Sep 10, 2021

MedCity News Check out new developments from Emulate, HealthMine, LuminDx, and more. Shares0 Emulate this week announced the close of an $82 million Series E financing round led by existing investor Northpond Ventures with additional participation from Perceptive Advisors. With this investment, Emulate has raised nearly $225 million to date. “This fundraise is a testament to the fact that Emulate organ-chips are allowing the exploration of human biology like never before,” said Jim Corbett, CEO of Emulate. “Over the last year, we have bolstered our leadership team, accelerated product development goals, and seen healthy growth in demand for our products. Several leading indicators validate our belief that organ-on-a-chip technology will dramatically transform the entire drug discovery and development pipeline and ultimately eliminate unnecessary animal testing.” HealthMine  published a timely article sharing how health plans can leverage digital technology to effectively communicate with members about well-child visits and immunizations to ensure children stay on track for healthy growth and development coming out of the pandemic. Read the full article to learn more about prioritizing prevention and incentivizing parents and caregivers to get the right care for their children using digital engagement and rewards & incentives. Health Wildcatters , a Dallas-based seed accelerator, added 10 startups with its latest cohort. They include: A LaRue Company (Winston-Salem, NC) – the designer of the LaRue Surgical Evacuator and  Clean Removal Process to aid surgeons in providing patients a safe, rapid, less invasive  procedure for removing gelatinous and similar materials from the body or surgical site. Aliform (Aachen, Germany) – which develops minimally invasive surgical devices for treating skin conditions. AllergenIQ (Southlake, TX)– a telemedicine platform that provides comprehensive integrative care, support, and treatment for children who have allergic conditions including food allergies. Birkeland Current – SOVRINTI (Waco, TX) – Changing the future of independent aging and  home-based care by scaling senior functional assessment to support earlier clinical diagnosis,  person-centered home care, and timely care interventions. Oral Genome (Carlsbad, CA) – develops personalized insights about oral health and recommended preventative measures based on saliva samples. Parrots Inc. (Seattle, WA) – Creator of “Polly”, an inclusive platform using AI and machine  learning to give a smart voice and telecare to people with neurological disorders. RECORNEA (Udine, Italy) – is a pre-clinical stage medtech ophthalmic company developing therapeutic corneal implants. Lung Healing Technologies, Inc. (Winnetka, IL) – Its SmartDrain is designed to monitor CO2, O2, and pressure in a chest drain to reduce hospitalization costs by over $4k per patient or $1B per  year in the US alone. Spectryx (Palo Alto, CA) – seeks to transform the drug development industry with high-throughput, label-free, ultra-sensitive automated sensors. Sympal (Boston, MA) – Clear aligner company disrupting the orthodontic industry. LuminDx, a digital health company developing a smartphone app to help healthcare clinicians quickly and accurately identify skin conditions with the help of AI, has changed its name to Piction Health . The name change reflects how the company helps physicians and other clinicians identify and act regarding skin conditions through its AI application that recognizes conditions by uploading a picture. Optimize Health , a remote patient monitoring tech company, has announced that Todd Haedrich will serve as the company’s new CEO. Co-founder and former CEO Jeff LeBrun will step into a new role as chief strategy officer, while also retaining his position as executive board chairman. Haedrich previously worked at Covetrus where he served as the company’s Global Technology Services chief commercial officer. He has also held roles at athenahealth.