“It doesn’t seem real that I am actually typing this … yesterday morning my little brother Will and his wife, Courtney, died in a plane crash,” Shrauner’s older brother, Ben Shrauner, wrote in a post on Facebook. He described his brother as “the best mix of all my siblings,” with intelligence and “a loving heart.” “Courtney was a perfect match for him,” Ben Shrauner wrote. “Smart, beautiful, witty, charismatic, and always fun to be around. Two really special people that are gone way too soon. Will & Courtney, I love you. Please keep the Shrauner’s, Haviland’s, and families of the two pilots in your thoughts.” Shrauner and Haviland studied medicine at Cornell University and received their medical degrees from Weill Cornell Medicine in 2016, records show. The couple had gotten engaged just before Match Day in 2016, when medical school graduates learn where they’ve been accepted to residencies, according to an article Weill posted back then on its website. Haviland was offered a pediatric residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Weill said, while Shrauner landed a residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for internal medicine. “It’s nice to have a face on the future,” Haviland said in the article. “It’s starting to feel real. It’s going to be hard to leave here.” “They were just a beautiful couple,” said the Rev. Matthew Mitchell, a pastor at the Church of the Servant in Oklahoma City who works closely with Shrauner’s father, Randy, a Methodist minister. “They loved medicine, they loved each other, and they loved life. They loved helping people experience the best of their lives.” Mitchell said Shrauner discovered a passion for medicine at an early age. “Will was headed that direction for a long time — that was his path,” he said. He added that Haviland was pregnant with their second child. Shrauner’s brother said the couple’s son was not traveling with them and was unharmed. Shrauner grew up in Kansas and Oklahoma with two brothers and a sister, and went to Oklahoma State University as an undergraduate. Haviland is a Connecticut native who graduated from Brown University in 2010 with a bachelor of science degree with concentrations in neuroscience and literary arts, a school spokesperson said Friday. Haviland recently concluded a medical simulation fellowship at MGH and had begun a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine, according to Dr. Ron Kleinman, physician-in-chief at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, who mourned both young doctors in a statement Friday. Haviland was “universally loved by her colleagues and patients and lived a life full of meaning,” Kleinman said. “Her bright smile and the twinkle in her eye left an indelible mark on all who met her, as did her boundless kindness and compassion.” Shrauner was a cardiology fellow at Boston Medical Center. According to his LinkedIn page, he began a residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2016. Dr. Joel Katz, director of the Brigham’s Internal Medicine Residency Program, on Friday described Haviland and Shrauner as “bright lights.” “Dr. Will Shrauner, who trained at the Brigham from 2016-2020, was an exceptional and committed colleague,” Katz said in a statement. “We are deeply saddened by this tragic loss, and our hearts go out to their families, friends and colleagues during this incredibly heartbreaking time.” In a separate statement Friday, Boston Medical Center offered condolences. “We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of one of our cardiology fellows, Dr. Will Shrauner, and his wife, Dr. Courtney Haviland,” the hospital said. “Will, a second year fellow at Boston Medical Center, was well known as an outstanding educator, physician, colleague and friend to many.” Records show the couple married in June 2017 in Boston and had purchased a home in the Seaport last year. The crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. The Cessna took off from Robertson Airport outside Hartford just before 10 a.m. on a flight headed to Dare County Regional Airport in Manteo, N.C., the Federal Aviation Administration said. Authorities said there appeared to be a mechanical failure during takeoff. The jet hit the ground a short distance from the runway and crashed into a building at Trumpf Inc., a manufacturer. The impact set off chemical fires inside the building. Two employees suffered minor injuries, officials have said. Christina Prignano of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Material from the Associated Press also was used. Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe. John R. Ellement can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe. Andrew Brinker can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @andrewnbrinker. Nick Stoico can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @NickStoico. The post Two Boston doctors killed in Conn. plane crash recently appeared on Medical Update News.
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On Friday, some Silicon Valley technology companies began speaking out, too. Lyft’s chief executive, Logan Green, said the company would pay the legal costs of any drivers who faced lawsuits under the law. “TX SB8 threatens to punish drivers for getting people where they need to go — especially women exercising their right to choose,” he wrote on Twitter. Uber’s chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, said on Twitter that his company would also cover its drivers’ legal expenses. And Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, issued a statement. “The effective ban on abortions in Texas not only infringes on women’s rights to reproductive health care, but it puts their health and safety at greater risk,” he said. “We are deeply concerned about how this law will impact our employees in the state.” A couple executives tried to find a middle ground, cheering on democracy and opposing discrimination while remaining silent on the Texas law. Mr. Musk, who said he has moved to Texas and was investing a lot in the state through Tesla and SpaceX, was among them. “In general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness,” he wrote on Twitter in response to Mr. Abbott’s comments. “That said, I would prefer to stay out of politics.” Hewlett Packard Enterprise, based in Houston, declined to comment on the ban, but said the company “encourages our team members to engage in the political process where they live and work and make their voices heard through advocacy and at the voting booth.” A spokesman for the company added that its medical plan allowed employees to seek abortions out of state, and would pay for lodging for such a trip. The post Companies Stay Quiet on Texas’ New Abortion Law recently appeared on Medical Update News.
Sponsored by VariluxIntroducing the VariluxⓇ ChallengeYou’re faced with a variety of progressive lenses to recommend to your patients, but they are not created equal. When Eyecare Professionals insisted on Varilux lenses with every presbyopic patient for 30 days, not only did they provide sharp, seamless vision so that their patients could truly see no limits, but they also created trust, loyalty and increased profitability. See for yourself and take the Varilux Challenge today at VariluxChallenge.com. #VariluxChallenge #InsistOnVarilux The post Black EyeCare Perspective Will Host Its Second Annual IMPACT HBCU recently appeared on Medical Update News.
Over the past 18 months, the COVID pandemic has made its impact on the industry and clinical trials, transforming the concept of decentralized clinical trials (DCTs). While DCTs were a part of the industry prior to the pandemic, the need for remote options has accelerated acceptance of these types of trials.
With a DCT, the trial is designed around the patient. It may include elements such as data being collected away from the trial site through wearables or sensors, or a video or home visit replacing a site visit. This dramatically decreases the time and commitment needed for the patient to participate in clinical research, ultimately allowing more people to participate due to a lower barrier to access. Prior to the pandemic DCT uptake was slow but over the past year and a half this type of trial has made significant headway, revolutionizing the industry. Parexel, a global clinical research organization, was heavily involved with DCTs before the pandemic and is currently working on more than 160 DCTs. Contract Pharma spoke with Rosamund Round, leader of Parexel’s Patient Innovation Center, about this clinical trial transformation, additional challenges, and advancements being made with DCTs. Contract Pharma: How has the industry transformed over the last 18 months? Rosamund Round: Following the success of remote operations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, adoption of DCTs has occurred at an incredible rate and has been fundamental to maintaining patient safety, trial continuity and data quality throughout the pandemic. What had been viewed largely as an innovation just a short time ago is now mainstream and will continue long after the COVID pandemic ends. Parexel now includes DCT in 80% of phase II/III and 100% of phase IV proposals. We see DCT as the centerpiece of a new operating model and how we can best support patients in or near their home to improve trial access and experiences. Members of our Parexel Patient Advisory Council tell us that for many, DCTs have reduced the burden of trial participation. Sites are comfortable using telemedicine, which has become standard practice to communicate effectively with patients. Regulators have also swiftly evolved to provide clear guidance on DCTs. CP: What considerations have gone into making this transformation possible? RR: The pandemic forced the industry to innovate. Often slow to deviate from traditional approaches, COVID accelerated the adoption of DCTs. At Parexel, we swiftly triaged all ongoing trials and converted them to DCTs as needed. We then created a clear process for incorporating DCTs into new trials, leveraging the expertise of our Patient Innovation Center and our large network of SMEs across the organization. This structure, along with regulatory expertise, patient focus, and strong relationships with a highly curated core group of vendor partners, enabled us to scale quickly. Parexel has been involved with DCTs since the first trial of its kind in 2011, so we fortunately had a wealth of experience to draw upon. CP: What are the additional challenges with DCTs and how can they be overcome? RR: Some of the main challenges with DCTs are:
CP: In what areas do you see advancements with DCTs RR: In addition to the areas addressed in the last question, technology solutions are becoming more refined and in line with experience. A vast array of sensors are becoming available and, though adoption is currently relatively low, this is an area that holds great promise in reducing patient burden. The pandemic has highlighted disparities in research access and placed a strong focus on diversity in clinical trials and research presenting new opportunities to educate the public about clinical trials and their role in the development of new medications and treatments. Through our Discussions on Diversity research, a combination of qualitative and quantitative data sourced from respondents around the world, we identified critical barriers to achieving diversity in clinical trials while offering specific solutions to help ensure more equitable access for Black, Latinx, Asian and Indigenous communities. Ensuring that trial populations mirror those who will take the medication, is an important focus for the industry. We see greater interest in methods for improving clinical trial participation for patients from underrepresented communities. Sometimes the disparity is socioeconomic in which case we can improve access by provisioning devices or data plans to reduce the practical and financial burden. We have also heard from members of the transgender community that overnight hospital stays can raise concerns or issues with how they may be treated by staff or other patients. With the ability to participate from home, this could be alleviated. Finally, supporting participants in their neighborhood and not necessarily in their home is a major advancement. Some people do not feel comfortable having medical professionals in their house for a variety of reasons. As an industry, we need to continue to look for ways to increase patient options that further enhance their access and experiences. When deployed thoughtfully, in partnership with both patients and sites, the full potential of DCTs can truly be realized. If the past year is anything to go by, I can’t wait to see where we are this time in 2022. Rosamund Round leads Parexel’s Patient Innovation Center and is focused on improving research access and experiences for patients and caregivers. This includes leadership of decentralized clinical trials services, activities to improve diversity in clinical research, and creation of other tools and services that reduce practical, financial and geographical barriers to participation in clinical trials. She has more than 15 years of leadership experience in patient engagement and innovation roles. The post Clinical Trials Are Transforming Right Before Our Eyes recently appeared on Medical Update News. US Coronavirus: Three doses of Covid-19 vaccine are likely needed for full protection Fauci says9/3/2021
He cited two Israeli-based studies that showed a decrease in infections among people who got a third or booster shot.
