecological health — not just changing the tampon so it serves people better and so it delivers pain relief. We always saw tampons as a potential tool for bridging the many gaps that exist in gynaecological health today. So tampons can be used to deliver all sorts of medications to the vaginal canal and tampons can also be used to really effectively screen vaginal health for a number of different diseases and infections,” Milanova tells ZebethMedia. “This isn’t a novel scientific discovery — it’s existing scientific knowledge that we’re building upon. Since the 1990s, when researchers from Westminster University first pioneered the method of menstrual tampon screening, we’ve known that tampons have greater levels of sensitivity and specificity, or diagnostic capacity, compared to vaginal swabs and cervical swabs and urinary swabs for the detection of vaginal infections and STIs [sexual transmitted infections]. So what we’re doing now with the introduction of the gynaecological health screen is we’re hoping to democratize access to insightful gynaecological health information that is not typically available through other providers or through the NHS [the UK’s National Health Service].” Daye’s first vaginal microbiome screening tests are focused on identifying two pathogens: mycoplasma and ureaplasma — which Milanova says are typically asymptomatic but associated with a negative impact on the reproductive function — putting carriers at a higher risk of miscarriage, pre-term labor or ectopic pregnancy. The vaginal microbiome screening test could therefore be of particular interest (initially) to women who are looking for explanations for fertility issues, though she also points to wider utility, noting: “The health of the vaginal microbiome in general not only has repercussions for your fertility, it also has an implication on your risk of contracting an STI and your risk of contracting a vaginal infection. And again this isn’t novel scientific discovery that we have made — we’re largely building on top of existing scientific knowledge.” Daye is also planning to introduce more types of tests as it continues to develop the screening product — including screening for STIs. It’s also currently conducting research in conjunction with Liverpool Women’s Hospital into pathogens with suspected links to certain conditions that can affect women (or people assigned female at birth), like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endometriosis, with the aim of further expanding the utility of the screening test by (it hopes) helping to verify those links. In addition to launching the vaginal microbiome screening kit — which will be offered to users in the UK in the coming days — Daye is busy building out a gynaecological health platform that will do more than just distribute individual screening results. The idea is to offer a place where women can get validated, accessible information about the full spectrum of gynaecological health — along with expert support and guidance to help them access appropriate treatments (or make helpful lifestyle changes) for any specific issues identified.

54gene CEO steps down as the company looks to cut more jobs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 25, 2022Posted in 54gene, africa, Biotech & Health, Layoffs, StartupsNo Comments

