DarioHealth Corp., a leader in the global digital therapeutics (DTx) market, announced that it has entered into contracts with two prominent regional providers in Hawaii and Georgia for its Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) services.

The two new contracts expand Dario’s provider footprint with one of the largest providers in Hawaii, and a metro Atlanta primary care system with multiple locations. Both partnerships will provide RPM services for patients living with diabetes and hypertension, two of the most common – and commonly co-occurring – chronic conditions.

Each contract represents a competitive win for Dario in the crowded RPM market. Dario’s established track record of partnering with providers to engage patients factored heavily in both decisions as providers increasingly look for credible solutions. Dario supports more than 197,000 members on its multi-chronic condition digital therapeutics platform today with live provider clients in the Midwest, Southeast and Southwest.

“Dario’s ability to engage and retain patients on our platform is very attractive to providers. Our credibility as a trusted partner is becoming a decisive factor in securing new provider partnerships, and we look forward to delivering the best possible experience for our newest clients and their patients as well,” said Rick Anderson, President and General Manager North America.

About DarioHealth Corp.

DarioHealth Corp. is a leading global digital therapeutics company revolutionizing how people with chronic conditions manage their health. DarioHealth offers one of the most comprehensive digital therapeutics solutions on the market – covering multiple chronic conditions including diabetes, hypertension, weight management, musculoskeletal and behavioral health within one integrated technology platform.

Dario’s next-generation, AI-powered, digital therapeutic platform supports more than just an individual’s disease. Dario provides adaptive, personalized experiences that drive behavior change through evidence-based interventions, intuitive, clinically proven digital tools, high-quality software, and coaching to help individuals improve health and sustain meaningful outcomes.

Dario’s unique user-centric approach to product design and engagement creates an unparalleled experience that is highly rated by users and delivers sustainable results.

The company’s cross-functional team operates at the intersection of life sciences, behavioral science, and software technology and utilizes a performance-based approach to improve its users’ health.

On the path to better health, Dario makes the right thing to do the easy thing to do. To learn more about DarioHealth and its digital health solutions, or for more information, visit http://dariohealth.com.

Spatial, the award-winning immersive audio platform, is pleased to announce it has partnered with HealthTunes, a nonprofit digital streaming platform offering scientific-based MusicMedicine, and Catalyst by Wellstar, the global digital health and innovation center of nationally-ranked Atlanta-based healthcare system Wellstar. The partnership will focus on designing immersive sound environments that provide a respite for frontline healthcare workers in the hospital setting while helping reduce the stress and anxiety brought on by the overwhelming COVID-19 health crisis.

A recent Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 62% of healthcare workers responsible for providing direct care for COVID-19 patients reported challenging mental health repercussions. 55% reported feeling burnout (mental and physical exhaustion from chronic workplace stress) and 49% reported feeling anxious. Three in ten frontline workers considered leaving the healthcare field altogether, and 13% have sought out and received mental health services.

Spatial, along with HealthTunes and Catalyst by Wellstar are aiming to help reverse these trends through the healing power of sound. In this inaugural project, Catalyst by Wellstar, will be piloting Spatial technology in wellness rooms under construction at four of its medical centers. These rooms will function as therapeutic spaces for healthcare workers to relax and recharge in tranquil, completely immersive audio environments.

To make this happen, HealthTunes licensed their content and built fully immersive versions of the soundscapes on Spatial’s platform for hospital and wellness center deployments. HealthTunes incorporates auditory beat stimulation to increase the strength of positive brain waves through a process called entrainment. Through their proprietary algorithm, HealthTunes inlays binaural beats and isochronic tones into playlists to influence and entrain brain wave patterns which help decrease stress and anxiety, increase relation, improve sleep, and more.

“Evidence shows that experiential sound works effectively as a therapeutic tool, but it is vastly underutilized in practical settings,” said Hank Capps, MD FAAFP, Executive Vice President, Chief Information and Digital Officer of Wellstar Health System. “The immersive wellness rooms present an exciting opportunity for Wellstar to leverage the healing power of sound for our clinical team members. Thanks to Spatial’s technology, health systems are empowered to find innovative ways to promote the mental wellbeing of their teams while paving the way for the technology’s use in patient-facing settings.”