There was good reason to believe that a third dose “will actually be durable, and if it is durable, then you’re going to have very likely a three-dose regimen being the routine regimen,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a briefing Thursday.
It’s ultimately up to the US Food and Drug Administration to decide whether Americans should get three doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, Fauci said. The agency is considering the question later this month after Moderna and Pfizer both applied for FDA authorization for a third dose either six months or eight months after getting the second dose.
The recommendation for the booster doses will likely lead to availability for a broad portion of the population, and doses could begin rolling out as early as the week of September 20, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said Thursday.
“At some point down the line, we may have a way of telling who needs an extra shot, and who doesn’t,” Murthy said on a call hosted by US Health and Human Services’ Covid-19 Community Corps. “Right now, we don’t have that indicator, which is why we’re recommending that not only people get vaccinated across the board — regardless of whether they were infected in the past or not — but also when it comes to getting these extra doses to sustain and extend your protection, that we do that broadly,” he said.
Additional doses were granted emergency use authorization by the FDA this month for those who are immunocompromised.
Even though the doses are not yet available to the public, local health departments nationwide have seen a recent surge in calls from people wanting to make appointments, according to the National Association of County and City Health Departments.
But the emphasis remains on increasing vaccination rates among the US population to help overcome the pandemic. Approximately 52.7% of the total US population are fully vaccinated. But of the 10 states with the worst Covid-19 case rates over the past week, seven of them also had among the 10 best vaccination rates, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Schools and universities enact safety measuresThe risk of Covid-19 spread at schools and campuses remains critical, and recent research demonstrates how unmasked behavior among the unvaccinated can lead to outbreaks.
A study published Thursday described a Covid-19 outbreak among more than 150 students at a Chicago university after many unvaccinated students traveled during spring break, despite university policies that advised against it.
To prevent similar outbreaks, some universities have instituted mandates to attend classes in-person. Virginia Tech disenrolled 134 students for failing to comply with the university’s requirement that students be fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and “did not submit vaccination documentation or receive a medical or religious exemption,” according to a statement on Monday.
The University of Virginia has also disenrolled more than 200 students for failing to comply with their vaccine mandate, according to a statement last month.
Vaccinations in teens and adults can not only stave off infections at schools but can also protect children under 12 who are ineligible for the vaccine.
“Communities with high vaccination coverage are seeing lower pediatric cases and hospitalizations,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. Along with vaccinations, mask-wearing is also beneficial to curbing Covid-19 spread, evidence shows. The state of New York will require weekly Covid-19 testing for teachers and other school employees, with an opt-out for those who are vaccinated, and will continue their mask mandate for everybody in a school building, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Thursday.
In Florida, districts will be able to institute mask mandates following a judge signing a written order Thursday that ruled against Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on such mandates in schools. DeSantis said he will appeal.
New Mu variant is under observationA new coronavirus variant designated as Mu by the World Health Organization is being monitored as a “variant of interest,” but federal health officials say they don’t consider it immediately dangerous. On Tuesday, WHO designated the B.1.621 variant as a “variant of interest” because it carries mutations that could help it partially evade vaccines and treatments such as monoclonal antibodies. WHO named it Mu under its system to designate important variants using the Greek alphabet. “This variant has a constellation of mutations that suggests that it would evade certain antibodies,” Fauci said Thursday of Mu. “Not only monoclonal antibodies, but vaccine and convalescent serum-induced antibodies. But there isn’t a lot of clinical data to suggest that — it is mostly laboratory, in vitro, data. “Not to downplay it — we take it very seriously. But remember, even when you have variants that do diminish somewhat the efficacy of vaccines, the vaccines still are quite effective against variants of that type. Bottom line, we’re paying attention to it. We take everything like that seriously. But we don’t consider it an immediate threat right now,” he said. The Delta variant still accounts for more than 99% of Covid-19 cases diagnosed and sequenced in the US, Walensky said Thursday, while Mu is rare. “We are watching it carefully,” she said. CNN’s Maggie Fox, Lauren Mascarenhas, Jacqueline Howard, Deidre McPhillips, Naomi Thomas, Elizabeth Stuart, Rob Frehse, Hannah Sarisohn, Sara Weisfeldt and Leyla Santiago contributed to this report. The post US Coronavirus: Three doses of Covid-19 vaccine are likely needed for full protection, Fauci says recently appeared on Medical Update News. Visit the News Hub Leading more than $1 billion in construction projects, among other duties Washington University Melissa Rockwell-Hopkins, whose position has her overseeing more than $1 billion in construction projects at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named the school’s associate vice chancellor for operations & facilities management. Her promotion from assistant vice chancellor was announced by Richard Stanton, vice chancellor for medical finance and administration at the School of Medicine. The appointment was effective Sept. 1. “Melissa has a rare combination of organizational and people skills that have made her a joy to work with,” Stanton said. “She has adapted to the sometimes chaotic rhythm and pace of an academic medical center while driving a more strategic approach to our management of space and services in support of our key research, training and clinical missions. She has used her excellent communication skills to work with strong-willed leaders in the medical school, the university and the campus and to approach every challenge as a shared problem-solving exercise. We would not be where we are today without her team and her leadership in attracting and retaining them.” Rockwell-Hopkins, also an associate dean for operations and facilities at the school, provides strategic direction for and manages facilities operations, protective services, capital projects, campus planning, district transportation planning, and auxiliary services. She also leads business operations, district transportation planning, sustainability, critical facilities, lactation programs, and education and support space and services. In addition to managing 534 employees, Hopkins is responsible for operating 61 buildings scattered over 18 city blocks, and an annual department budget of $54 million. Since she joined the School of Medicine in 2013, Rockwell-Hopkins has significantly advanced the medical school’s facilities and infrastructure. From 2013 to 2020, she successfully oversaw the completion of 1,300 capital planning and construction projects valued at more than $800 million. In fiscal year 2021, Hopkins led an additional $251.4 million in projects; and she, with her team, delivered them all on time and $18.1 million below budget. She currently is leading more than $1 billion in construction projects, including a nine-story, 659,000-square-foot outpatient cancer facility, an 11-story, 609,000-square-foot neuroscience research building; and a five-story, 191,000-square-foot vertical expansion of the Steven & Susan Lipstein BJC Institute of Health building. Rockwell-Hopkins was responsible for the development of the Campus Sustainability Program, the Lactation Program, the Feminine Products Distribution Program, and gender-neutral restrooms, and manages these programs. “We have a large job and a tremendous responsibility as steward leaders,” Rockwell-Hopkins said. “However, we have achieved growth and success from working together in a team-based operation to help others carry out their missions in clinical care, teaching and research. We serve the physical place, but our strategy is focused on people. The dean and department leaders embraced our planning and service models and served as strong, collaborative leaders, as well as partners, and I am grateful to be part of this team.” Before joining Washington University, Rockwell-Hopkins served in a variety of positions, including as executive director of facilities management at the University of Houston; associate vice president of facilities operations and development at The Ohio State University in Columbus; and regional operations and facilities manager for CH2M HILL, an international engineering consulting firm headquartered near Denver. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 1995 in law and justice from Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Wash. She received a master’s degree in nonprofit management in 2017 and a master’s degree in human resources management in 2020, both from Washington University. She earned “Leading Organizations and Change” certification from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., in 2019; “Women in Leadership” certification from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., in 2018; and a graduate certificate in public health and homeland security from Missouri State University in Springfield, Mo., in 2017. In addition, Rockwell-Hopkins holds an active Society for Human Resource Management Senior Certified Professional certification, renewed in 2021, and certification as a Facilities Management Professional from the International Facility Management Association. The post Rockwell-Hopkins named associate vice chancellor for operations, facilities – Washington University School of Medicine i… recently appeared on Medical Update News. by: By Carrie Ghose | Columbus Business First Posted: COLUMBUS, Ohio (COLUMBUS BUSINESS FIRST)–Twelve Bricker & Eckler LLP attorneys, including the firm’s healthcare and employment law practice leaders, have left to open the Columbus office for a national firm. Epstein Becker & Green P.C.’s first Ohio office is located at 375 N. Front St. in the Arena District. With 16 offices nationwide, the firm has an administrative office in New York City. “Make no mistake, Bricker & Eckler remains strong and very well-equipped to provide our clients with excellent personal service and outstanding value,” Managing Partner Jim Flynn said in a firmwide memo sent Thursday and provided to Columbus Business First. Flynn said he would return to his role leading the healthcare practice in addition to his managing partner duties. Columbus-based Bricker is Central Ohio’s third-largest law firm by a number of local attorneys. “This event is part of a national trend of expansions of large law firms, business consolidation, and the rapid evolution of the health care industry,” Flynn said in the memo. “That Epstein targeted these partners is evidence of the reputation of Bricker attorneys and the high quality of legal services our firm provides.” Epstein wanted to enter Ohio because it’s the Midwest’s fastest-growing market, Chairman Mark Lutes said in an announcement Thursday on the firm’s website. Columbus joins Chicago and Detroit offices. “We’re thrilled to add depth and breadth in our three areas of focus with a group held in such high regard in the market,” Lutes said. “Through this team of noted practitioners, we have an opportunity to problem-solve for healthcare clients, and a range of employers with workforce issues, in the region’s strong and diversified economy.” The three co-leaders of the office are healthcare partners Jennifer Nelson Carney and Stephen Kleinman, and James Petrie, partner for the employment law practice. Nelson Carney had been chairwoman of Bricker’s healthcare industry group. She has 17 years of experience on business and regulatory issues for hospitals, health systems, and other clinical providers. She’s also a past Columbus Business First 40 Under 40 winner. Petrie was chairman of the employment and labor law group at Bricker. His three decades of experience focus on employment-related disputes, compliance training and consulting to employers in several industries. Kleinman has 25 years of experience focused on medical staffing and physician leadership. “EBG’s capabilities, size, and depth and breadth in our key practice areas are a perfect fit for our clients,” Kleinman said in the release. “The chance to join EBG’s exceptional team of health care and labor and employment attorneys provides a wonderful opportunity to bring additional resources to our client base,” Petrie said. Other attorneys joining “to date,” according to the announcement, and their practice areas are:
Eight are healthcare specialists, Flynn’s memo said. “While we are sad for them to leave, we wish the best for our dear friends and former partners as they transition to a new opportunity,” he said. For more business headlines, go to ColumbusBusinessFirst.com. The post Bricker & Eckler attorneys leave to start office for national firm recently appeared on Medical Update News.
