Imagine you’re back in high school and you’re sent on a field trip to a local pharmaceutical company. You spend the day talking to scientists, touring the labs and … making ice cream?
That’s what your day would look like if you showed up at Emergent BioSolutions Inc. as part of MdBio Foundation’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education opportunities.
emocha Mobile Health received a Small Business Innovation Research grant to further development of its mobile app that provides video-based healthcare observations in some cases where visits were previously required.
The NIH grant, which is for about $200,000 over two years, will allow the Johns Hopkins-based startup to gather data on its miDOT app from Tuberculosis patients in four health departments around the state, said cofounder Morad Elmi. The system is already in use at Baltimore’s health department.
OpGen, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPGN) and the District of Columbia Hospital Association (DCHA) today announced that Washington DC’s public health departments will oversee a comprehensive citywide evaluation, HARP-DC (Healthcare facility Antibiotic Resistance Prevalence-District of Columbia), to gauge the prevalence of the multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) in healthcare facilities throughout the District of Columbia. The DC Department of Health (DOH)-led study is being funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) Funding program for tracking healthcare-associated infections (HAI). The Department, in turn, has contracted OpGen to perform related laboratory services. The DC Department of Forensic Sciences-Public Health Laboratory (DFS-PHL) is also participating in the study by providing logistical support and by sequencing and banking isolates recovered from cultures.
Smartphones are getting smarter thanks to Agewell Biometrics and their Equilibrium app! More specifically, Equilibrium is a “mobile software balance assessment application that allows healthcare professionals to quickly evaluate postural stability”. In turn, this can help detect signs of musculoskeletal, neurological and vestibular dysfunction in the elderly. So, in short, AgeWell Biometrics is improving senior care and quality of life by providing objective, precise and predictive fall risk assessment.
A Roche drug that can prolong the lives of some women with advanced breast cancer has been plunged back into the centre of a drug pricing row after Britain’s health cost agency declared that it is still too expensive.
The stand-off shows how the price of medicines is as pressing and emotive an issue in Europe as in the United States, where Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has promised to clamp down on alleged profiteering by the drug industry.
PHARMACEUTICAL majors AstraZeneca and Sanofi have agreed to swap 210,000 compounds from their proprietary libraries as part of efforts to encourage open innovation in drug development. No money will change hands between the two companies, in what is a relatively new collaborative approach. Both companies will be able to increase the diversity of their compound libraries. AstraZeneca and Sanofi have chosen compounds from each others’ libraries which plug gaps in their own, and will share chemical structures and the procedures to make them.
On November 4 more than 400 regional business and government leaders joined us for our Annual Meeting to celebrate the people and companies that make this region great. Attendees heard from 20 individuals who share their stories about their connection to Baltimore.
In 2016, The University System of Maryland will break ground on a new Biomedical Science and Engineering Education Facility at the Universities at Shady Grove. The facility has been designed to meet the specific economic needs of this region, while expanding degree opportunities in healthcare, biosciences, engineering and computational sciences and STEM education. This facility will provide state-of-the-art teaching laboratories, active learning classrooms, clinical training facilities, academic offices, and an expanded level of student services necessary to support program and enrollment growth.
The University of Maryland was honored at the 2015 Innovation & Economic Prosperity (IEP) University Awards by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). UMD took home the top honor, the Connections Award, which recognizes an institution working to build connections between innovation and entrepreneurship, talent development, and social, community and cultural development. The award winners were announced today at APLU’s annual meeting in Indianapolis.
UMD won the Connections Award in part for its partnership with Northrop Grumman to create the Advanced Cybersecurity Experiences for Students (ACES), a program which helps to supply trained workers to serve the cyber community. In addition, UMD announced earlier this year its plans for Greater College Park, an initiative which ties together many efforts supporting the university’s goal of becoming a premier college town. It focuses on dynamic academic spaces, a vibrant downtown community and a public-private research hub that brings together businesses and the university’s academic community.
GSK is quietly building a new treatment pipeline, in parallel to its established work on molecular medicines, that hopes to use peoples’ nerves to treat disease. If successful, it could not only revolutionize its product offering, but change the very way we think of medicine.
“There are fewer players looking at it,” said Kris Famm, who leads the dedicated R&D unit at GSK. “We’ve gone out on a limb to capture what we believe is a game-changing therapeutic opportunity.”
The pursuit of truth requires both free speech and racial justice
Nearly two centuries after his birth as a slave in Maryland, the great orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass has come home. His statue, just installed at the University of Maryland, now towers over a square inscribed with his soaring words on racial justice and the transformative power of education.
Dr. Robert L. Caret was inaugurated as chancellor of the University System (USM) of Maryland on November 19, 2015 at the Christopher Columbus Center in Baltimore, Md. The event featured remarks by several Maryland dignitaries and members of the USM community; musical performances by current USM students; as well as the following video tribute.
Dr. Jayfus Doswell has become accustomed to finding solutions to complex problems.
The Baltimore-born founder of The Juxtopia Group— a nonprofit established to reduce the critical STEM learning gap of underserved communities— has helped to find another solution to a problem that involves Alzheimer’s disease.