Spatial’s software enables creators to design immersive experiences with sound as a core sensory modality, opening the door for independent researchers to study the impacts of sound on human emotion, recovery, therapy and more,” said Calin Pacurariu, co-founder and CEO of Spatial. We are honored to work with HealthTunes and Catalyst by Wellstar to enable the healing power of sound to help frontline healthcare workers manage the stress and anxiety present in their daily work environment. As we continue to partner with leaders in the audio and health sectors, the possibilities for sound as a therapeutic tool are tremendous.”

MusicMedicine in Patient Care
In addition to this initial project that focuses on frontline healthcare workers, providing therapeutic sounds to help manage stress and anxiety brought on as a result of the pandemic, the teaming of Spatial and HealthTunes can transform patient treatment and care as well. The healing power of sound, via HealthTunes’ MusicMedicine, can be deployed in any hospital, long term care, or home-based environment using Spatial’s immersive audio platform and tools, addressing a target range of treatments including addiction, pain, chemo nausea, sensory issues, pre-surgery anxiety, and more.

Spatial’s technology is responsive to biosensors and can link to various different inputs and outputs (e.g., visual, olfactory, haptic, etc.). Thus, each patient’s experience is highly personalized and unique to their situation. Patients, along with caregivers, also can control the experience using an iPhone or iPad. Once an experience is set in motion, Spatial’s real-time platform can integrate with monitoring systems to track progress and outcomes — providing a feedback loop that paves the way for improved and more diverse therapeutic research and applications over time.

“The Spatial platform is a dynamic 3D experience, which makes it much more powerful and flexible for audio therapy purposes than a regular canned soundtrack,” said Walter Werzowa, Founder of HealthTunes. “A deeper sound immersion enables a higher efficacy of MusicMedicine.”

Advancing its application of artificial intelligence and data science to help improve patient care, egnite, Inc. expanded into heart failure for its flagship solution, CardioCare. This expansion leverages real-world insights to help physicians identify at-risk patients with heart failure and a reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) who are not on guideline-directed medication and could benefit from timely intervention.

Early data from five heart programs managing more than 50,000 HFrEF patients indicate the 3-year survival rates for HFrEF patients prescribed 0 or 4 guideline-directed medications were 56% and 95% respectively. Thirty-day hospital readmissions for HFrEF patients prescribed 0 guideline-directed medications were three times higher than patients prescribed 4 medications, at 18% and 6% respectively.

These real-world insights from the CardioCare platform indicate an average of only 2.48% HFrEF patients are prescribed all 4 guideline-directed medications to manage their disease. “These data demonstrate significant opportunity to help improve survival and reduce readmission rates for heart failure patients,” said Joel Portice, chief executive officer, egnite. “CardioCare’s first to market technology helps hospital systems understand and improve the care for these large heart failure patent populations.”

Today, CardioCare is partnered with over 50 heart programs to reduce variability in care and improve guideline-directed treatment for patients with heart valve disease. This expansion into heart failure is the first of many for CardioCare as egnite continues its pursuit to elevate the standard of structural heart patient care by bringing leading-edge technologies to hospital systems.

“Healthcare information is moving rapidly with estimates of doubling five times a year. Data-driven population health initiatives like this are imperative to assist providers in managing their patients to the highest level of guideline-based care, the foundation of heart failure management. This work will improve patient management, quality of care, and save lives.” John Mignone, M.D., Ph.D., Robert M. and Patricia Arnold Endowed Medical Director for Heart Failure and Co-Executive Medical Director Swedish Heart and Vascular Institute.

Stratasys Ltd., a leader in polymer 3D printing solutions, announced a partnership with Ricoh USA, Inc. to provide point-of-care anatomic modeling services to healthcare facilities. RICOH 3D for Healthcare utilizes Stratasys 3D printing technology as part of its solution to give more medical providers and hospitals access to 3D printed, patient-specific anatomic models.

RICOH 3D for Healthcare is an end-to-end workflow that simplifies the development, design, and production of anatomic models1 for healthcare providers. The solution increases medical facility access to 3D printed medical models to help clinicians see inside anatomy for greater visibility into patient needs and reduces barriers to entry that healthcare providers encounter when standing up a 3D printing facility. These include staffing issues, training requirements, HIPAA, quality and IT compliance, as well as budget constraints.