Free medical, dental, and vision care Sept. 18-19 Remote Area Medical- RAM – a major nonprofit provider of pop-up clinics delivering free, quality dental, vision and medical care to underserved and uninsured individuals—will return to Jonesville, Virginia, on Sept. 18-19, 2021 to provide free care. All RAM services are free, and no ID is required. Free dental, vision, and medical services will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis. “Remote Area Medical is glad to be able to help bring free services to those in need in the Jonesville community, and we couldn’t provide this important care without our wonderful volunteers,” said RAM CEO Jeff Eastman. “This has been a challenging time, and access to healthcare is more important than ever before. Thank you to all the volunteers and community members who are coming together to help those in need.” Services available at the clinic will include dental cleanings, dental fillings, dental extractions, dental x-rays, eye exams, glaucoma testing, eyeglass prescriptions, eyeglasses made on-site, chest x-rays, women’s health exams, and general medical exams. “Even with the recent reopening of the Lee County Community Hospital, many residents do not have access to basic medical, dental or eyecare, due to a combination of factors, like cost, lack of transportation, or the lack of providers in our area,” said Joe Faulkinbury, member of the RAM Community Host Group. “As a local pastor, I have seen the difference that free dental care or a free pair of glasses makes in a person’s life. Lee County’s Remote Area Medical Clinic can help to fill this gap, bringing better health and wellbeing to our community.” The 2-day clinic, in collaboration with members of the local community, will be held at Lee High School, located at 200 General Lane in Jonesville, Virginia. Due to time constraints, patients should be prepared to choose between DENTAL and VISION services. Free medical services are offered in addition to dental or vision services to every patient attending the clinic. The patient parking lot will open no later than 12:01 am, Saturday, September 18, and remain open. As patients arrive at the parking lot, they will be provided with additional information regarding clinic opening processes and next steps. Patients should be prepared with their own food, water, medicines, and clothing when arriving early. Bathrooms will be provided. Clinic doors open at 6 am on Saturday, September 18. This process will repeat on Sunday, September 19. RAM encourages everyone who would like services, especially dental services, to arrive as early as possible. In some situations, such as inclement weather, volunteer cancellations, or other circumstances outside of RAM’s control, the parking lot may open earlier or a smaller number of patients served. *Clinic closing time may vary based on each service area’s daily capacity. Please check RAM’s clinic FAQ page for more information. In response to COVID-19, RAM has incorporated and developed new disinfecting and safety processes. All patients will be required to wear a face covering and must undergo a COVID-19 screening before entering the clinic. Guests and family members of patients, including pets, will not be allowed to enter the building. New airflow, disinfecting processes, and capacity limitations have also been put in place to ensure the safety of patients, staff, and volunteers. Since RAM’s founding in 1985, more than 863,000 individuals have received free services. RAM is still in need of vision providers and general support volunteers for the parking lot. If you are interested in volunteering at this event, please email RAM’s Volunteer Manager Mary Brown at [email protected]. For more information about volunteering at a RAM pop-up medical clinic in the future or to donate, visit www.ramusa.org or call 865-579-1530. If you are media and would like an interview or to attend the clinic, please reach out to Mindy Cooper at [email protected]. The post RAM free clinic returning to Jonesville, Virginia – Harlan Enterprise recently appeared on Medical Update News. ATLANTA — Georgia currently has the highest number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 since the pandemic began. The Georgia Department of Health reported Thursday that 5,784 patients are hospitalized and battling the virus across the state. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] The previous high was 5,700 cases on Jan. 13. Nearly 33% of patients who are hospitalized statewide are COVID-19 patients, but that number is much higher in some regions. TRENDING STORIES: In far southeast Georgia, nearly 60% of hospitalized patients are COVID-19 patients. In far north Georgia, 50% of patients in the hospital have the coronavirus. The innermost parts of metro Atlanta are the only areas of the state with less than 30% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Just over 94% of intensive care unit beds in Georgia are occupied. Of Georgia’s 14 regions, only two regions have ICUs that are below 90% capacity. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter] According to Wellstar Health System, which runs 12 hospital facilities in metro Atlanta, of the 734 patients they are treating, only 57 of them are vaccinated. Of the 163 patients in the ICU, 155 are unvaccinated. Of the 122 patients on ventilators, 116 are unvaccinated. There were 126 new COVID-19 deaths reported across the state on Wednesday. ©2021 Cox Media Group The post Georgia breaks record for number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 – WSB-TV Channel 2 recently appeared on Medical Update News. TEL-AVIV, Israel, Sept. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — A new clinical study reveals the positive effect of a nutritional supplementation on growth and body composition in short and lean preadolescent boys aged 10 years old and up. The new nutritional formula, “Grow Daily Boys 10+” protein drink powder, has been shown to support growth and development in boys 10 and older. It was developed by Nutritional Growth Solutions, Ltd. (NGS) (ASX: NGS). The 12-month, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was published in the August issue of the peer-reviewed medical journal Acta Paediatrica 2021. The multi-center study was carried out by the Institute for Endocrinology of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel and two other co-research centers, both in Israel. The intervention included two stages: Stage 1 (months 0-6), a double-blinded intervention with nutritional formula or placebo (1:1), and Stage 2 (months 6-12), an open-label extension with the nutritional formula for all the participants. 160 lean and short boys participated in the study. “Intervention with a multi-nutrient, protein-rich formula was effective at increasing weight and body mass index (BMI), mostly from fat-free-mass and muscle mass, in short and lean prepubertal male adolescents,” explains lead researcher Michal Yackobovitch-Gavan, PhD, Dietitian and Researcher for Schneider Children’s Medical Center. “It also prevented the expected slowdown in height growth in children older than 11.4 years. This is a key trial that evaluated the importance of nutrition for pre-adolescents and is certain to inspire more research.” Data on nutritional interventions in lean, healthy children with short stature living in developed countries are sparse. Also, unlike with earlier stages in childhood, few studies have attempted to establish improved growth through nutritional interventions in later stages of childhood or adolescence. The new nutritional supplementation powder formula contains about 25% of the recommended dietary reference intake for calories (the total daily amount was based on target nutritional needs for weight and height in the 50th percentile for age and gender, and low activity level), 18g of whey protein, and added vitamins and minerals. The placebo was comprised of a powder that was relatively low in energy and protein, and without added vitamins and minerals. The results indicate that consumers of Grow Daily Boys 10+ gained significantly more in weight, BMI, fat-free mass, and muscle mass than did the placebo group. Positive dose-response correlations were found between consumption of the formula and changes in the outcome parameters examined, including height. “Children who consumed at least half of the recommended doses of the nutritional supplement formula improved their intake of the macro- and micronutrients—including protein, calcium, zinc and iron—that are vital to growth,” adds Yackobovitch-Gavan. “Grow Daily Boys 10+ ticks all the right boxes when it comes to growth and development of pre-adolescents,” notes Liron Fendell, CEO and Managing Director of NGS. “It was developed and tested by pediatricians, and clinically shown to help pre-teens and teens increase muscle mass. School lunch and fast food are part of our kids’ menu, so it is important to balance their diet and fill the gap with vital nutrients.” Grow Daily Boys 10+ protein drink contains all the essential micronutrients, such as calcium and iron, with high protein for normal growth in pre-teens. It supports growth and development in boys aged 10 and older. Low in sugar, it’s available in three flavors, Chocolate, Vanilla, and Plain (a neutral base). Grow Daily Boys 10+ Plain is versatile, crafted to be added to milkshakes, fruit smoothies, yogurt, or other delicious recipes. About Nutritional Growth Solutions: Nutritional Growth Solutions, Ltd., is a global nutritional health company focused on the well-being of children. NGS develops, produces, and markets clinically tested nutritional supplement formulas for children based on 20 years of medical research into pediatric nutrition at Schneider Children’s Medical Centre, Israel’s largest pediatric hospital. SOURCE Nutritional Growth Solutions, Ltd. Related LinksThe post Study Shows Positive Benefit of Grow Daily Boys 10+ recently appeared on Medical Update News. Los Angeles: Comedian Joe Rogan, whose podcast racks up millions of listens but who has faced criticism for suggesting young people need not get vaccinated against Covid-19, said Wednesday he had tested positive for the virus. In a post on Instagram, Rogan said he was tested after showing mild symptoms following a trip to Florida, which is currently battling surging cases of the highly infectious Delta variant. He said he had taken a number of drugs to treat the virus, including antiparasitic medicine ivermectin, demand for which has surged in the United States despite scant evidence of its effectiveness against Covid. “A wonderful heartfelt thank you to modern medicine for pulling me out of this so quickly and easily,” Rogan said. Rogan’s podcast is one of the world’s most popular, often featuring fellow comedians as well as academics, journalists and athletes discussing everything from fitness to UFOs and psychedelic drugs. He signed a reported $100 million deal with Spotify last year, giving the music streaming giant exclusive rights to his show. But the podcast has long drawn criticism for giving a platform to conspiracy theories and disinformation, with Rogan publicly rebuked by the White House this year for suggesting young people do not need to receive Covid jabs. “If you’re like 21 years old and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go, ‘No,'” he said. “If you’re a healthy person and you’re exercising all the time and you’re young and you’re eating well, I don’t think you need to worry about this.” Rogan has not stated publicly whether he received a Covid vaccine. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) The post Controversial “Vaccine Sceptic” US Podcaster Joe Rogan Has Covid recently appeared on Medical Update News. Elizabeth Crais, PhD, Speech and Hearing Sciences, received her first kidney transplant in 2004 from colleague, Linda Watson. After 17 years of excellent health and wellness, however, Dr. Crais needed a second transplant, this time for both a kidney and a liver. On May 26 at UNC, Dr. Elizabeth Crais received a dual kidney-liver transplant from a deceased donor and is very grateful for the gift of life once again. The UNC Transplant Center personnel have supported her throughout the process and she sends her thanks to these fine professionals. Building on these experiences, Dr, Crais with a colleague and a donor, Carol Offen have written a book about the kidney donation process entitled, The Insider’s Guide to Living Kidney Donation: Everything You Need to Know If You Give (or Get) the Greatest Gift. The book provides all the information anyone needs to make an informed decision about this life-changing act. The Insider’s Guide to Living Kidney Donation offers easily accessible material that demystifies the live-donation process, including