54gene co-founder and chief executive officer Dr. Abasi Ene-Obong has stepped down from his executive role, the African genomics company confirmed to ZebethMedia today. The three-year-old company has appointed General Counsel Teresia L. Bost as interim CEO. She will be supported by Chief Operating Officer Delali Attipoe, the company said. Ene-Obong, on the other hand, will retain his position on 54gene’s board while moving to a new role of senior advisor. Ene-Obong’s resignation and Bost’s ascension comes two months after 54gene laid off 95 employees, or more than 30% of its workforce, in August. The layoffs affected employees, mostly contract staff (in labs and sales departments) recruited to work in 54gene’s COVID business line launched in 2020 to complement its flagship product: a biobank of the African genome. Founded in 2019 by Ene-Obong, 54gene addresses the gap in the global genomics market where Africans make up less than 3% of genetic material used in pharmaceutical research despite being more genetically diverse than any other population. The audacious project has received over $40 million from investors such as Adjuvant Capital, Y Combinator and Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund (CAIF) and partnered with organizations like Illumina, Genentech and Parexel. Biotechs globally tend to have a long-term approach toward making money; in fact, such companies can still be worth billions with little to no revenue. For the Washington-based but Africa-focused 54gene, its primary revenue path involves working with pharmaceutical companies to co-develop drugs and medicine–and that takes time. A typical time frame for a new drug from creation to market entry can take up to a decade, so it made sense for 54gene to turn its lab capabilities to COVID testing as a new source of revenue. However, the decline in COVID testing has presented 54gene with fresh challenges: dwindling revenues and redundant roles. Though it has already let go of 95 employees, the company confirmed that it will conduct a second round of layoffs following restructuring across several departments. According to the YC-backed company, it wants to focus resources on its core mission of African genomics research and equalizing precision medicine. At the same time, its clinical diagnostic arm takes the back seat. Here’s more information on the company’s new direction: Going forward, the primary focus will be on the unique genomic research the company has started by further leveraging its genomic datasets derived from 54gene’s state-of-the-art biobank, that currently houses over 130,000 unique patient samples and corresponding genomic data, all with the objective of positioning the company to make contributions to precision medicine and drug discovery. This continues the meaningful work the company has invested in, whilst de-emphasizing the clinical diagnostic business line at the time. It’s unclear exactly why Ene-Obong is stepping down. Yet, it’s not farfetched to assume that the company’s recent struggles are a contributing factor. In response to whether the company’s decision to let him go was performance-related or because the ex-CEO was moving on to new projects, 54gene only said, “Abasi has decided to step down as the CEO but will continue to support the company in its go-forward plans such as strategic partnerships and fundraising. We cannot comment on what other new interests he will pursue if any, but we wish him well and still consider him a key team member.” Interestingly, the former CEO’s resignation also comes one month after Ogochukwu Francis Osifo, the company’s co-founder and VP, Engineering, left the company in September. As 54gene shifts into a new phase, Ene-Obong, who consulted for organizations such as Gilead and IMS Health in the past, believes the startup is in the best hands as Bost and Attipoe “have deep insight into the workings of 54gene.” Bost boasts more than 20 years of extensive knowledge and experience across pharmaceutical, biotechnology and healthcare industries with companies such as Celgene and Quartet Health while providing strategic support of securities matters, corporate governance and finance matters. Attipoe, on the other hand, brings more than 15 years of experience in the pharmaceutical sector working with firms like Roche and Genentech. Ene-Obong, addressing his exit and the transition in a statement, said: I have always believed that the scale of genetic diversity in Africa and other highly diverse populations will materially impact our understanding of biology and lead to better medicines and interventions for the global population, and I am proud of what has been achieved at 54gene. I’d like to thank the 54gene Board for their support over the years, and the many talented scientists and technology professionals I have had the pleasure to work with during my time at the company. I will continue to support the company and the scientific ecosystem, particularly the African genomics ecosystem. Teresia and Delali bring decades of experience in building and scaling high-impact global pharma companies, and they also have deep insight into the workings of 54gene. I am excited to see them take the company to its next phase.

Telehealth unicorn Cerebral lays off 20% of staff for ‘operational efficiencies’ • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 24, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, Cerebral, Layoffs, mental health, StartupsNo Comments

Cerebral is laying off 20% of its staff, citing an ongoing push for efficiency at the digital health unicorn. A spokesperson for Cerebral confirmed the layoffs to ZebethMedia but did not share the specific number of employees affected. According to the WSJ, which first reported the news, and Insider, some 400 people will lose their jobs, primarily clinical staff and care counselors. “Today’s changes are part of Cerebral’s ongoing transformation program, which drives to create more sustainable growth and stability, while further delivering our mission to democratize access to high-quality mental health care for all,” a Cerebal spokesperson told ZebethMedia. “These changes are focused specifically on realizing operational efficiencies while prioritizing clinical quality and safety across the organization.” The company did not explain what type of severance, if any, was offered to employees, but did tell ZebethMedia “we are doing everything we can to support our impacted colleagues as they pursue other opportunities.” Cerebral’s model explains care counselors meet with patients regularly to manage medications prescribed by clinicians and provide support. The SoftBank-backed company has come under scrutiny for making it easier to provide ADHD medication to potential clients. Perhaps too easy: allegations led to an investigation by the Department of Justice, into potential violations of the Controlled Substances Act for overprescribing prescriptions such as Adderall. A lawsuit was also filed against the company by Matthew Truebe, former vice president of product and engineering, alleging company higher-ups encouraged Cerebral employees to prescribe stimulants to all ADHD patients. According to a press release, the company has since stopped providing those services, citing the need to review its clinical quality and safety processes. “Based on recent feedback from stakeholders, it is clear that this has become a distraction from our focus to democratize access to mental health care services, provide treatment for more patients and add service lines for new conditions,” Robertson said in the release. The San Francisco-based company has raised over $426 million since its founding in 2020, $300 million of which was announced in a Series C last December. Cerebral is valued at $4.8 billion, according to Behavioral Health Business. Earlier this year Cerebral laid off “hundreds” of people primarily affecting its support and operations team to better its programs. At the time, the company did not provide any details to ZebethMedia explaining any severance offered to employees. Cerebral is just one of many healthcare startups making cuts in the past few months, such as Truepill and Noom. Current and former Cerebral employees can contact Andrew Mendez by e-mail at andrew.mendez@techcrunch.com or on Signal, a secure encrypted messaging app, at 669-832-6800.