Ricoh uses the Stratasys J750 Digital Anatomy™ printer and the Stratasys J5 MediJet™ 3D printer to create the models produced for RICOH 3D for Healthcare. The printers create life-like anatomic models that can reflect an individual patient’s pathology and be physically manipulated like human tissue. Medical models allow clinicians to deliver more personalized care through better surgical preparation and patient education and can also be used for medical training purposes.

“To date, access to anatomic models at point-of-care locations has been limited to large hospitals and healthcare facilities,” said Gary Turner, Managing Director, Ricoh 3D for Healthcare, Ricoh USA, Inc. “Our cost-effective solution expands access for healthcare providers of all sizes. By partnering with Stratasys, through an integration with IBM Watson Health and our ongoing commitment to innovation, we are able to provide these models to any facility using IBM iConnect® Access.”

RICOH 3D for Healthcare is currently available to providers in two different ways. First, a point-of-care option, which includes having the Stratasys 3D printers coupled with Ricoh’s managed services staff on-site to manage the entire process aligning with Ricoh’s Quality Management System and good manufacturing practices. Further, there is an on-demand option where providers can order and have anatomic models 3D printed and shipped directly to them. Both options are HIPAA compliant and easy for medical staff to use.

“Through our partnership with Ricoh we are giving healthcare institutions the opportunity to access patient care tools that they may not have previously had access to,” said Scott Drikakis, Healthcare Segment Leader for Stratasys. “With Ricoh 3D for Healthcare, providers can easily generate 3D printed models of patient specific anatomy using state of the art technology through an on-site managed services or on-demand part approach. This will demonstrate the clinical and economic benefits of anatomic models, while streamlining the historical challenges of establishing 3D printing programs in hospitals.”

Attendees to the RSNA conference in Chicago Nov. 28 – Dec. 2 can see the full anatomic model solution from IBM Watson Health, Ricoh and Stratasys in the IBM Watson Health 3D Printing Imaging Showcase in booth 8108.

Stratasys and Ricoh will continue to expand their partnership and redefine how healthcare facilities access anatomic models for personalized patient care.

Together with Imperial College London (‘Imperial’), DNAe has been awarded a UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) by Innovate UK to support development of its next generation sequencing (NGS)-based diagnostic platform for use in cancer monitoring.

The KTP program connects innovative businesses with academic experts who can help them deliver their ideas. This award formalizes a collaboration between DNAe and Professor Charles Coombes, Professor of Medical Oncology at Imperial. The work of the KTP will build on the existing research partnership between Professor Coombes and Professor Jacqui Shaw, Head of the Department of Genetics and Genome Biology and Professor of Translational Cancer Genetics at the University of Leicester.

The aim of the program is to develop a ‘liquid biopsy’ test based on DNAe’s proprietary “sample to answer” NGS technology, to directly detect and identify biomarkers and mutation hotspots that have been identified in Professors Coombes’ and Shaw’s research. This will enable these markers to be used to monitor treatment and detect early recurrence of breast cancer. Under the terms of the partnership, a post graduate researcher (the KTP Associate) will be based at DNAe to integrate expertise from the academic partners into the development of the test.

Samuel Reed, CEO of DNAe, said: “Recognizing that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we’re delighted to formally announce our collaboration with world experts Professors Coombes and Shaw who bring their extensive knowledge of using circulating tumor DNA to manage the treatment of breast cancers. Through this KTP award, we will be able to harness that deep expertise and combine it with our proven diagnostic technology.”

DNAe’s integrated, sequencing-based technology will bring genomic analysis to the point-of-need, enabling testing to move out of specialist laboratories and closer to the patient. By detecting and sequencing tumor DNA directly from raw blood samples in a matter of hours, DNAe’s platform has the potential to expose unresponsive or recurrent cancer earlier.

Professor Charles Coombes, Professor of Medical Oncology, Imperial, and Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist, Imperial College Healthcare Trust, said: “Cancer monitoring is a vital component of successful treatment. Firstly, we need to ensure a patient’s tumor is responding to the therapy, and secondly, patients in remission must be monitored for signs of recurrence. The current monitoring options are slow, and any delays to appropriate cancer care can lower the chance of survival and increase treatment-associated problems and costs. Although we are at the early stages, I believe that DNAe’s integrated, sequencing-based platform could ultimately provide rapid, actionable information that saves patients’ lives.”