The Insider’s Guide to Living Kidney Donation also features thought-provoking first-person stories of the remarkable process of donation/transplantation, including the authors’ own candid, moving accounts as a donor and a recipient. The post UNC Medical School Professor Has Second Transplant recently appeared on Medical Update News. Welcome back to TechCrunch’s continuing coverage of Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day! This is Day Two. If you haven’t caught up yet on what happened during the first day, you can read our recap of all the presenting companies here, our favorites from that first set here, and a quick podcast about all of the above. Today we’re back in the action, listening to a few hundred rapid-fire pitches throughout the day. What follows are short overviews of each company based on their one-minute pitch. Elsewhere on the site we’ll soon have our Day Two favorites for you to enjoy, so be on the lookout for that! Day Two companiesIntellect: A mental healthcare service that provides teletherapy for employers in Asia. They’ve also got a free consumer app at the top of the funnel that has seen 2.5 million users since launching a year ago. The company says it’s grown to $500,000 ARR in the last six months. MazumaGo: Banking and electronics payment service for construction companies. MazumaGo aims to help this antiquated industry move off of traditional banking and into a unified ledger. The banking infrastructure product puts credit and debit cards into customer hands, starting in the United States. Pandai: Pandai is helping kids in elementary/high school in Southeast Asia boost their grades with a learning app that replaces take-home workbooks. With more than 1,600 paying subscribers using the app for almost an hour a day, Pandai may be on its way to helping thousands more get the A. Locale: Think that DoorDash doesn’t have enough food options? Locale is betting that some folks want more options and are willing to pay for that access. The startup wants to help restaurants sell farther from their operations, and its model is showing some early traction. The company’s revenue (GMV, perhaps) scaled from $145,500 in July to $192,000 in August. The startup claims 70% retention month to month and an average order of just over $100. Arrow: Arrow is building one-click-checkout-payment infrastructure for online sellers in Southeast Asia aiming to boost social commerce among small sellers. The team behind Arrow helped launch GrabPay and has already scaled GMV at the startup to $150,000. Talentdrop: A hiring marketplace where open jobs are posted with “bounties.” If someone you refer is ultimately hired and stays a while, you get the bounty. The company says that $1 million in bounties have been posted to the site thus far. Infina: A retail investing app aiming to be the Robinhood of Vietnam. Since launch in January, Infina has reached over $2.5 million in assets under management. Its first focus was breaking open mutual funds and fixed-income products, and now it wants to head into stocks and crypto for its younger user base. BlackOakTV: Black millennials are bigger consumers of streaming content than other demographics, but comparatively little of that content is made with them in mind. Black Oak TV is a subscription streaming service by and for Black creators and stars — could the next Dave Chappelle or Issa Rae come from here instead of YouTube or TikTok? HEO Robotics: This startup wants to leverage unused time on existing satellites that monitor the planet to find stuff in space. Not trash, like the startup that presented yesterday that wants to clean up space around Earth, but things like other satellites. HEO says that it is selling to the Australian government, and executed a live in-orbit demo during Y Combinator. There are going to be many more satellites in space over time, the company says, which could boost demand for its service. Gallery : Gallery is building a platform to help developers quickly create self-stage staging environments, saving time and energy. The founding team has experience from Facebook and Goldman Sachs and hopes to tackle what it believes is a $5 billion market for mid-sized engineering teams alone. Adra: AI to help dentists find cavities they might otherwise miss. It can also convert fuzzy X-rays into something a bit easier for patients to understand. Currently in a pilot with 20 dentists. Tantl: Low-code APIs are hot, and a team of Google and Apple engineers are building Tantl to make it speedy, too. Tantl enables developers to build faster internal workflows — for $20 bucks a seat. Think skipping repetitive code, easy authentication and customer user interfaces. The SaaS business launched last week and has onboarded three customers. Titipku: A huge amount of people in Indonesia want to do their local shopping online like so many of us already do, and Titipku is ready to make it happen. They’re “Instacart for Indonesia” and that’s that. Sales are already popping and the model is proven, so let’s just offer a preemptive congratulations on their success. Flok: Flok is building what it describes as an Airbnb for corporate offsites. That means the startup is helping connect companies looking to host some IRL activities with a location that will be suitable. In a remote-first area, heading into a remote-friendly future, companies may spend more time and money bringing staff together sporadically. Flok wants to help those events come together. Per the startup, it takes around 15% of bookings and has booked 45 events so far worth around $200,000 in revenue. Spark Studio: The team at Spark Studio is building a hub for online extracurricular courses designed for kids, reflecting the COVID-era changes to how kids learn on the web. The team is particularly focused on music, art and communication skills, hoping to streamline the wide offerings of the internet into a platform where high-quality, vetted content lives. BrightReps: A no-code tool meant to help you shift your company’s customer response workflows from flowcharts/spreadsheets into something more easily updated and iterated upon. Founder Brittani Dunlap says the company is profitable with $740,000 in ARR. Verihubs: Indonesia has a thriving fintech sector, with hundreds of startups and the well-known unicorn Gojek. Verihubs is launching a data and verification platform for regional fintechs to do stuff like authenticate customer identities and access financial data. The service has landed 45 customers, fueling $41,000 in monthly revenue. Aleph: A lot of banks and fintech companies want to use the latest financial models but also prefer to rely on the good old spreadsheet. Aleph allows ordinary spreadsheets in Excel or Google Sheets to have specialized financial tools built right in and always up to date. The best of both worlds, if you really love spreadsheets and financial models! Sirka: Noom is now so big that startups are looking to take its model to new markets. Sirka is one such company, with a focus on the Southeast Asian region. The startup wants to replicate Noom’s science-first approach to weight control, noting that there are 150 million overweight or obese folks in the SEA area. The startup also noted that its users lose 4% of their weight on average. Is that a lot? For me (Alex) at around 160 pounds, that would be around 6.4 pounds. Watu: Watu wants to help retailers close the sale they almost made. The platform is building a shopping workflow that lives inside emails and allows shoppers to make a purchase without getting tossed back to the mobile web. Stownest: On-demand, full-service storage spaces for India. They pack up your stuff, store it and bring it back when you need it. The company says it’s helped over 12,000 customers so far, handling over 20,000 pickups/deliveries. Comet Health: A digital physical therapy platform that combines telehealth with video-based curriculum. Comet Health is launching with a focus on pelvic floor physical therapy and already ran a proof-of-concept pilot in Virginia. Lemonade Finance: Africa’s banking system is evolving quickly, as we’ve seen from other startups in this batch. Lemonade Finance is a consequence of that — a bank for the millions of Africans who have left for other shores but still need to interact with accounts or people at home, send or receive money and so on. Having encountered this problem themselves, the founders built Lemonade Finance to make it simpler for the African Diaspora to bank abroad. Parallel Bio: Coming up with ideas for new pharma products, testing them on non-humans and later scaling up to testing on our species takes a long time and is expensive. Parallel Bio claims to have created a human immune system in a petri dish, which can help with testing new drugs sans using humans on the front lines of testing. As with all biotech concerns, I (Alex) struggle to vet the company’s possibilities of a tech breakthrough, but the concept here is very neat. Atmana: The team at Atmana is building a platform to help 15-30-year-olds break technology addictions, specifically addictions to gaming, porn and social media. The company is taking a serious approach with its $90 per year treatment plans, which combine support groups, accountability and education. Float: Supply chain finance — in other words, they pay for your inventory upfront, you pay them back as it sells. Float co-founder Rob LaFave previously co-founded/sold Foodzie, while co-founder Zack Kim was the CTO of Zaarly. Float says they’ve deployed $50,000 in advances to five customers so far. Kitchenful: Led by a former Hellofresh executive, Kitchenful thinks that grocery delivery’s commidification means it’s time for new innovation. The app gives users personalized recommendations for recipes — and then delivers the ingredients straight from a local grocery store. The team has landed partnerships with Walmart, Kroger, Target and REWE for logistics, and has launched in one city so far. TransAstra Corporation: Space tugs are a hot item in space: small spacecraft that help get other spacecraft where they need to go. TransAstra, from a former Momentus CEO, is using a new, super efficient “solar thermal rocket engine” that he says accomplishes this type of mission better than anything out there. With millions in NASA money and hundreds of millions in LOIs, MOUs and contracts, TransAstra sounds like it’s well on its way to being the biggest name in space tugs. Comadre: Nubank won’t control the entire Brazilian neobanking market if Comadre gets its way. The company is building a new digital bank for low-income families, a group of folks that it says have to pool their funds together to pay bills on time, so they need new tech. The startup intends to charge $8 per family per month, in addition to generating interchange incomes. Of course, fintech is a competitive market, but if Comadre can land a customer base, its revenue story writes itself. Toku: The startup helps subscription companies collect revenues in Latin America where 15% of recurring charges fail. While traditional options rely on collection agencies, Toku taps cross-channel outreach to connect with subscribers