FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE
PRIA Healthcare Management | January 27, 2022
PRIA Healthcare Management (PRIA), a leader in technology-enabled Market Access services that accelerate the adoption and rapid commercialization of innovative devices and procedures, today announced a significant investment fromVirginiabased growth equity firm, Aldrich Capital Partners. With the support of growth capital, PRIA Healthcare will quickly expand its Market Access solutions to innovative Medtech companies facing clinical trials and early reimbursement challenges of novel and life changing therapies.
"After bootstrapping PRIA since our founding in 2012, we could see it was time for us to take the next step as the business grew and the needs in the market continued to expand. After meeting with many potential partners, we chose to work with the team at Aldrich Capital Partners because of their deep experience within our space and enormous set of resources they will bring to the table, outside of just capital."
Mike Simon, Founder and CEO of PRIA Healthcare
PRIA looks to further advance its mission to provide patients and providers across dozens of specialties access to innovative medical devices. PRIA's deep expertise in early reimbursement strategy, clinical trial reimbursement programs, and market-leading patient access programs ultimately enhance the market success of ground-breaking medical device procedures. The investment will be used to develop new products and services, as well as expand its reach to additional medical device manufacturers accelerating PRIA's already impressive growth rate.
PRIA and Aldrich Capital Partners share a common vision around the importance of patient-centric services within the life sciences ecosystem.
"Over the last several years, we have set out to invest in an innovative patient services business serving the life sciences segment and after meeting the PRIA team, we were immediately impressed", saysRaz Zia, General Partner of Aldrich Capital. "The sector-specific expertise, use of technology and vision set PRIA apart from other vendors in the space and we are excited to leverage our resources, relationships and decades of experience in scaling businesses to help the PRIA team realize their full potential."
Informed by clinical data, PRIA partners with leading medical device manufactures and emerging medical device start-ups across the country and uses centralized, data-driven process workflows to deliver coordinated patient access programs that navigate the complexity of coding, coverage and payment for novel procedures. PRIA brings together patients, providers, medical device manufacturers and health insurers to ensure patients receive the best possible care for their situation.
About PRIA Healthcare
PRIA Healthcare Management is a patient access and reimbursement solutions company specializing in patient-based appeals of denied care. PRIA partners with medical device companies, healthcare providers, and healthcare organizations to ensure that patients are afforded appropriate coverage for the care that they are prescribed. Guided by the PRIA Patient Access Process our team of Patient Access Specialists have the experience and expertise to ensure that patient's rights to prescribed care will always be exercised to the fullest extent.
About Aldrich Capital Partners
Aldrich Capital Partners supports disruptive innovation in healthcare IT, fintech, and application software by investing equity capital in privately held growing companies. Founded by experienced investors and operators, who were also successful entrepreneurs, the founders of Aldrich Capital have been responsible for over$1 billionin technology investments since 1999. Both an operations partner and board-level advisor, ACP brings its portfolio companies strategic insight and access to a broad network of relationships built over 50 combined years of entrepreneurship and investing. Aldrich Capital Partners was founded in 2014 and has offices in Silicon Valley and theWashington, DCmetro area.
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FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE
Althea | March 26, 2022
Althea is proud to announce Tacoma, WA is the latest addition to its growing broadband coverage area, with installations and infrastructure investment focused in the Hilltop neighborhood. Founded in 2017, Althea’s mission is rooted in the belief that affordable broadband connectivity is a fundamental right for all people that strengthens communities, economic growth, educational opportunities, and healthcare access.
Althea is a distributed Internet Service Provider which works together with local communities and network operators to provide sustainable high speed and low cost broadband access. This is made possible by Althea’s unique technology, infrastructure, and routing protocol. Althea’s routing protocol allows the service and accounting layers of the ISP to be almost entirely automated, and maximizes bandwidth utilization (i.e. delivers lower latency and higher speeds than one would typically experience from a given network connection, when compared to a traditional ISP routing protocol). This technology negates the need for contracts, late fees, and other drawbacks of traditional internet delivery.
The mesh topology used to connect users also allows individuals to host infrastructure themselves, growing the network, and earning revenue share for doing so. This keeps value in the community, encourages community involvement, maintains low costs, and creates an ever more resilient network architecture.
Althea uses a unique pay-as-you-go payment model, making it easy for users to manage costs. Additionally, each user has access to the always-on free tier, guaranteeing they will have access to no-cost basic internet, regardless of their financial situation. Unlike traditional ISPs, Althea’s technology does not artificially throttle bandwidth or utilize speed tiers either, so users always get the maximum speed their equipment is capable of delivering. Althea users in Tacoma can expect speeds around 100 Mbps and pay, on average, around $25/month.
“Many people don’t have access to the internet, not because of availability, but costs and other barriers keep them from this vital resource.We believe internet access is a human right, which is why we provide an always-on, free tier of internet.”
Deborah Simpier, Althea CEO and co-founder
Hilltop, Tacoma was also one of the first proof-of-concept networks for Althea, partnering in 2020 with Tacoma Cooperative Network and the University of Washington to build and test community led LTE networks. Through this work in Open5GS, Althea developed KeyLTE, which is an embedded EPC inside an Althea home router, which provides flexibility to build and grow LTE/5G networks anywhere, quickly and affordably.