Aidar Health aims to provide physicians with consistent patient vitals • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 21, 2022Posted in Aidar Health, Battlefield 200, Biotech & Health, MouthLab, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Sathya Elumalai was finding it hard to manage his mother’s health after she was diagnosed with four chronic conditions. Rather than guess her health status for the day, he decided to co-found Aidar Health, to get that information directly and reliably. In founding Aidar, Elumalai also created and launched MouthLab, a device it claims tracks 10 key health parameters in under a minute. The company is part of the Battlefield 200 at ZebethMedia Disrupt 2022. “For a car you have this check engine light that helps you to say, now it’s time for you to take your car [to a] dealer or mechanic to get it fixed. Similarly, our device acts as a as a way to monitor your health every day, to provide a more holistic view of an individual’s health,” Elumalai said. “So if there is any abnormalities, or any changes in that health from their baseline, the device can alert and inform the user about those changes, and what can they do to help manage their health. Or use the same data to communicate with their physician or caregivers to better assess the health condition or changes or deviations in health at the very early stage.” A user holds the iPhone-sized device and puts their mouth on the mouthpiece, breathes normally and positions their hands on the device as instructed. The company claims MouthLab will record temperature, respiration rate, pulse rate, blood pressure, respiration pattern, heart rate, heart rate variability, ECG, spirometry (i.e. lung function) and oxygen saturation. Data is collected from sensors across the device from saliva, breathing, hand pulse and lips to read the body’s parameters. In a world where digital and remote care has become the new norm thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians have often had to go off what their patients say, which is a good starting point but not sufficient for long term care. Although tests and labs are done eventually there hasn’t been an efficient way to track a patient’s vitals at home. Aidar Health was able to garner Class II FDA 510(k) clearance earlier this month. The clearance states the device may pose some moderate risk to users but allows the company to introduce the product for commercial distribution and market it. It is unclear what risks the clearance was referring to. According to the company, the device has gone through three clinical trials and is embarking on a study in partnership with the VA Health System. Today, there are over 800 active users of MouthLab and Aidar Health, using it for remote vitals monitoring, chronic care management, and other home health services — as well as “real-world evidence generation efforts with life science companies,” Elumalai said (the latter presumably meaning taking part in studies). “The device is being used for Remote Physiological Monitoring (RPM), Chronic Care Management (CCM), Hospital at Home (H@H) services with health systems and digital biomarker development, digital companion, and real-world evidence generation efforts with life science companies,” Elumalai told ZebethMedia. The Maryland-based company says they are HIPAA compliant, by using their own LTE/cellular network cloud. Once data is collected it is sent to users via the mobile app and then sent to physicians through Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, an API for electronic health records. The company has decided to run on a subscription-based model, which costs $50-80 per patient per month. Users are provided MouthLab, access to the web and mobile apps, and physicians can collect vitals and analytics. Depending on the usage of the service, pricing can vary. “It’s hard to really decipher what patients are really going through,” Elumalai said. “But a device like this, before we even get hold of a physician to telemedicine, we can get the data to them instantly. So they get a full snapshot of the patient medical history, a longitudinal analysis of the data for the past few days.”