and get them back in the fold. Makani Science: This team has built what it says is the “world’s first wireless patch that can accurately and continuously monitor breathing.” Co-founder Michael Chu says the company expects to get FDA clearance within a year. Verde: Small and medium-sized farms in Brazil may now have a new favorite credit card. Verde is a fintech platform that wants to make it easier for farmers to request and access loans. Beyond credit cards, Verde’s services include insurance and digital banks. Anakin: Every e-commerce site wants to know exactly how every other e-commerce site is pricing the same goods, but it’s not always easy to do this systematically and comprehensively. Anakin fills this role, monitoring competing platforms for their clients and providing real-time pricing data so it can be undercut or otherwise responded to in order to snatch up that customer. With three “multibillion-dollar” companies paying half a million bucks a year already, Anakin seems well on its way to success. And maybe it’ll save you a few bucks as well. TAG: Tag is building a neobank for Pakistan, a market that it claims features 100 million unbanked individuals out of a population of 250 million. The startup said that it is working with employers to help employees get their wages deposited into their TAG account instead of being handed out in cash. The company has local regulatory approval and is live in its market with a debit card product. FirstIgnite: The team is building a marketplace that pairs companies with university experts to tackle challenges they’re facing. The team already has pilots with University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon, among others. Perfekto: Pitched as “Imperfect Foods for Latin America,” Perfekto delivers a subscription box of tasty-but-not-necessarily-pretty produce. Co-founder Anahí Sosa previously led the rollout of Uber Grocery in Latin America, and says Perfekto is currently seeing $8,000 in monthly revenue. SFA Therapeutics: As digital health matures, SFA Therapeutics is the latest to pitch a new focus on treating the root cause of disease, instead of suppressing symptoms for momentary relief. The team is betting on an oral solution for the over 100 million patients who suffer from autoimmune diseases (and who currently deal with painful injections as a mainstream solution). The therapeutics company has a Phase 1B trial underway and referenced “strong clinical data” on their drug’s use in combating psoriasis. Levo: Levo is supercharged savings accounts in Mexico, providing up to three times the average yield (6.5% vs. 2.1%) by combining customers’ accounts and negotiating better deals with the banks and other financial organizations they work with. It’s a smart idea in use around the world but apparently not for individual savings accounts in Mexico — for now! Laudable: The B2B sales process needs to move past the PDF world, Laudable reckons. The startup wants to help its customers find and share videos of their customers using their product to share instead of written testimonials. We have some questions about how its product works, but the startup scaled from $0 to $27,000 in MRR in two months, so it appears to be onto something. Also sales tech tools have raised quite a lot of money in the last year, so there’s likely appetite for Laudable. Monto: Monto’s team is building a platform that provides companies in Mexico with the ability to give workers “salary on demand,” which isn’t an advance but allows workers to request the salary they have already earned between paychecks. Workers are charged a flat rate of $34.50 + VAT. Mindstate Design Labs: Mindstate says it’s working on “next-gen” psychedelic therapeutics for treating things like PTSD. One thing they’re working on is a “safer MDMA” that they say doesn’t cause post-treatment depression and would allow for a “greater ability to redose for increased efficacy.” Beau: Small businesses have finally been peer pressured into digitizing their operations for more seamless customer experiences — it only took a pandemic. Beau is building a no-code client workflow for customer communications. With Beau, these businesses can collect submissions, files, payments and send messages to build loyalty (and do their jobs). The minimum viable product has been launched to seven paying customers and 65 active companies. Ruth Health: Pregnant women receive a lot of care but once the baby is born, there are months of health issues they still have to deal with — and little support provided by existing medical providers. Ruth Health is a telehealth clinic focused specifically on postpartum care, with $150 out-of-pocket sessions to address common women’s issues like painful sex and unwanted urination. Their rallying cry is “for vagina owners, by vagina owners!” Axolo: Offering what it calls a “war room for each pull request,” Axolo is a startup building in what we might call the developer productivity space. Its service creates a Slack channel around pull requests that helps engineers avoid swapping from Github back to their internal chats. The company says around 35 organizations are using its product today, and intends to monetize using a freemium model. Axolo will cost around $8 per engineer per month. Ananya Health: The team at Ananya Health is building a portable medical device that can freeze abnormal cells much cheaper than existing solutions. The team is focused specifically on using the device to treat cervical “pre-cancer” in regions across the world where medical help is hardest to reach. Noloco : A no-code tool for agencies/real estate firms/small businesses to easily build branded portals for interacting with clients, handling things like communication and file sharing. Co-founder Simon Curran says the company is currently seeing an MRR of $1,500. Govly: Red tape has a way of bringing people together. Govly helps companies like Cisco and Nutanix come together to bid on government contracts. It wants to grow beyond a SaaS tool and into a marketplace that helps businesses sell into the government. The team hopes to be a better visualization into the business-to-government procurement space. Walrus: Countless young people in India sign up for their first bank account every year. Walrus thinks it would be nice if they signed up with them — a neobank that offers a simple debit card and tools for saving, budgeting and investing. With a straightforward 1% transaction fee model it could be the simplest way for folks there to start banking. Mach9 Robotics: Ah the modern world, full of wonder and aging infrastructure. Sure, we’ve built a lot, but a lot of our infrastructure is fraying. And that means inspections are a pretty big deal. But inspecting stuff in the ground is a huge pain in the backside. Mach9 uses a thermal camera attached to a car to peer into the Earth and find infrastructure issues. The company claims three paid pilots. Algo University: Algo University is taking the ISA learning model to India, training university students there to become solid software engineers. Students also have the option to pay upfront for the education platform, which teams live classes, assignments and contests to help students pick up skills that hopefully land them at top tech jobs. Therify: Therapy works better when you’re talking to someone that you feel understands you. Therify provides mental healthcare as a benefit to companies, focusing on matching patients with therapists who have similar backgrounds. Co-founder James Murray says it’s currently running $100,000 in paid pilots with “four global companies.” Jovian: The “Great Resignation” has led companies to get quite nifty with their benefits, with one impact being the rise of investment in employee education. To take advantage of these shifting employer habits, Jovian has an ambitious goal: be the best technical university online. The job-oriented training platform helps professionals shape up on data science and ML skills. It has a monthly revenue of $20,000 and is growing 35% month over month. Argonaut: Practically every tech company that wants to scale will need to deploy infrastructure to the cloud, causing words like Kubernetes, Terraform and containerization to be uttered. Argonaut automates this deployment as much as possible to reduce or eliminate the need for specialized engineering work, so even dummies like me can launch a company. Abhi: Here’s another startup working on the Pakistani market. Abhi wants to offer instant wage access to workers in the country. Early traction appears to be good, with some $15,000 in total payment volume in its first month. The startup claims to have 45 MOUs — a very non-GAAP sort of contract, if you will — that represent around 200,000 employees. If it converts a few of those into real agreements, Abhi should have enough volume to truly test its model in the country. Dots: Dots (one of two companies called Dots in this cohort!) is building a software product to help automate online customer communities, plugging into platforms like Slack and Discord and allowing companies to automate certain tasks and help them ensure new community members don’t slip through the cracks. Stack: Pitched as “Vanguard for India,” Stack is trying to make investing easier for the 130 million middle-income households in the region. Launched six weeks ago, they’ve got 1,000+ users with $250,000 under management. Epinoma: CRISPR transformed biology, and the world’s understanding of the human genome. Epinoma, led by three biogenetic experts, builds off those learnings to apply them to the world of epigenetics. The first application for its protein is for the liquid biopsy market, which the team estimates is a $50 billion opportunity. Koshex: Obviously the middle class in India needs somewhere to put their money. If they don’t want to use Stack (two entries above) then maybe they’ll go for Koshex, which bills itself as “Wealthfront for India.” Integrated with more than 40 financial institutions already, Kosher is prepared to handle billions of dollars worth of Indian small investments. Shimmer: Therapy is good and if everyone could access regular therapy it would be good for the world. But there aren’t enough therapists, and the service is often too expensive for folks in need — if they can get access. Shimmer wants to bridge the need-coverage gap by offering online mental health support groups that are run by coaches. Peer support can be pretty key to helping with various issues, as anyone in recovery can tell you. The company has 105 users today and claims 2x the retention of traditional therapy. FrontPage: Building on the retail investor boom, FrontPage wants to build a Public.com for India, helping market investors and traders find a community of people interested in the finance world while browsing trades, charts and new discussions taking place in real time. HyperGlue: Once you’ve got a big audience, keeping track of what your users are saying about you all around the internet gets tough. HyperGlue analyzes things that people share in places like Reddit and Discord to give product managers an automated breakdown of what people are saying about your product — the things they hate, the features they want, etc. Oneistox: Online-cohort based classes for designers, architects and engineers — sold at roughly $900 bucks a pop. Oneistox wants to fill industry skill gaps through the virtual school, which mainly markets to those in their mid-20s and above. Early completion rates are 82%, dozens of percentage points above industry standards from massive open online course providers — signaling its format may just work. Greenwork: With the huge infrastructure bill coming through, demand for skilled blue-collar labor will be jumping over the next few years. Greenwork wants to organize it with a LinkedIn-like site for these folks, often government-trained experts who need to find a project to apply their skills to. A recruitment and networking platform