No action is good action. At least for online investment platform the Funders Club that today received a ‘no-action letter’ from the SEC stating that it will not recommend enforcement action.
The letter is a green light for the FundersClub and validation that its investment model is legal. The news is significant for the venture capital and finance industries, as well as startups looking for more flexible methods of fundraising.
The Congressional hearings debating the regulatory framework for mobile health devices and apps made me think about how we view mobile health apps and the criteria we use to determine what makes some better than others.
And as we all think in terms of the NCAA college basketball tournament around this time, I thought we would do a mini tournament using mobile health apps.
As we come to the close of Q1 of 2013, LSN has compiled some insight into three of the hottest subsectors being targeted by investors in the medical technology space. New technologies are surfacing that are changing treatment philosophies, and more importantly, medtech is attracting a whole new class of investors such as corporate venture from the consumer electronics, digital media, and telecom space. Here are the three trend areas that are changing the world from the medtech investor perspective:
The Maryland Venture Fund has awarded $300,000 to Adlyfe, a Rockville diagnostic test developer, as part of the state’s InvestMaryland program.
Adlyfe, which is developing an early detection test for Alzheimer’s disease, is also receiving a $200,000 grant from the Maryland Biotechnology Center.
This the title [paraphrased] of a keynote given last week by Jonathon Bush, the CEO of AthenaHealth, at the Xconomy Mobile Madness conference in Cambridge, Ma. What follows are my notes from the speech. The ideas are Jonathon’s. I really like what he’s saying and mostly agree, and he puts it very well.
AthenaHealth’s base business is medical practice billing in the cloud. This is an example of technology-enabled transformation of the health care business system, which we believe will be a big opportunity for entrepreneurs going forward. Founded in 1997, AthenaHealth is now a successful public company (ATHN).*
A week after the Congressional hearings discussed how the US Food and Drug Administration’s impending regulatory guidelines (expected by October) will impact mobile health apps, aspiring and current digital health entrepreneurs may be rethinking their path. In a report dubbed “FDA 101,” health startup accelerator Rock Health has compiled a handy report to help digital health entrepreneurs assess whether their mobile health apps would be classified as medical devices by the FDA and require 510(k) clearance.
Some of the pressure to clear the waters has come from technology developments that have simply outpaced the regulatory environment. Another is that provisions of health care reform call for making greater use ofremote monitoring, to reduce healthcare costs. Providers are pretty keen to reduce costs where they can as well. Remote monitoring would be particularly helpful when it comes to patients with chronic conditions, such as congestive heart failure or diabetes or both, so they can have shorter hospital stays and care managers can be alerted for any changes in their vital signs.
President Barack Obama’s top healthcare adviser acknowledged on Tuesday that costs could rise in the individual health insurance market, particularly for men and younger people, because of the landmark 2010 healthcare restructuring due to take effect next year.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said definitive data on costs will not be available until later this year when private health plans become authorized to sell federally subsidized coverage on new state-based online marketplaces, known as exchanges.
