PharmStars, the pharma-focused accelerator for digital health startups, is delighted to announce that 13 startups graduated from its Spring 2023 program focused on “Innovations in Women’s Health or Health Equity.” The graduating startups successfully completed PharmaU, PharmStars’ 10-week program. PharmaU culminated with a Showcase Event, held in Boston in May, that brought together the participating startups and PharmStars’ innovation-minded pharma members.
PharmStars focuses on bridging the “pharma-startup gap,” helping pharma and startups overcome partnership barriers. PharmStars’ unique PharmaU program provides education and mentorship to help startups more effectively partner with pharma.
Rob Milnes, viO HealthTech CEO, said “the PharmStars program has been invaluable in establishing our value proposition for clinical trials monitoring and Real World Evidence gathering for drug efficacy throughout the women’s reproductive cycle. The meta-analysis we conducted as part of the program revealed that a staggering 70% of drugs have a lower efficacy for women than men depending on the timing in the reproductive cycle. That includes common drug classes such as antidepressants, diabetes medications, anti-epileptics, cardiovascular therapies, some cancer therapeutics, and pain medications. 1-4 Our OvuSense users have a 92% device compliance rate and enter additional self-reported data on drug doses, timing, mood, pain, etc. Our OvuSense solution is 99% accurate for determining the cycle phase data needed for effective dose timing, and 11 clinical papers/posters have been published proving the use of OvuSense as a digital biomarker to help screen and monitoring various women’s health conditions, and understand drug efficacy.”
- Bergström H, Lindahl A (2021)
- Bartkowiak-WieczorekJ, Wolski H (2015)
- Zanger UM, Schwab M (2013)
- Lynch T, Price A (2007)
The 13 participating startups were selected in February 2023 following a highly competitive application process that attracted over 60 applicants from 14 countries. The selected startups each offer a unique digital health solution related to Women’s Health or Health Equity. Their diverse digital health solutions include new biomarkers, diagnostics and predictive tools, digital therapeutics, care access and delivery platforms, patient engagement platforms, and patient communication and education tools.
At the Showcase Event, startups presented their solutions to PharmStars’ pharma members and participated in one-on-one meetings with the members. More than 60 meetings took place over a two day period.
Participating startups shared that the PharmStars program was extremely valuable and useful to their business. Marina Rigau, CEO of MiMARK and part of the Spring 2023 Cohort, said, “Thanks to PharmaStars, we now have a strong pharma value proposition and have made the right connections to make engagement possible.”
The following 13 digital health startups completed the Spring 2023 PharmStars accelerator:
• GPx (Boston, MA): Continuous, Non-invasive Digital Blood and Urine Biomarkers
• Health Care Originals (Rochester, NY): Body-worn, Auscultation-based Continuous Respiratory Biomarker Platform
• Health In Her HUE (New York, NY): Education, Care, and Community Health Platform for Black Women and Women of Color
• Innsightful (Sunnyvale, CA): High Accuracy, Wearable-based AI Algorithm for Continuous Measurement of Anxiety and Depression
• Local Infusion (Nashville, TN): Tech-enabled Physician-administered Infusion Centers
• Manta Cares (San Francisco, CA): Interactive “Maps” and Engagement Platform for Cancer Patients and Caregivers
• MiMARK (Barcelona, Spain): Diagnostic Gynecological Fluid Biomarkers
• My Moves Matter (Dublin, Ireland): Patient-centric, Neuro-friendly Patient Engagement Platform for Women with Parkinson’s Disease
• NalaGenetics (Singapore): Genetic Risk Prediction Tool for Pre-Screening of Cancer, Cardiometabolic and Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Nivi (Sudbury, MA): Insights Engine and WhatsApp Chatbot Promoting Global Health Equity
• Samphire Neuroscience (London, United Kingdom): Neurotechnology-based Therapeutic Headband for Mental and Physical Symptoms of Menstruation
• Twill (New York, NY): Direct-to-Consumer Marketing and Adherence Platform that Delivers ROI
• viO HealthTech (Old Saybrook, CT and Camberley, United Kingdom): Continuous Remote Monitoring of Menstrual Cycles for Drug Efficacy
PharmStars is accepting applications through July 10, 2023 for its upcoming Fall 2023 cohort, around the theme “Digital Innovations in Therapeutic Delivery: Supply Chain to the Patient Interface.” Digital health startups interested in participating can find additional details and the application form on the PharmStars’ website.
For pharma and biotech companies, PharmStars 2023 membership is now open to a limited number of additional firms.
About viO HealthTech
viO HealthTech is the global leader in clinically proven remote screening and monitoring for women’s reproductive cycles. viO was founded based on our team’s own personal family experiences. Our OvuSense platform helps screen for common health issues for which 50% of women currently go undiagnosed, and monitors the 70% of drugs that are affected by timing of dose in the reproductive cycle. OvuSense is a class II medical device with 11 clinical publications and 10 granted patents, providing unique insights through our cycle flag and 99% accurate cycle tracking algorithms.
About PharmStars
PharmStars is the member-based, pharma-focused accelerator for digital health startups. Through our extensive expertise across pharma, startups, digital health, and innovation, we understand the challenges that pharma and startups face when seeking to collaborate. Our PharmaU program supports digital health startups and our pharma members in “bridging the gap,” leading to greater success and faster patient adoption of “beyond the molecule” solutions.
Contact PharmStars
[email protected]
Phone (617)-333-8723
www.PharmStars.com