just for this valuable class of workers could be just the thing to get people back to work. marketfeed: This is fun. Marketfeed is an app that trains users in India to trade stocks. Its founder claims to be akin to the Jim Cramer of India, with a boatload of YouTube subs to back up the claim. So far the app has reached around $100,000 in MRR. Seeing how popular trading has become in Europe and the United States in the last few quarters marketfeed’s general thrust makes sense. Warrant: Warrant is building a platform that helps developers add authorization and access control to their web and mobile apps. The company’s API manages the complexity while users are able to define rules that meet the needs of their product. SalaryBox: Not to be confused with “SalaryBook” from yesterday, SalaryBox is also aiming to be Gusto for India, helping the many millions of SMBs there to take their paper-based payroll (etc.) digital. The team says it’s seeing $18,000 in annual revenue just a few months after launch. Evidence: Code! Code! Code! Evidence helps data teams replace drag-and-drop business intelligence tools with a code-based workflow, which a fancy way to say that it makes work more simple. The company is betting it can build the default front end for data management, as “every company becomes a data company.” Evidence of this? Evidence has 46 active projects after launching last week. Female Invest: Investment is an industry dominated by men, but women command an increasing proportion of investable income. Female Invest aims to educate and mobilize this growing contingent and already has more than 17,000 paying subscribers in its community. Soon they’ll activate trading as well and fulfill their ambition of becoming the “Robinhood for women.” Inversion Space: Instead of taking stuff to space, Inversion Space wants to bring some back from space. That’s an, ahem, inversion of what we tend to hear from space startups. The startup is building a return “capsule” that is four feet in diameter and wants to be able to drop stuff from space back to the planet in under an hour. Notably the startup claims some $225 million worth of LOIs, which may sound like a lot, but given what it costs to do anything in space, keep the number in scale. Inversion is targeting a first launch (drop?) in mid-2023. Advantage Club: The team is building a wide-ranging platform for employee engagement, teaming perks, exclusive rewards and access to early wages. They’re hoping to bring multiple benefits into a single platform while catering to top customers with their deep web of more than 10,000 brand partners. DigiBuild: Construction management software built on the blockchain to give a “verifiable single version of truth” to all owners/contractors/subcontractors/etc. Co-founder Rob Salvador says the company is currently seeing an MRR of $58,000, projecting that to grow to $75,000 by October. Rivia.AI: D2C brands in India need better ways to get their products into ever-impatient consumer hands. Instead of forcing brands to rely on Amazon for two-day delivery speed, Rivia.AI is building its own fulfillment agency to help this customer base get the same outcome, but cheaper. By ignoring Amazon, Rivia.AI is helping e-commerce brands in India achieve two-day shipment, while the startup makes $0.65 on each delivery. Rivia.AI has 2,400 monthly transactions — and a mission to get to the billions. Palla: Sending money across borders has never been easy. Or rather, if it’s easy, it’s expensive. Palla aims to make it both easy and cheap to send money to and from LatAm, from one person to another. They’re partnering with big fintech and banking companies to get thousands of folks signed up and ready to get cash from out of the country on their debit cards in seconds rather than hours. Suplias: This is cool. There are 13 million small grocery stores in Africa, Suplias says, which it wants to help supply. The startup offers a B2B mobile marketplace that uses third-party logistics providers to get new inventory to small grocers rapidly. The digitization of SMBs in emerging markets is a well-known trend, but this is a bit different. And if the margins are good, it could scale pretty rapidly. Suplias claims $230,000 in GMV per month today, a figure that it says is growing by 40% each month. Marble: Marble helps property owners manage their properties from afar. The platform handles rent collection and maintenance in addition to remote showings, collecting $50 per unit per month, significantly undercutting competitor pricing. Zoios: Analytics for HR that the company says can predict who is going to quit, who is burned out, etc. Co-founder Christian Højbo Møller says they currently have 12 companies as customers paying for 500 seats and have hit an ARR of $24,000. BoldVoice: Duolingo may be the best-known language learning app on the market, but BoldVoice has a deep focus in one area that unicorn is missing: smart speech. The startup wants to help non-native English speakers find (and flaunt) their voices. The startup uses short-form videos, taught by Hollywood accent coaches who traditionally help actors, to deliver content. The curriculum is built around three Ps: posture, to help with the physical feel of using an English R versus a Spanish R; phonology, the vowels and consonants; and porosity, which is the musicality of an accent. In two months, it has hit $5,000 in monthly revenue from over 200 paid uses. We wrote more about the startup on TechCrunch. Sleek: Impulse buys on the internet aren’t actually any easier than big buys. You still have to go through the whole checkout process, except on the few shops that offer one-click fire-and-forget checkout. But what if I told you there was a startup offering a browser extension that makes every online shop have a one-click checkout … AND it gives you cash back? That’s the pitch with Sleek’s ML-powered checkout bot. By preventing cart rot they increase sales, collect the commissions and pass on the savings to you. Of course, you’re still out the cost of that impulse buy you would have left behind … but let’s not talk about that. Cloudanix: Lots of companies now use more than one public cloud provider. So not just AWS, or just Azure, but GCP and others as well. Cloudanix wants to provide a unified dashboard to help companies keep all their public cloud work secure from a single dashboard. Per its website, the startup provides security monitoring and “remediation workflows” when needed. As the world becomes increasingly a multicloud domain, the company could find itself riding a secular shift. FastFarma: A digital pharmacy that promises 30-minute medication delivery for Latin America, currently operating in Ecuador and Mexico. Co-founder Santiago Ribadeneira says the company is currently doing $20,000 in monthly revenue. Stipop: An easy-to-install SDK that developers can use to add stickers to their consumer chat apps. Already has 150,000 stickers designed by 5,000 artists and has been integrated into over 100 apps. Stipop monetizes through brand-sticker partnerships. Siglo: Internet service providers are complicated to work with, which is always a green light for savvy entrepreneurs. Siglo is disrupting the ISP market for urban communities in Latin America. Focusing on easy-to-pay and simplified processes, Siglos’ wireless home broadband service currently connects over 1,700 homes with $26,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Its revenue is growing 30% monthly. Telivy: SMBs need cyber insurance, and Telivy wants to give it to them. It’s as simple as that. They specialize in this and offer better and cheaper coverage so that SMBs can meet compliance and other requirements easier. CartX: Shopify’s huge growth is drawing startup attention. CartX wants to build something akin to Shopify for the Brazilian market. As companies like Nubank have shown, the Brazilian digital market can prove lucrative. So to see CartX work on its e-commerce infrastructure is not a surprise. The company, now around two years old, is doing just under $1 million in yearly revenue today. HomeBreeze: A home repair marketplace that is aiming to get rid of the annoying back-and-forth estimate process, instead providing up-front fixed/guaranteed prices and instant service scheduling. They’re focusing on water heaters first. Co-founder Vineet Mehta says the company is seeing over $60,000 in monthly revenue after launching in May. Tuli Health: Tuli Health is building software that helps pharmacies in the U.K. perform in-house diagnostic tests. It started with COVID testing but is now expanding into allergy testing. Co-founder Jiawei Li says the company has onboarded 147 pharmacies that have run over 7,000 diagnostic tests so far, accounting for $400,000 in revenue. Alchemy: Sure, Shopify made it easier for businesses to sell online, but how do those same businesses create a dynamic, differentiated experience for their customers? Alchemy is a visual development platform that enables brands to build unique e-commerce experiences, sans the code. It launched in late July and has so far landed 11 initial customers accounting for $2,800 in monthly recurring revenue. Okani: In LatAm, millions of people without primary care physicians either find a specialist by other means or end up going to the hospital instead. Okani acts as a digital primary care provider living in WhatsApp, so patients can meet with a doctor and get tailored referrals rather than take on the time and expense of a hospital trip. The Breakaway: Ah, do you need more motivation to get back on your indoor bike? Is your Peloton sitting idle because you are worried that Matt will judge you for not doing enough Power Zone Max rides? The Breakaway is building a “motivational coaching” application for fitness dweebs like me. Its iOS app will link to your Peloton, so you can, well, cycle more? Better? I would joke that surely the $50 you already pay Peloton is enough, but since we’re already paying that, why not tack on more to perhaps cycle a bit more? Hypercontext: This company says it helps managers run better meetings by streamlining their meetings according to their team’s OKRs and providing a dedicated place for agendas, feedback, follow-up steps, etc. The team says its MRR is currently at $37,000, charging teams $7 per user per month. Fella: Telehealth for men with obesity. Combines recently FDA-approved medication with health coaching, charging $150 per user per month. The company has worked with 13 patients so far after launching in Texas two months ago. Bedrock AI: Some of the best gems sit in the footnotes of corporate filings, from 10-K annual reports to Form D filings. Bedrock AI’s software extracts key factoids to limit information overload and better supplement those who spend their days working though the fine text of public company data. Hiration: LinkedIn may have disrupted resumes, but Hiration wants to disrupt LinkedIn’s role in the job search process. The startup is building a way for job seekers to quickly create efficient resumes. Through partnerships with over 80 institutions, including Stanford and The University of Texas at Austin, Hiration created 125,000 resumes in August. It has an annual recurring revenue of $500,000. CellChorus: All kinds of medicines, therapies, vaccines and other research processes need to understand what effects they create on a cell-by-cell level, but observing this directly can be very difficult. CellChorus does it, though, and has trained a machine learning model to watch footage of cell interactions and automatically derive conclusions like which cells perform best and why. They’ve already got traction and have been in multiple prestigious journals, so while it’s not something you’ll be using at home, it could be standard issue tech in medical research soon. Secoda: Secoda wants to aggregate your company’s data in a single place, so that internal teams can better work together and share metadata, queries and more. Part of its