Sight Tech Global 2022 announced • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 21, 2022Posted in accessibility, Biotech & Health, Sight Tech GlobalNo Comments

As we prepare for the third annual Sight Tech Global (December 7-8, free & virtual, register here), a technology event that tracks the advances in technology supporting people who live with blindness, two big shifts are front and center. First, new digital experiences, notably virtual reality, are testing known approaches to accessibility. There are no white canes or screen readers (yet!) in the metaverse. That digital realm is on the verge of going mainstream both for consumers and enterprises so quickly that accessibility could easily become an afterthought, as it was at the start of the PV era. At Sight Tech Global, we will hear from the people working to ensure that the metaverse is open to all. The event is free and virtual! Second, the technology platforms underpinning so many of the breakthroughs in assistive and access tech — the tools that help blind and low vision people navigate the world — are advancing fast and enabling better, cheaper devices. Not long ago, AI-powered computer vision systems were costly marvels of miniaturized cameras, GPUs and batteries, but faster networks, cloud services and more powerful mobile phones are changing everything, especially the cost. The old debate in access tech was which would prevail — universal technology platforms such as mobile phones with built-in accessibility features, or purpose-built devices specifically for people who need vision assistance. The emerging formula is not one or the other but both, in a winning combination. At Sight Tech Global, we will hear from the technologists applying the new approaches to next generation devices. Register today. And underlying so much of these discussions is the evolution of AI itself, which is a critical technology across the spectrum of blind tech. The current “deep learning” form of AI continues to deliver striking results in forms such as the natural language GPT3 or many computer vision AIs. But there is growing dissatisfaction with the ability of those powerful pattern-recognition systems to apply something more like human reasoning to issues large and small, not to mention filter out the bias and problems when AIs are unleashed. At Sight Tech Global, we will hear from top AI technologists grappling with those topics and more. The event agenda will be ready in a month, but we hope you will register today. The event is free and virtual. And one new twist in 2022: Sight Tech Global is adding an “In Person” event on December 9 in San Jose, California. The event is aimed at technologists, product leaders and designers working in access tech. The event is limited to 150 people and by invitation only. Most of the programming will be workshops driven by attendees. Here’s where you can request an invitation or nominate someone. Sight Tech Global is a production of the nonprofit Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. We’re grateful to current sponsors APH, Amazon, Google, Fable, Humanware, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Waymo. If you would like to sponsor the event, please contact us. All sponsorship revenues go to the nonprofit Vista Center, which has been serving the Silicon Valley area for 75 years.

Katakem’s ‘robot chef’ speeds up drug development with reliable chemistry • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Battlefield 200, Biotech & Health, Disrupt, Katakem, Robotics & AI, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Organic chemist Manuela Oliverio was working on a new drug when he noticed that test results on mice weren’t consistent, because the molecule being administered was always different depending on the chemist who produced it. It occurred to him that automation and robotics could make the drug development process more predictable, and so he founded Katakem, one of the startups in the ZebethMedia Disrupt Battlefield 200. With Katakem, Oliverio aims to develop what he calls a “robot chef” for chemists — a device that makes chemical reactions more consistently reproducible while accelerating the experimental process. He claims that the current prototype, dubbed OnePot, can collect data about chemical processes 150 times every second and automate repetitive, mundane tasks like heating, cooling and mixing different molecules. “The production of a chemical product is strictly regulated and standardized. [But] the development phase between discovery and production is still carried out manually and no significant data is extracted,” Oliverio told ZebethMedia in an interview. “Through data, we can help companies develop new life-saving drugs faster and, of course, this means higher revenues and better margins for them … Data [from OnePot] is reliable, clean and immediately usable.” To Oliverio’s point, drug development today is a lengthy and expensive endeavor. Only about 12% of drugs entering clinical trials are ultimately approved for introduction by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. And estimates of the average R&D cost per drug range from less than $1 billion to over $2 billion, with errors and mistakes adding to the price tag. Katakem developed OnePot over the course of three years, designing both the mechanical and electrical components in-house. The company is seeking chemists to beta test the device, particularly those in corporate and academic settings, to collect data that it plans to use to train an algorithm that can recommend “faster and more sustainable” ways to develop molecules. Image Credits: Katakem Image Credits: Katakem Given the size of the problem — and addressable market — it’s not surprising that Katakem has competition. Automata is also creating a robot to handle basic lab tasks, and it recently raised $50 million to do so. There’s Kebotix, a startup developing AI and robotics tools to expedite the discovery of chemicals, and Artificial, which sells a lab automation platform aimed at life sciences R&D. But while Katakem has the dual challenges of proving its technology works and overcoming rivals, Oliverio isn’t concerned. Based on existing commitments, he expects Katakem’s annual recurring revenue to hit $350,000 by the end of the year and $3 million by the end of 2023. Presumably, those projections assume Katakem finds success with its early customers and demonstrates that OnePot does all the company says it can do. “As our clients — chemical companies — are key to economies, we are not subject to high variability in demand,” Oliverio said. “The robot is ready to be commercialized.” To date, Calabria, Italy-based Katakem has raised €1.3 million ($1.27 million) in capital from undisclosed seed investors, according to Crunchbase data.

