opioid crisis

Heart monitor
By  Jessica Hagen 12:54 pm September 27, 2022
Calif.-based DyAnsys, a medical device company specializing in the autonomous nervous system, announced Primary Relief, its percutaneous electrical nerve stimulator (PENS) system, received approval by the FDA to treat postoperative pain following cardiac surgery.   According to DyAnsys, the PENS system can be used for up to three days following cardiac surgery and, in a clinical trial, reduced...
A group of providers or researchers looking at a data dashboard on a large TV on a wall
By  Emily Olsen 10:35 am February 3, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the high cost of drug overdoses in the U.S., with provisional data from the CDC estimating more than 100,000 overdose deaths in the year ending in April 2021.  The National Center for Health Statistics notes that's an increase of nearly 29% from the deaths recorded in the same period the year before. "We have failed to truly harness the power of technology in...
A close up shot of a person using a tablet
By  Emily Olsen 11:47 am September 16, 2021
A "refill" of Pear Therapeutics’ reSET-O digital prescription therapeutic for treating opioid use disorder is associated with high levels of abstinence and treatment retention as well as fewer hospital encounters, according to a study published in Hospital Practice.  Most of the study’s authors are current or former Pear employees.  TOP-LINE DATA Out of a group of 3,817 people who completed a 12-...
By  Sofia Noori and Dan Gebremedhin 10:59 am June 12, 2020
  About the authors: Dr. Sofia Noori (@sofianoori) was a member of the 2019 Flare Capital Partners Scholar Class and is currently a psychiatry resident at Yale School of Medicine. She is the curriculum lead for Innovation to Impact, a substance use entrepreneurship program funded by the National Institute for Drug Abuse. Dr. Dan Gebremedhin (@dangebremedhin) is a partner at Flare Capital Partners...
By  Dave Muoio 12:04 pm March 2, 2020
axialHealthcare, maker of a platform for managing substance use disorder (SUD) patients, has closed $15 million in Series C funding. The raise was headlined by the Nashville company's existing investors, a list that includes Oak HC/FT, .406 Ventures, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners and Sandbox Advantage Fund. WHAT THEY DO Founded in 2012, axialHealthcare's earlier iteration focused on...
By  Laura Lovett 04:03 pm February 10, 2020
Addiction focused digital health startup Boulder scored $10.5 million in Series A funding this morning. Investors included Tusk Ventures and Greycroft Partners.  The deal coincides with the news Boulder signed a value-based contract with Premera Blue Cross.  WHAT THEY DO  The startup connects patients seeking treatment for opioid use disorder to teams of addiction specialist, care coordinators...
By  Jonah Comstock 10:57 am February 11, 2019
Before we can solve the problems of patient engagement, we have to make sure we’re not the ones creating them. That was one takeaway of Geisinger CIO Karen Murphy’s remarks at the HIMSS Patient Engagement and Experience Summit in Orlando this morning. “We’re trying to innovate because […] patient engagement and patient experience is truly not ideal,” she said. “We have the system arranged so that...
By  Jonah Comstock 03:10 pm January 31, 2019
Duke University has received about $500,000 in grant money from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina to build an app designed to help doctors and patients work together to prevent opioid abuse. The investment is part of $2 million in grants distributed earlier this week by Blue Cross NC across five organizations tackling the opioid crisis in different ways, which in turn is part of a $10...
By  Laura Lovett 12:16 pm October 25, 2018
In one of the few and far between bipartisan bills to be passed during this administration, President Donald Trump signed into law yesterday a new package aimed to help tackle the opioid epidemic, called the Support for Patients and Communities Act.  The latest legislation expands opioid-specific telemedicine services, exempting the technology from certain requirements. It also modifies the...
By  Dave Muoio 04:04 pm October 19, 2018
WEconnect, maker of an app that helps addiction patients through their first year after substance abuse treatment, announced yesterday that it has closed a $6.05 million Series A round. Investors in the company include ServiceNow founder Fred Luddy, Buckingham Capital Management Chairman Larry Leeds Jr., Metalab founder Andrew Wilkinson, CEO of Venturehouse Mark Ein, and others. The app — which...