Large conferences provide an ideal opportunity to learn about the latest developments in various companies. The recently concluded HLTH conference showcased several companies highlighting their strengths and capabilities. Here are a few companies that I either met for the first time or reconnected with after a period of time (listed in alphabetical order).
Brook Health
At the HLTH conference, Brook Health presented its innovative use of AI to extend primary care providers’ reach into patients’ homes for managing chronic diseases. Oren Nissim, the co-founder and CEO of this Seattle-based company, emphasized the importance of maintaining patient engagement over time, a challenge faced by many health tech programs.
Brook Health distinguishes itself by not acting as an outsourced entity but rather as an extension of primary care providers, particularly focusing on congestive heart failure patients. With Medicare covering care at home since 2019, Brook Health leverages remote care reimbursement to benefit both patients and primary care physicians.
In addition to its remote care program, Brook Health offers a preventive care program and currently serves 30,000 individuals, including customers like Independent Health, Erie County Medical Center, and UMass in Massachusetts. Competitors include companies such as Cadence and Snap Health.
Carrum Health
Carrum Health, headquartered in South San Francisco, specializes in managing specialty care costs for self-insured employers, covering areas such as surgical care, cancer treatment, and behavioral health. CEO Sach Jain highlighted the company’s focus on partnering with health systems to implement value-based care programs for employer-sponsored care.
The company recently launched a value-based care program for substance use disorder, aiming to combat fraud and abuse in this area by holding providers accountable for the quality and cost of care delivered. By making providers financially responsible for patient outcomes, Carrum Health seeks to ensure sustainable recovery for individuals battling substance use disorder.
Genialis
Based in Boston, Genialis is a precision medicine company that leverages RNA-based biomarkers through a combination of computational biology and AI. Aditya Pai, the company’s head of business development, shared that Genialis has analyzed over 1 million transcriptomic samples globally to train its algorithms.
Genialis’ biomarkers have the potential to accelerate drug development, enhance diagnostic testing, and improve clinical decision-making. One of their notable biomarkers is krasID, which predicts responses to and benefits from KRAS inhibitors, a previously considered non-druggable target. Our goal was to create a biomarker that encompassed all aspects of the KRAS biology, including the entire KRAS pathway and adjacent downstream components, to develop a biomarker that could effectively consider the diversity of this pathway.
Genialis trained the biomarker using 1 million transcriptomic samples and then validated it clinically with a patient group treated with the sotorasib drug by Amgen for non-small cell lung cancer. Patients with high krasID scores had significantly better survival rates on Amgen’s drug compared to those with low krasID scores, surviving 2.5 times longer.
The significant stratification and high sensitivity of our predictions compared to existing market options make our biomarker a best-in-class solution. Several pharma companies, including Debiopharm, are using the krasID product, with plans to further optimize the biomarker for kras inhibitors and create companion diagnostic products for clinical trials.
In addition to developing biomarkers for specific targets, Genialis recently introduced the Genialis “supermodel,” a platform technology combining multiple validated models of cancer biology for pharma companies to use as an AI recommendation engine.
Phenomix Sciences, based in Minneapolis and Palo Alto, has developed the MyPhenome Test to help individuals and their doctors understand weight gain factors and provide personalized treatment. Patients are stratified into categories based on their phenotype, with the company focusing on those with a “hungry brain,” “hungry gut,” and emotional hunger.
Phenomix Sciences’ approach aligns with drug development efforts by pharma companies targeting these phenotypes, enabling physicians to prescribe appropriate interventions based on patient needs.
Truvian Sciences, led by CEO Jay Srinivasan, is focused on using a few drops of blood to assess health status at the point of care. The company aims to conduct complete annual physicals using just 8-10 drops of blood through a proprietary instrument. Truvian’s multimodal platform requires only one tube of blood, making it convenient and accessible for widespread use. Clinical trials are underway to validate the instrument’s effectiveness, with plans to seek FDA clearance and CLIA waiver for future use without on-site medical technicians. Srinivasan agregó que la empresa ha lanzado una asociación con Shoppers Drug Mart, una farmacia minorista, en Canadá y tiene la intención de seguir una estrategia similar para comercializar en los EE. UU. Y aunque quiere llevar un dispositivo de análisis de sangre en el punto de atención al mercado, tiene algo muy claro.
“Conscientemente tomamos la decisión de que para poder construir el producto más robusto que el mercado pueda ver, tomaremos tecnologías conocidas y encontraremos una forma de miniaturizarla, encontrar una forma de hacerla robusta y proporcionar los mismos resultados de calidad que un laboratorio central,” dijo Srinivasan.
La empresa actualmente está llevando a cabo un ensayo clínico y espera enviar los datos a la FDA a finales de este año o principios del próximo.
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