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FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE
NextGen Healthcare, Inc. | May 05, 2022
NextGen Healthcare, Inc. a leading provider of innovative, cloud-based healthcare technology solutions, announced a partnership with Circuit Clinical to bring clinical trial access to patients of Federally Qualified Health Centers through over 14,000 providers that utilize NextGen Healthcare solutions. Historically, these underserved communities have not had easy access to participate in transformative clinical research that can provide enhanced treatment options. Such research-as-care can also improve health outcomes and offers revenue generation for the clinics that participate. NextGen Healthcare’s innovative collaboration with Circuit Clinical, whose mission is to transform how patients find and choose clinical trials by bringing them to the doctors they know and trust, will improve the participation of diverse patients in clinical trials and provide greater health equity by facilitating access to the underserved.
“This partnership underscores NextGen Healthcare’s commitment to FQHCs and highlights our commitment to serving diverse patient populations. NextGen Healthcare’s technology is empowering providers to build healthier communities. Our work with Circuit Clinical is a milestone that provides real impact for our clients and their patients, and delivers on our pledge to facilitate better healthcare outcomes for all.”
Srinivas (Sri) Velamoor, chief growth and strategy officer at NextGen Healthcare
The collaboration contributes to the vision of the NextGen® Community Health Collaborative, a first-of-its-kind initiative announced late last year that offers data benchmarking, comparative analytics and reporting services, plus a forum for members to connect and share best practices to advance the mission of community health and health equity among underserved populations.
NextGen Healthcare-powered practices, in conjunction with Circuit Clinical, will now be able to offer clinical trial patient recruitment, referral and enrollment services, eliminating obstacles to such care. Furthermore, participation provides tangible benefits to participants, including extra care visits without co-pays, therapeutic improvement on a better regimen, and patient stipends.
“Our partnership with NextGen Healthcare will create a comprehensive solution for improving access to clinical trials for diverse communities across the country,” said Dr. Irfan Khan, founder and chief executive officer of Circuit Clinical. “Combining NextGen Healthcare’s comprehensive data insights and national reach with Circuit Clinical’s expert ecosystem offers pharmaceutical, biotech and vaccine companies a groundbreaking opportunity for accelerating therapeutic development and improving diversity in clinical trials.”
In April, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) issued updated guidance to provide recommendations to those developing medical products on the approach for developing a Race and Ethnicity Diversity Plan to help enroll adequate numbers of participants in clinical trials from underrepresented racial and ethnic populations. Adequate representation in clinical trials helps ensure that the data generated reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of the intended use population and may potentially identify safety or efficacy outcomes, the FDA said.
About NextGen Healthcare, Inc.
NextGen Healthcare, Inc. is a leading provider of innovative healthcare technology solutions. We are reimagining ambulatory healthcare with award-winning solutions that enable high-performing practices to create healthier communities. We partner with medical, behavioral and dental providers in their journey toward whole-person health and value-based care. Our highly integrated, intelligent and interoperable solutions go beyond EHR and Practice Management to increase clinical quality and productivity, enrich the patient experience and drive superior financial performance. We are on a quest to achieve better healthcare outcomes for all.
About Circuit Clinical
Circuit Clinical®, one of the largest integrated research organizations in the USA, is dedicated to empowering patients to choose clinical research as a care option. Circuit Clinical® is committed to transforming the way physicians and their patients find, choose, and participate in clinical research. The company delivers clinical research services and an award-winning patient engagement platform, trialjourney.com.
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HEALTH TECHNOLOGY
Titan Medical Inc. | May 04, 2022
Titan Medical Inc. a medical device company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative surgical technologies for single access robotic-assisted surgery announced receipt of a $2.6 million purchase order from Medtronic plc a global leader in healthcare technology.
The order covers the purchase of instruments and cameras that will be used in preclinical activities and the evaluation of Titan Medical as a potential manufacturing and supply partner for Medtronic.
“Medtronic has been a great partner for Titan since 2020 and we’re excited about this opportunity to further our work together. Our manufacturing team and capabilities continue to expand at our operations in Chapel Hill. With this order, we will produce instruments and cameras for Medtronic’s evaluation and testing in addition to producing instruments and cameras for our own single-access RAS platform, Enos.”
Paul Cataford, Interim President and CEO of Titan
For clarity, these agreements are between Medtronic and Titan Medical Inc. Titan Medical is not affiliated with Titan Spine, which Medtronic acquired in 2019.
About Titan Medical
Titan Medical Inc. a medical device company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with operations in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is focused on enhancing robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) using innovative technology through a single access point. The Enos™ robotic single access surgical system is being developed with an ergonomic focus to provide a surgical experience that imitates real-life movements that surgeons demand. The Enos system includes multi-articulating instruments designed to allow surgeons an increased range of motion in a confined space, with dexterity and the ability to exert the forces necessary to complete common surgical tasks. Titan intends to initially pursue gynecologic surgical indications with the Enos
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