pitch is that current tools in its domain are more targeted at enterprise-scale companies, while it wants to target smaller startups to start. That’s a standard GTM model for YC startups, but in this case it doesn’t bother us. The company claims $40,000 in ARR today. Flowly: Pairs virtual reality headsets with a heartrate sensor to generate visualizations that the team is proving can reduce pain (and thus, opioid usage). They’ve got a $1.2 million grant from the NIH, and co-founder Celine Tien says the company is currently seeing over $40,000 in monthly revenue. outloud.ai: Records and analyzes conversations in drive-thru restaurants to help owners figure out the best ways to upsell. Co-founder Sasha Miagkyi says they’re currently analyzing 700,000 orders per month at over 50 restaurants. Baraka : An investment app built explicitly for the Middle East. Baraka launched one month ago and has attracted over $340,000 in assets under management with 70% week-over-week growth. Its mission is to give local retail investors the ability to put money into the U.S. stock markets. Genomelink: Once you’ve had your DNA sequenced and analyzed by 23andMe or Ancestry, what else can you do with it? Upload it to Genomelink and you can activate any number of “apps,” — other forms of analysis that show more traits that the big companies don’t list. It’s your genomic data; you can do what you want with it, right? PAYZE: Pitched as “Stripe for former Soviet Union countries,” PAYZE takes the fragmented payment solutions in the region and unifies them into a single payment platform. Co-founder Giorgi Tsurtsumia says they’re working with 350 merchants 8 months post-launch. Revery AI: Revery is building a “virtual dressing room” that helps online shoppers visualize how clothing they’re shopping for will actually look like on a person, tapping AI to impose clothing images on models while allowing users to customize said model to look more like they do. Plug: One API to process payments across multiple providers. Alex Vilhena says they take a 1% cut while saving teams up to 30% in processing fees and have processed over $230,000 to date. Abbot: This former GitHub team saw firsthand the power of a streamlined, remote-first operating system, and now it’s building tools for other startups to do the same. Abbot makes the traditional team chats on Slack or Discord into a command center to get tasks done. It reacts to messages by running programs, deploying software or, heck, even displaying the weather. Mecho Autotech: Believe it or not, the global logistics revolution is powered by drivers in actual vehicles, and those vehicles need maintenance, which cuts into earnings. Mecho Autotech is tackling the issue in Nigeria, where truckers sacrifice a lot of income to shoddy or inconvenient repairs. Instead, Mecho will let them summon one of the 2,000 mechanics on demand via a web app to fix things when and where they’re needed. mello: After the absurd last few years, it’s no surprise we’re seeing an uptick in companies focusing on burnout. Mello reduces burnout by regularly checking in with employees, detecting shifts in happiness/productivity and offering up ways you might help them dig their way out. Currently ties into Slack, with plans for Teams/Discord/Google integrations on the roadmap. Quest: An audio Q&A platform where experts can share advice and stories in short audio clips; think a micropodcasting Quora. The startup is focusing specifically on business advice early on and has over 10 hours of content from speakers at companies like YC and Google. Concord Materials: Helps construction companies check invoices for accuracy and detect unauthorized charges. Founder Anthony Valente says they’ve got contracts in place to verify over $20 million of GMV. Baubap: Baubap is a microfinancing platform for the traditionally underbanked in Mexico. The already-profitable mobile-lending app doles out capital to its users with a 90% return rate. Baubap’s mission isn’t small: It wants to become the largest lender in Latin America. SnapCalorie: Nobody likes counting calories, because (A) calories are great and (B) it’s a pain. But SnapCalorie could at least address B by providing a calorie estimate of a meal from a single image that they claim is more accurate than a nutritionist’s. The founder also co-founded Google Lens and the Cloud Vision API so he knows of what he speaks. Don’t make it too convenient though buddy, because then I would have to use it. Bree: Zero interest cash advances (up to $100) in Canada; instead of fees, Bree allows users to tip the service when it’s been helpful. Co-founder Alexander Li says the company did $14,000 in advances and saw $1,800 of revenue in July. Zuma: Zuma is building out an “AI leasing agent” that helps make the most of web interest by responding and following up on every lead. In eight months, the team has grown to $388,000 ARR. Medium Biosciences: Uses machine learning to find new/novel enzymes for biotech companies. The company says by cutting out much of the trial-and-error, it cuts a 10-week process down to two weeks. Hyperseed: Already backed by Silicon Valley investors, Hyperseed makes it easier for finance professionals to create custom pricing and billing applications. The full-stack development environment helps finance teams add their thoughts into tech stacks, doing what the no-code team thinks Excel can’t. Glitzi: An alternative to actually going to a salon or spa to get beauty or grooming services, Glitzi is an on-call service that connects beauty professionals directly to clients. The clients get the convenience of home care and the pros make more for the personalized service and no fees or rent for spa space. Everyone wins, and of course everyone is beautiful … that means you! StandardCode: An API meant to help gaming/social companies deal with COPPA/GDPR compliance, automating the ID/parental approval/age verification process. Charges $0.50 per verification. Payhippo: Payhippo is building a loan platform for small businesses in Nigeria, hoping to help bring access to working capital that can make a difference. They say that many of these businesses they lend to aren’t able to get loans from the bank due to high collateral requirements and the scarcity of credit scores in the region. MayaEats: Pitching itself as “Uber for kitchens,” MayaEats works with “underutilized” kitchens to analyze their region/potential audience and build a virtual brand to sell on platforms like DoorDash and Uber Eats. Vijayaraj Gopinath says they’ve already processed over 57,000 orders, accounting for $2 million in GMV and a monthly recurring revenue of $30,000. Contalink: Startups love to build SaaS for sales teams, but Contalink is refreshingly looking at another team for its software-based tool: the accounting department. The platform helps accountants move off of desktop software into the electronic cloud, a shift the team claims will make bookkeeping a much faster task. Starting with a focus on Mexico SMBs, Contalink has landed 2,700 paying users with $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Numary: Moving large amounts of money around within or between organizations is something that needs to be done constantly and flawlessly. Numary wants to be the next standard financial ledger for money movements, starting with an open source base and taking aim at developers — the power behind the power. Stepful : Helps those without college degrees train for and find entry-level healthcare jobs. Charging $3,000 per student, co-founder Carl Madi says the company has graduated 36 students to date. Vinco: Vinco is a corporate benefits startup aiming to connect employees at Latin American companies with online education opportunities. The startup’s service is live at more than 30 companies, promising a way to improve employee retention and satisfaction. Invezo: An investing research/analysis tool for stocks and crypto assets, tying social media data (read: hype!) and financial data together. Lets you, for example, track mentions of a cryptocurrency over Reddit/Twitter/Google/etc. Co-founder Emmett Miller says they’ve doubled weekly active users to over 5,000 in the last month. Chipax: Describing itself as a “Quickbooks for SMBs in LatAm,” Chipax wants to give business owners real-time visibility on receivables and payables. The startup is expanding its revenue opportunities with invoicing and B2B payments. It has landed $1.6 million in annual recurring revenue across over 1,100 customers. Catena Biosciences: Autoimmune disorders are devastating and difficult to treat. Catena has a new approach born out of work at CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna’s lab. By attaching custom proteins to red blood cells, they can retrain the immune system to cease its mistaken and destructive response, potentially providing a treatment for Graves’ disease, celiac disorder, multiple sclerosis and more. Big Pharma is already nosing around, as you might expect, and I predict a large valuation quite soon. (But more importantly, treatments for serious disorders.) Kapacity.io: Connects to existing devices/products (like HVAC) in a building and controls them via API to reduce electricity costs, aiming for a 25% reduction and taking a cut of the savings. Ancana: Ancana is a marketplace for fractional ownership of fully managed vacation homes, taking the idea of timeshares and Airbnb and creating a platform for shared homes where owners actually own a percentage of their property. Users collaborate with their co-owners to book time through the platform instead of relying on fixed timelines. Keyri: A passwordless authentication API that taps your phone, QR codes and FaceID to sign you in to services without any passwords to type/share. Co-founder Zain Azeem says the company has four LOIs signed and is already working with 57 startups. Fitia: The app creates personalized nutrition plans, using ingredients in local grocers, for LatAm users who want to lose weight. Users pay $55 per year, and the now-profitable startup attracts $70,000 in monthly revenue. Beyond trying to democratize the nutritionist, Fitia is also growing a database of over 1 million Latin American foods and recipes. Evidently AI: Machine learning models are used almost universally in tech stacks, but telling when they’re failing and how isn’t as simple and established as something like “500 Error server not found.” Evidently wants to make tracking and debugging ML systems simpler and easier, so that faults can be identified and fixed faster. As authors of dozens of ML models themselves, the team thinks they’ve got the chops to do it. And who will naysay them? Adaptyv Biosystems: A smaller, faster chip for biotech companies to synthesize and screen proteins. CEO Julian Englert says their chip is 100,000x smaller than existing options, allowing them to screen “millions of drugs instead of thousands.”; from the data they’ll gather, they’ll build “the world’s largest protein database.” Awesomic: The team at Awesomic is building a design freelancing platform with a big emphasis on getting design jobs done quickly without the stress of hiring a designer. Luable: Helps users in Latin America find saving accounts with better yields. Acting as a broker, Luable takes a 1.5% commission. The team says it currently has over $450,000 under management, averaging 2x growth month over month. Craft Aerospace: Craft Aerospace is designing and testing a totally novel new vertical take-off and landing aircraft designed to fly and land in and around cities, making regional travel faster and cheaper. The design of the aircraft is pretty wild, but it actually makes a lot of sense and could help change SF-to-LA into Tenderloin-to-Silverlake (well, maybe not that, but you get the idea). I wrote more about their new approach here. Snowboard Software: If you know what the “Snowflake data cloud” is, Snowboard might be for you. Snowboard is a data catalog for Snowflake, allowing you