Professor Jacqui Shaw, Head of the Department of Genetics and Genome Biology, University of Leicester, added: “This is an exciting collaboration with DNAe and Imperial, where we will combine our expertise to develop a rapid integrated liquid biopsy platform for management of patients with breast cancer.”

Most of the highly accurate, lab-quality molecular tests for COVID-19 that have been developed so far require nasal swabs or saliva samples to be mixed with virus-specific reagents or antibodies to extract and amplify COVID particles from the sample. Those that don’t use these scarce and often pricey reagents, meanwhile, end up sacrificing diagnostic accuracy to make that trade-off.

A group of MIT scientists has developed new sensor technology that may achieve the best of both worlds. In a study published today in Analytical Chemistry, the sensors were shown to be an accurate and much faster alternative to the current gold-standard PCR tests.

Not only did the sensors return results within five minutes without the need for in-lab analysis using antibodies or other reagents, but they also were able to detect the coronavirus in concentrations as low as 2.4 picograms per milliliter of sample. In subsequent tests after the paper had been submitted, the researchers said that limit of detection dropped even lower, enabling the sensors to detect the virus in smaller concentrations than other rapid tests that are currently commercially available.

The sensors are built using carbon nanotube technology originally developed several years ago in the lab of MIT chemical engineering professor Michael Strano, Ph.D., senior author of the study. The nanometer-thick tubes naturally fluoresce under laser light, and Strano’s lab discovered that when the tubes are wrapped in various polymers and exposed to biofluid samples, targeted virus molecules will wedge into the gaps between the polymer loops and alter the intensity of the tubes’ fluorescence.

With the support of a grant awarded earlier this year by the National Institutes of Health’s RADx program, Strano’s lab and InnoTech Precision Medicine got to work translating this Corona Phase Molecular Recognition technology, or CoPhMoRe, into a rapid COVID diagnostic.

They began by looking for a polymer that would interact best with coronavirus molecules. The researchers were able to identify 11 viable candidates, narrow down that list to the strongest candidate and use it to build highly accurate sensors to detect the virus within just 10 days from the start of the project.

They went on to adapt the resulting nanotubes into a device equipped with a fiber-optic tip that spots changes in the tubes’ fluorescence in real time as they interact with biofluid samples.

Because of how quickly the scientists were able “to go from someone handing us viral markers to a working fiber-optic sensor,” Strano said that the technology could eventually be used to speed up the process of developing diagnostics not only for COVID-19 but for future pandemics, too, by cutting out the need to design a virus-specific protein antibody.

Nanotechnology has become an increasingly important focus of diagnostics developers amid the ongoing pandemic. In a session at the MedTech Conference last month, RADx leaders said that approximately 20% of the project proposals that have made it to phase two of the rapid diagnostics program rely on nanomaterials to detect the virus.

Indeed, a handful of the 12 diagnostic technologies that received a collective $77.7 million from the program this month incorporate nanotech in some way. Palogen, for one, reeled in the NIH’s support for a nanoelectronic biosensor that aims to detect COVID in just three minutes, while Clip Health is developing a smartphone-connected antigen that can diagnose both COVID and the flu in about 15 minutes using glow-in-the-dark nanomaterials.

Bio-Rad Laboratories, a life science research and clinical diagnostics product provider, announced the launch of the CFX Opus 96 Dx System and CFX Opus 384 Dx System on Oct. 20, 2021. These instruments provide real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection for in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) testing.

According to a company press release, the Opus 96 and OIpus 384 offer accurate and precise quantification to improve assay development and workflow efficiencies and productivity for diagnostic testing and research. Additionally, both are open systems that can multiplex up to five targets to provide IVD assay development and testing.

“We continue to see an increasing demand for real-time PCR systems that offer more efficient workflows and improved data management and analysis that meets regulatory requirements in IVD assay developm

ent and testing, and we’re pleased to introduce the [CFX] Opus Dx Detection Systems to meet these needs,” said Steven Blakely, director for Gene Expression and Software Technology, Bio-Rad, in the press release. “Both systems are robust and secure platforms that leverage Bio-Rad’s long-standing expertise in genomic tools to better serve both research and clinical diagnostic markets,” he added.

Both products have been listed with FDA for IVD testing and meets the requirement for IVD use in Europe. They are also registered with the regulatory bodies of Singapore and Canada.