Medical Technology

Health_Cloud_shutterstock_129963686As companies continue to implement mobile health apps, aggregate clinical trial results, and isolate disease through computer modeling, they are also focused on possible risks. Harnessing cloud technology gives rise to a constant concern about keeping sensitive data secure.

Medicine has led the drive for nimble handling and accessibility of information.  Electronic health records and clinical decision support have been widely adopted. Physician order entry facilitates scrutiny of outcomes. Stats can be compared thanks to industry standards for sharing. Devices for patient compliance and fitness provide value by accumulating user information to assess individual results and detect trends. Finally, better processing power can employ sophisticated algorithms to sift hundreds of millions of compounds and billions of DNA base pairs in a quest to discover drug targets.Continue Reading Your Health in the Cloud

A solar water heater on every Israeli rooftop

Israel is a garden of inventiveness and Israelis have a strong tradition of contributing to technology and life sciences. Breathing the innovation when I lived there, I was privileged to test PrimeSense’s 3D camera, help bring Notal Vision’s tool to gauge macular degeneration to the United States, deliver a turn-key VoIP network in Nigeria and Zambia on behalf of VocalTec, license ecommerce and security software to dozens of Fortune 100 companies, watch knee surgery with miraculous tissue-repairing Regentis hydrogel, play with a gear box created from an Objet (now Stratasys) 3D printer, and negotiate sponsored research, patent licenses and clinical trials on behalf of emerging pharmaceutical companies.

Figuring out what gives rise to the “start-up nation” character, with wildly disproportionate foreign direct investment and numbers of translated books, cited academics, filed patents, Nasdaq companies, successful exits, and tuneful children’s songs, is a pervasive new-age question. Many answers have been floated, including its world-class research institutions, the very first technology transfer offices for commercialization of academic R&D, raw skills honed in one of the best-trained and most-sophisticated militaries, a culture of questioning, and a flood of ex-Soviet engineering talent over three decades. Naturally one can’t discount that there are real issues to be addressed too. Israelis have done it — from discerning security risks through synthesis of big data to making the desert bloom with fruit, vegetables, fish, and minerals.
Continue Reading Ingenuity in Israel’s Water

Emerging medical device companies should consider these points when weighing a potential merger, strategic partnership or investment:medical technology

1. Identify unmet medical needs

Medical device titans are actively looking to acquire new technologies to treat unmet medical needs and drive market adoption. Larger medtech companies often view early-stage companies as outsourced R&D labs, and will pay a premium price for products that can drive future revenue. The larger the potential market, the higher the value to medtech titans.

2. Know the market and competitors

Acquiring technologies that can transform or dominate a market drives many deals and collaborations. Disruptive technologies that improve patient outcomes are in high demand. Larger medtech companies are always on the lookout for new devices or improved treatments that have no or few competitors. Understanding the strategic investment goals and criteria of potential suitors will further refine and focus a growing medtech company’s efforts to gain visibility and generate productive relationships.
Continue Reading M&A, Investment or Partnering Checklist for Medtech Companies