Rapid Non-Invasive Treatment for Stroke

Dr. Mark Borsody, Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Nervive Inc, spoke about stroke healthcare, at www.bio2devicegroup.org event.

Stroke has been a #1 cause of severe disability, #2 cause of death in the world (responsible for more than 5 million deaths, each year), and it is 4^th leading cause of death in the US.  About 800,000 people in the US have stroke, each year.  One American dies from stroke, about every 4 minutes.  In fact, stroke is responsible for putting the biggest healthcare burden, worldwide and the burden is likely to increase in the foreseeable future, said Dr. Borsody.  Stroke results from “plumbing problem”, in the brain.  Ischemic stroke is caused by blockage of a blood vessel due to reasons like thrombosis or arterial embolism.  Hemorrhagic stroke is caused by bleeding of blood vessels of the brain, either directly into the brain or into the surrounding brain tissue.

While treatment options for hemorrhagic stroke are limited, current treatment options for ischemic stroke include intravenous “clot busting” through tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) or through endovascular catheter devices for blood clot retrieval.  Worldwide, an estimated 180,000 tPA treatments are done every year and 22,000 clot retrieval treatments are done.

Microphotograph of HE stained section of human brain tissue upon acute ischemic stroke. Orgininal magnification 400x (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Honing in on the major problem, Dr. Borsody discussed why do so few patients with stroke receive timely treatment.  Timely intervention is the key for treatment of stroke.  Like all cells in the body, neurons and other brain cells require oxygen and glucose delivered through the blood in order to function and survive.  A few minutes of oxygen deprivation can kill millions of neurons.  Additionally, stroke can provoke inflammation, swelling (edema), and other processes that can continue the damage for hours or days after the initial attack.  However, often treatment of stroke within 60 minutes is very rare due to the time required for patient transportation and in-hospital evaluation.  Effective treatment for stroke can be simple, but it needs to be immediate.  So how come there aren’t many innovations to bring the treatment to the patient, even to buy them some time?

Nervive’s Vital Flow Stimulator is a simple device that is aimed at targeting the facial nerve behind the middle ear.  The objective is to control the cerebral arteries through the facial nerve, which regulates the function of the arteries.  It is comprised of 3-4 cm coil placed over the ear.  Magnetic fields readily penetrate any tissue and creates electrical currents in neural tissues, leading to axonal and soma depolarization.  Early indications are that it is effective in treating ischemic stroke and it is safe in ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke.  This device is moreover, simple enough to use without any special training.  Vital Flow complements other therapies and bring exponential benefits of rapid treatments.  The device will be inexpensive, portable, and extremely easy to transport in the ambulance.  The treatment can be administered within a few minutes.  Animal studies show increased blood flow after facial nerve stimulation and improvement in several measures after stroke.

Ending his talk, Dr. Borsody said, Nervive has a strong IP position, the technology is targeting a market with huge potential, and it is substantiated by preclinical and clinical science.  They are starting fund raising for series A round.  To emerge from the dark ages of stroke healthcare, we need some disruptive, out of box (out of hospital) thinking, said Dr Borsody.
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Mark your calendars for following events……..

May, 6 – EPPIC will host Dr. Sarvajna Dwivedi, Founder, Pearl Therapeutics that was acquired by Astra Zeneca for $1.15B, last year.  Register at http://www.eppicglobal.org, @EPPIC_GLOBAL
May 16, 17 – #TiEcon 2014 will feature Healthcare Track to showcase and discuss new innovative technologies in Life Science and healthcare industries, @TiEcon
May, 2014 – Healthcare Code-a-thon will be hosted by http://www.healthtechnologyforum.com @HealthTechForum
May 20, 2014 – “Pathways to Sustainable Health” conference hosted by http://www.healthtechnologyforum.com
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Every Tuesday exciting speaker – http://www.bio2devicegroup.org

 

Hyper-Connected World – IoT and Implications for Healthcare

Internet of Things (IoT) is the new big buzzword, in the technology innovation.  It enables objects that contain embedded technology to interact with internal states or external environment.  As I see it, IoT is about empowering devices to gather and share information directly with each other, with people, and over the cloud, making it easier, convenient, faster, cheaper, and more effective to collect, record, and analyze data streams. Thus far internet empowered people to easily access information.  IoT will empower devices and finally, this will give a way to put data to use, in real time and it can help solve all sorts of interesting challenges, across a range of industries.  In May, 2014 two fantastic conferences will discuss IoT.  TiEcon 2014 has a track dedicated to discussing IoT and HealthTech Forum has a panel to discuss the impact of IoT on Healthcare.  See below registration details.

I am most interested in IoT’s application in the life science industry.  Apparently IoT is likely to revolutionize healthcare.  Currently, it is people who enable most of the flow of communication.  For instance, consider a patient in critical condition who needs to be constantly monitored and his vital signs checked by a healthcare professional.  Now consider that instead of a professional coming in at regular intervals, this can be done with automated flow of information.  People have a limited bandwidth.  People’s limits in attention span, time etc. can and do lead to all sorts of errors.  But technology has advanced and there are smart sensors that can collect, record, and analyze patient data more easily.  We already have smart sensors and connectivity to make all this possible.  And yet, right now only 1% of things are connected, according to Joseph Bradley, General Manager of Cisco Consulting Services.

Now consider a world of such connectivity that every one of over a trillion everyday items have at least some ability to store and process information.  The Internet of Things promises to be the most disruptive technological revolution since the advent of the World Wide Web.  Projections are that over a 100 billion uniquely identifiable objects will be connected to the internet by the year 2020.

Kevin Ashton, General Manager at Belkin, who coined the term “The Internet of Things”, envisions a world of such connectivity where not only trillion everyday items store, process and share information but they can also share that information, over the global internet with other trillion items.  Imagine connected roads where the information of slowing traffic is instantly connected through sensors embedded in the roads so other less busy roads can instantly open up carpool lanes to everyone.  Now imagine a smart bandaid that directly communicates to the physician whether the diabetic foot ulcer wound is healing or getting worse and timely intervention can save an amputation.

English: internet Español: internet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the life science arena, the implications of such connectivity will be huge.  Not only it will make hospital and nursing facility stays shorter and care more affordable, but home healthcare will become routine as monitoring becomes easier.  It will have implications for the aging population.  An American turns 50, every 7 seconds  http://bit.ly/1ivIWhf.  Most older individuals would prefer to live in their own homes for as long as they can.  Sensors and systems like Lively http://bit.ly/11iBk7g are working on making this possible.  Living in a hyper connected world is not going to be free of challenges.  IoT will raise many new questions and challenges, some of them technical but also many moral and philosophical.

See discount codes to register for TiEcon 2014, www.tiecon.org and for Health Technology Forum

www.tiecon.org – If you are a professional  in #healthIT, #digital health,  #internetofthings, #cloud, #bigdata or related, then this is the conference, you don’t want to miss – It offers a fabulous opportunity to network with 3000+ professionals and listen to top notch speakers and panelists.  Register for #TiEcon (May 16 & 17 at Santa ClaraConvention Center) as my guest, at link http://tinyurl.com/kr2hkcw  & enter promo code tievalue to get $100 discount.

Healthtechnology Forum conference http://www.healthtechnologyforum.com, focused on exploring pathways to sustainable health, is on May 20 in SF. Please register for the conference as my friend, with the discount code “HTF14-FriendOfOrganizer” and send me your first & last name at wd_darshana at hotmail dot com, to get $150 off the price of the ticket.  Also check out & participate in code-a-thon on patient engagement, for May 8.  Over 20K+ in prizes.

JOBS: are posted at the link http://bit.ly/1o85CTM