Ambr wants to solve the billion-dollar burnout problem by tracking employees’ working habits • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Ambr, Battlefield 200, Biotech & Health, burnout, Disrupt, Enterprise, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

Worker burnout is real. Reports suggest that work-related chronic stress could be costing businesses up to $190 billion annually in reduced output and sick days, not to mention the much-discussed “Great Resignation” where workers are jumping ship in search of a greater work-life balance. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared burnout an “occupational phenomenon,” adding it to its International Classification of Diseases. This is a problem that Ambr is setting out solve, with a platform that promises to address worker burnout preventatively. The company is demoing its wares at TC Disrupt this week as part of the Battlefield 200, and we caught up with the founders before and during the event to take a closer look at an early iteration of its product. Ambr was founded in February this year by Zoe Stones, Steph Newton and Jamie Wood, a trio of former Uber managers who witnessed the impact of worker burnout firsthand. “Burnout was a problem across our teams, and as managers and individuals, we didn’t know what to do to prevent it,” Chief Product Officer Wood explained. “We researched the causes of burnout and learnt that burnout is primarily the result of workplace factors like poor relationships, unmanageable workloads, poor time boundaries and a lack of control.” The founders, who are all based in London, are in the process of making their first hires and raising a pre-seed round of funding, which it said it expects to close “in the coming weeks.” Burnout data Ambr’s technology currently relies on self-reported check-in data from Slack, with a configurable survey-like system for gathering feedback from workers. Worker feedback. Image Credits: Ambr But while this kind of in-app survey functionality isn’t exactly unique, the company is in the process of developing additional tools to proactively figure out whether a workforce is at a higher risk of hitting burnout. This includes using natural language processing (NLP) to identify whether workers are happy to talk about what they’re doing outside of work or whether they always talk shop. This will mean using data from an open-ended question in the daily Slack check-in survey, which asks “What’s on your mind today? Share any work or non-work topics.” The idea here is that if a worker only ever mentions work stuff, then they may be at risk of burnout, though in reality it’s probably an imperfect indication given that people are less inclined to talk about personal things with an automated survey than they would be with a human work colleague. Worker feedback. Image Credits: Ambr While all NLP analysis is apparently anonymized, with the resulting aggregated data only accessible to management, it would be better applied to more organic conversations within public Slack channels or Zoom calls, though this would obviously raise greater privacy concerns even if the data is anonymized. At any rate, this gives some indication as to the types of things that Ambr are working on as it looks to automate the process of assessing burnout risk. “We’re investigating other features and integrations in the future that may leverage NLP but nothing yet on our product roadmap,” CEO Zoe Stones said. Elsewhere, the company is exploring using anonymized data from other workplace tools such as email and calendar software. This could work in a number of ways. For example, it could detect whether someone is emailing excessively in the evening or on weekends, or perhaps they have wall-to-wall meetings for 90% of the week — a scenario that could force someone to work far more than their allotted hours to keep their head above water. Wood also said that there’s potential farther down the road to integrate with human resource information systems (HRIS) to identify workers not taking their full vacation allowance. Ultimately, this gives companies valuable data on work culture, helping them address smaller issues before they escalate into full-blown problems. Ambr analytics. Image Credits: Ambr “Nudges, not nags” But spotting risk factors is just one element of this. Ambr is also working on “nudges” that serve workers gentle reminders inside their core workplace tools, perhaps suggesting ways they could cut down on out-of-hours work. “Initially, we’re delivering nudges through Slack, but we plan to rapidly expand into using Microsoft Teams and also a Google Workspace add-on,” Wood explained. “It is important to highlight that nudges are used sparingly — only when we think they can have a meaningful positive impact on behavior. Our principle is nudges, not nags.” Ambr’s ethos can perhaps be juxtaposed against the myriad meditative, mental health and well-being apps that have raised bucketloads of cash in recent years. Indeed, Ambr’s approach is more along the lines of, “why fix something when you can stop it from happening in the first place?” “We are beginning to transition to a world of work where employees are demanding more from their employers — Ambr will enable companies to adapt to this new reality, particularly as hybrid and remote working becomes the norm and as more Gen Zers enter the workforce in the coming years,” Wood said. Beyond the usual health and well-being players which, according to Wood, typically have lower adoption rates given that they’re not integrated into workers’ day-to-day tools, there are a number of startups with a similar approach to Ambr. These include Humu, which uses nudges to encourage behavioral changes, though it’s not specifically focused on countering burnout. And then there is Quan, which issues well-being recommendations to users based on self-reported assessments. Ambr’s closed beta went live in June this year, and it said that it has been gradually onboarding new customers from its waitlist, including startups and “later-stage growth companies” globally. It expects to launch publicly in early 2023. In terms of pricing, Ambr is pursuing a standard SaaS model with customers paying a monthly per-employee fee.