It is an unprecedented time in science and healthcare filled with equal parts cavernous challenge and unrivaled opportunity. Competitive job markets, extended trainee timelines and increasing demand for endurance coupled with uncertain career paths to pose serious questions to early, mid and late career professionals in our fields. Nowhere is this more apparent than here at the heart of our nation’s capital – a microcosm representing nearly every sector of science, medicine and healthcare along with the institutions that govern them.
Join us for an impactful evening as four extraordinary women leaders from across our community come together to discuss the career and life lessons that guide them as they define success and shape the future of science, medicine and healthcare today.
Accelerators have been nurturing young companies since startups became as hip as garage bands. (This was 2005ish… about the same time I was in my garage tuning my guitar.) Founders consume the wisdom of elders in a sleepless boot camp designed to spin up incredible value quickly. For the startup, the ticket to ride is somewhere around 6 percent of their seedling company in exchange for $20K and the opportunity to immerse themselves in the three-month program, usually concluding with a rockstar-like demo day event.
We are excited to be returning to Growlers in Gaithersburg on December 2nd for BioBuzz MoCo
BioBuzz is an ongoing monthly networking group of professionals from all sectors of the Bioscience industry. Each month we host a FREE event for like-minded people to come to gether and network, reconnect with past coworkers, build stonger relationships and share stimulating conversations in a welcoming atmosphere.
Everyone loves the backup quarterback because they’ve never played a down. But once those backups play, the sports analogy goes, and they are almost always worse than the starter.
Are digital health VCs the backup quarterbacks of healthcare investing? Rightfully, there’s a lot of excitement about corporate venture’s increasing prominence in healthcare. But don’t get overexcited.
The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced today the release of the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund (CRCF) annual report for FY2015, which tracks investments in high-potential technology development and commercialization initiatives throughout Virginia.
In FY2015, CIT announced 38 grants to startups, universities and research institutes engaged in research and development projects totaling $2.8 million in key sectors such as life sciences, cyber security, advanced manufacturing and energy. This investment was leveraged to secure an additional $5.6 million from private sector and university matching funds.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Term Sheets But Were Afraid to Ask!
It is an entrepreneur’s dream…to receive a term sheet for your venture! Don’t let it become your nightmare by not understanding the terms or ramifications of what you are about to sign! Learn from a panel of legal and venture capital experts about what to expect, how to navigate the terminology, and what strategies you can deploy to get you the best possible deal structure. Our presenters are willing to take on your questions, from basic to the most advanced, so join us at the next National Capital SoPE Chapter meeting.
Pfizer has clinched a blockbuster merger with a fellow drug maker, one worth more than $150 billion, that can best be described in superlatives.
When it is announced — most likely on Monday, people briefed on the matter said — the deal to buy Allergan, the maker of Botox, would be one of the biggest ever takeovers in the health care industry. And it would be the largest acquisition yet in a banner year for mergers.
Most companies make a conscious and deliberate decision to embrace digitization and the information revolution. Yet the role of big data in medicine seems almost to compel organizations to become involved. In this interview, Dr. Eric Schadt, the founding director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, tells McKinsey’s Sastry Chilukuri how data-driven approaches to research can help patients, in what ways technology has the potential to transform medicine and the healthcare system, and how the Icahn Institute is building its talent base. An edited transcript of Schadt’s remarks follows.
This week, Andreessen Horowitz said it’s launching a fund dedicated to investments in bioinformatics and “beyond the pill” technology. The venture capital firm had already gotten its feet wet with investments in these areas, but a dedicated fund is something new and indicates an interest in ramping up its strategy. With its fund, the firm could make a big impact. Here are some insights on some challenges and opportunities in these areas and some companies the firm should consider.
First of all, it’s worth noting some of the health and life science IT companies that Andreessen Horowitz have invested in so far. It’s only a handful to date:
The new president and chief executive officer of Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology has roots in high flight and high finance and every intention to bring skills from both sectors to his new job. Ed Albrigo, appointed Nov. 2 by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to succeed Peter Jobse, who has returned to the private sector after 13 years with the nonprofit CIT, says his goals are lofty — maybe seeding Virginia companies to remotely mine for minerals on the moon and bring them back for use in fusion energy.
This week, PricewaterhouseCoopers came out with a report on remaking primary care for what the consulting form called “the New Health Economy.” We would have covered it straight up on Wednesday, but a certain provider-focused health IT reporter at MedCity News was busy at the American Medical Informatics Association conference.
Since it’s not breaking news anymore, we have to take a different angle. A major component of the future of primary care, according to PwC, will be digital health.
Virtual reality is here, and brands of all stripes are embracing the tech. The New York Times and Google newly partnered to send more than 1 million cardboard VR viewers to Times subscribers at the beginning of November so they could watch the paper’s first VR documentaries on a smartphone. Magic Leap published video of its augmented reality system online in October, causing more buzz around VR’s potential. Even Tommy Hilfiger now offers VR sets to its in-store customers so they can watch its recent New York Fashion Week show.
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