As healthcare goes remote, Equipt Health brings medical hardware to the home • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in Battlefield 200, Biotech & Health, Disrupt, Equipt Health, Hardware, medical equipment, Startups, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

It’s no secret the pandemic has pushed healthcare to become virtual, in theory making it easier for patients to attend appointments and access the care they need. But Rebecca Weisinger, CEO and co-founder of Equipt Health, has seen plenty of patients falter in the long process of qualifying for devices they need. Equipt is a home medical equipment company; it aims to streamline the process for providers and patients to access medical equipment needed for care. Weisinger told ZebethMedia because of patients’ physical limits and lack of resources to make the process easier it has to be “connective, informative, transparent.” Though Weisinger has seen access issues professionally, personally she has also seen her friends and family experience hardships in accessing medical equipment due to the various layers of complications. Equipt aims to make the process easier by being the packager, the logistics, the clinician (via its provider network), providing technical support, and the return of data from connected devices. Although the company launched earlier this year as part of Y Combinator’s Winter cohort, it is certified to deliver DME (durable medical equipment) and HME (home medical equipment) devices across 24 states. The company is looking at expanding its reach in the near future, according to Weisinger. Currently, the company has been able to focus its efforts on sleep apnea products through the creation of Helio Sleep, a sub-brand of Equipt. The at-home sleep test offered by Equipt through Helio Sleep. Image Credits: Equipt Health Equipt provides patients a home sleep test that is later interpreted by a sleep physician, and if they qualify, the company will guide the patient on the next steps of getting medical equipment, ranging from CPAPs to alternative devices through Helio Sleep. “We created Helio Sleep to give users a better way to understand and improve their health through sleep tests, best-in-class treatment devices and access to board-certified physicians,” read the Helio Sleep launch announcement. “24M Americans are currently undiagnosed for sleep apnea, leaving them not only tired but also at risk for serious health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.” In addition to proving a more integrated path for patients, Equipt partners with medical device companies looking to go to market. Once a company is ready to launch medically cleared equipment, the company can market the product on its site to help fulfill demand. This feeds into its financial model where the company charges for DME and HME consultations. At the moment Equipt is not accepting insurance payments for care but is transitioning to “providing insurance reimbursement or insurance payments.” Although the company’s first focus is the sleep apnea market, Weisinger explained she hopes to expand services to cater to individuals with more chronic conditions. “We want to help a lot of the new medical device companies and support them as they go to market,” Weisinger said. “But at the same time, we think there’s great opportunities in the infusion pumps based around treating diabetic patients, home dialysis equipment, and other home medical devices that would include breast pumps and other like mobilization devices or hospital home.”

Labby wants to make milk healthier and cows happier with better sensors • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in AgTech, Battlefield, battlefield 2022, Biotech & Health, Disrupt, Hardware, LabbyNo Comments

For most dairy farmers, milk flowing from their cows is tested by a traveling technician once per month. But in a world where bovine mastitis can appear from one day to the next, it is udderly ridiculous to test milk flowing from cows once per month. Today at ZebethMedia Startup Battlefield, Labby offered a different solution, with an inline optical sensor that can test cows every time they are milked. For now, the product detects potential issues early, but over time, the company believes it can start predicting issues before they occur. The company’s product is called MilKey and comes in two variants: a hand-held product that can be used anywhere, or an inline product that can be hooked into the milking machines, which enables daily farmers to test continuously. The main difference between the two products is also their strengths. The handheld device can be used by any technician out in the (literal) field; you select the cow you’re testing on a smartphone app, and the test results show up with the right animal. That’s great when a cow is wandering about or if you have suspicions about a particular animal having an illness. The inline device is fully automatic and works over Wi-Fi. For this device, the results need to be assigned to the right cow manually, but it makes it feasible to test every cow, every milking. Labby’s portable sensor. Image Credits: Labby. Labby tells ZebethMedia that the device takes spectral measurements of milk samples and uploads them to the cloud. From there, the company uses machine-learning models to take spectral readings as inputs. It can estimate the content of the milk, broken down into fats, proteins and somatic cell counts. Once the measurements are taken and assigned to an animal, the farmers can use an app or any web browser to see the full testing history of any animal, to ensure they are going a-bovine and beyond in terms of milk production. “Animal health records are like human records; they give critical indications about animal health and feed efficiency. It turns out that milk is the best biomarker for everything. Currently, the industry only tests once a month for each animal. We think this is a systemic failure for the farmers and for the animals,” says Julia Somerdin, CEO and founder of Labby, in an interview with ZebethMedia. “One complication for animal health is mastitis. It one of the most common yet expensive diseases, and it can change from day to day. So when they do 30-day testing, the test will tell you everything is fine, but the next day the animal could develop a case, which can be subclinical with no symptoms. So for farmers, between testing days, they have no idea how the animal is doing.” You may be wondering “who cares,” but dairy farming is a hell of an industry. There are 9 million cows across 40,000 farms in the U.S. Worldwide, there are 250 million cows across 115 million farms; it all adds up. Labby’s dashboard gives you unherd-of amounts of details, both for spot testing and trends for each animal in the herd. Image Credits: Labby. “With our solution, we can provide on-farm real-time testing to help provide the farmer with daily, weekly and monthly health records,” says Somerdin. “Animal health is the critical indicator that’s missing from today’s industry practices.” From the numbers and the impact, you’ll be unsurprised that there are big sums of money involved. The best milk gets farmers the best price, which means that milk quality is directly linked to revenue, the Labby team tells me. The benefit is two-fold: Healthier cows need less veterinary attention, and higher-quality milk nets the milk producers more money per gallon of milk delivered. “We can insert Labby in the value chain. Dairy is a very input-intensive industry so we have all kinds of suppliers that help farmers produce more and better milk, and then the dairy farmers sell their milk to dairy processors. With our service, the big battle, besides the money-saving aspect, is we create all this real-time data,” says Somerdin. “Animal genetics companies can use that data, helping them refine their algorithms. We can also bridge the gap between dairy producers and veterinarians, enabling telehealth for cows.” Labby’s inline milk analyzing sensor, MilKey. Image Credits: Labby. Apart from the fact that when I hear “telehealth for cows,” I giggle at the thought of a cow staring into a Zoom screen and talking about its feelings and its four upset stomachs, it’s easy to understand how Labby adds significant value and the ability to be an early warning system for animal health. “The most important thing is that you don’t need a technician to sample the milk anymore. The cleaning can also be integrated with the current system,” says Somerdin, explaining how the company has designed a set-it-and-forget-it approach to continuous testing. Labby was part of Techstars, and raised a total of $1.3 million from them and a number of other investors, including MIT Media lab’s E14 fund. The company officially started selling its products in early October, and has only just started shipping its products to customers. In the short term, it’s a hardware+SaaS business, but after that, it’s time to start milking the data itself for wisdom. “Our business model has three revenue streams. For the dairy farmers, they pay once for the hardware equipment, then monthly for us to provide the testing in the cloud. The farmer pays per cow per day,” says Somerdin. “In addition, we’re looking at data. We believe we are generating significant value for the industry, such as for genetic companies. We will have a data licensing fee, but we will wait to offer that until we have half a million cows on the platform.” Over time, the company hopes to be able to use big data to catch a glimpse of the future, too. “The data will help us develop a reliable benchmark for each animal,” says Somerdin, and suggests that deviations from