to dig through your data on the platform faster, find data issues, etc. You can self-host it, or they’ll host for you; it’s free to start tinkering with, and you start paying after 1,000 indexed columns. The company says it’s currently seeing $15,000 ARR with four companies onboarded. Jupe: First up, the Jupe founder who presented had an excellent hat. He was also living in a Jupe in a parking lot. Why? Because Jupe sells glamping-in-a-box. The company has booked some $6.5 million in revenue this year and claims to be profitable. It sells software and hardware and takes a pretty big cut of total spend. Er, is glamping a big industry? I have glamped. It was nice. Perhaps it is growing during the COVID era. Hera: The team at Hera is building a Calendar app with an emphasis on productivity, with a number of overt and more subtle features aimed at helping people get the most out of their meetings without living in a bloated calendar app. Astek.: Helps doctors find the right antibiotic faster — an hour, the company says, instead of days — in emergency situations. The company expects to charge $100 per test. Protego: Founded by ex-Rappi entrepreneurs, Protego helps LatAm companies recover lost revenue. It automates the chargeback process, a process that currently requires quite a bit of manual labor. Since launch, it has attracted $4,300 in monthly recurring revenue and has turned its former employer into a pilot customer. V-Flow Medical: Millions of Americans suffer from compressed pelvic veins, a dangerous condition usually treated with stents — which have a 20% failure rate. V-Flow has designed a device to treat the huge number of people who need an alternative treatment. With a track record of medical device approvals and exits behind them, the team says they have this whole thing mapped out and hopefully ready to keep hundreds of thousands of people healthy. bloop: An extension for your code editor that surfaces code examples from each library’s official documentation. Works with VS Code, with support for other IDEs on the way. Instacrops: An agtech startup focused on helping farmers in Latin America maximize their crop yields using technology like IoT sensors and drones while integrating data sources to help farmers make the best decisions with the best information available. Bite Ninja: Bite Ninja wants drive-thru restaurants to use its freelancers (ninjas) to help others order and receive food (bites), allowing people to take drive-thru orders from home. One of the co-founders ran a BBQ restaurant chain called Baby Jacks, where he built out the initial concept. The team says it’s currently running pilots with five chains and would make $150,000 per restaurant location. Pylon: One way to stand out in Y Combinator is to be a fully bootstrapped company making nearly double-digit revenue. That’s what Pylon, a platform to help water and electricity companies manage infrastructure, did in its pitch today. The profitable company improves its clients operations by detecting and reducing leakages, consumption theft and uncollected bills. ClearMix: Organizing an in-person video team at a global company can be tough at the best of times, let alone during a pandemic. ClearMix is a fully remote video production suite that lets video teams record and produce videos quickly and professionally, but entirely online. No doubt it’s going up against some heavy hitters in the Adobe vein, but the need is clear. Sequin : A fintech play, Sequin wants to give women debit cards to help them build credit — the card features what the company called “live credit reporting” — so that more women can access debt products. The company plans to eventually build a credit card product as well. Per Sequin, it expects to generate around $60 per user per year thanks to interchange incomes. Teamspace: A remote collaboration platform built by a Facebook product designer who worked on the company’s Workplace product. The startup hopes to reduce team misalignment by giving them a “shared canvas” where they can tackle problems together. Repool : Pitched as “AngelList for hedge funds,” Repool wants to let more people build hedge funds. “Focus on trading, we’ll take care of the rest,” they say. Co-founder Kevin Fu says the company has two funds onboarded after launching two weeks ago, already accounting for $36,000 in ARR. SigmaOS: A browser designed for work. SigmaOS wants to be the main tool startups use to access the web, with an interface meant to promote multitasking and collaboration. Flagship features include split-screen capabilities, browser-based collaboration pages and focus mode. The productivity software startup charges $10 a month — and claims it’s gaining one customer every two minutes. Whalesync: No-code tools are definitely popular (there have been plenty in the last two days) but they don’t solve every problem. And it turns out they create at least one new one — keeping data in sync between no-code tools can be tough and your devs end up having to code a data pipeline anyway. Whalesync connects no-code tools with each other, staving off the “real” coding for another step or two. Yummy: Co-founded by a Postmates alum, Yummy is building a super app for Venezuela that it intends to expand to Peru and Chile. The company’s application includes food, CPG and entertainment products and claims to have expanded to ride-hailing as well. Yummy says that it is doing $1.6 million in monthly GMV, a figure that is growing by 35% each month. If that growth keeps up, expect to hear more about the company. Level: A fintech financing platform that buys loans from fintech startups helping them gain access to capital to scale faster. The company analyzes the fintech company’s performance and loan portfolio to source low-risk loans it can purchase at a discounted rate. Inflow: A self-help app for helping people manage ADHD. The company is promising symptom improvement on par with in-person treatment while making it “100x more affordable and accessible.” Co-founder Levi Epstein says Inflow has 2,700+ paying members and is currently seeing $33,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Keeper: Bookkeepers often stick to spreadsheets and email, so Keeper has built a software solution with them in mind. The startup gives bookkeepers a suite of tools to communicate with clients and deliver reports. Focusing on the quiet but complicated has helped Keeper hit $6,400 in monthly recurring revenue. Jingu Health: Millions of women suffer from vaginal infections with no effective treatment, but Jingu Health is coming to the rescue with a powerful tool. They target the underlying cause of these infections by analyzing the microbiome with computational biology tools and reprogramming it (think “more of this, less of this,” not bioengineered microorganisms). They claim to have the first pill-based treatment. It’s even FDA approved even though it doesn’t need to be … just in case. Echoes HQ: This one could prove controversial. Echoes wants to measure engineering output and align time spent to different corporate OKRs. If TechCrunch rolled this out to measure writer output, there would be pitchforks in the streets.* Precisely how much engineers want to have their work monitored so that a manager elsewhere can chide them for whatever they deem to be “less than productive” is not clear. However, given how tight the market is for technical talent, if this introduces any sort of material friction, it would drive regretted employee churn, as they say. *And by streets we mean various Slack channels. Litnerd : Litnerd wants to help make kids better readers by keeping them more engaged in reading. They livestream actors into the classroom on a weekly basis to act out and advance stories the kids have spent the last few days reading, provide lesson plans for teachers and more. We wrote about Litnerd here! DocVita: Telehealth has exploded during the pandemic. DocVita is looking to scale telehealth in India further with a platform that connects consumers with generalists and specialists across a wide network. The founders have experience in the healthcare software industry and have scaled the company to $12,000 in monthly GMV after just a few months on the market. Waterplan: Tech and water may not usually mix well, unless you’re Waterplan. The startup helps industrial facilities mitigate water risk, a growing threat due to climate change and deterioration. It has $345,000 in annual recurring revenue thanks to 12 pilot customers. Moxion Power: I (Alex) half expect this company to announce a SPAC-led deal to go public in the next month. It’s building large, mobile batteries that construction sites and other commercial operations can use to provide power in locations where they today use generators. Lower emissions is a win. The company expects to get its first production facility online in Q1 2022. Given the huge interest in EV tech more generally today, we like Moxion’s chances of raising the capital it needs to give its business a shot. Lightly: A machine learning startup that helps ML teams prioritize the data most in need of labeling, pointing them to the data subsets that will have the biggest impact on their overall model accuracy. Beeper: You probably use like a half dozen chat apps. Beeper merges them all together — even iMessage, through some hackery involving forwarding messages from a Mac or jailbroken iPhone — and adds things like unified search. Co-founders Eric Migicovsky and Brad Murray previously worked together at Pebble, the early smartwatch company Eric founded. Rendalo Maq: A digital broker for construction equipment in LatAm. Clients turn to Rendalo Maq to procure and handle fleet management for construction companies in the region. While the startup’s software is focused on used equipment and rentals, it’s also a marketplace and operating system. Basis: Look, if you’re in business automation like me, you understand that a dynamic end-to-end data pipeline is worth its weight in bitcoin. Was that convincing? Okay, I’m not in business automation but I can guess that with the amounts of data coming in and the number of places it needs to go, you want a big-time solution, and that’s what Basis wants to be. “Yes code” instead of no code, giving superpowers to your dev team so they don’t have to hire a specialist in data handling just to make things work. Levro: Something that I’ve noticed among lots of smaller companies is building in many countries at once. That means that business itself is increasingly global. Which is great for remote workers, but a bit wonky when it comes to payments and banking. Levro appears to be prepping to help smooth the currency situation by offering a multicurrency banking service. The company dangled a hook during its pitch, offering free payments up to a transaction cap for folks tuned into Demo Day. Let’s see if that helps it drive early sign-ups. Its website currently only lets folks sign up for updates, so it may be some time until we fully grok Levro’s early traction. Zazos: A no-code tool for HR teams that helps them build the exact functionality they need and leave out what they don’t while allowing customizations across interfaces, permissioning and data integrations. Filadd: Helps students in Latin America pass their college entrance exams, then provides them with 24/7 access to tutors until they graduate. Co-founder Joaquin Olmedo says the company is currently seeing $800,000 in annual revenue. testRigor: A better way to test for quality assurance. TestRigor has created technology that allows companies to run tests that better emulate the way end users engage with their applications. The software claims to be faster, non-engineer friendly, and thus more scalable for its clients. Netflix is one of the customers fueling testRigor’s $700,000 annual recurring revenue. Heimdal: Heimdal pulls valuable minerals out of seawater while simultaneously sequestering carbon dioxide, producing carbon-negative materials for the concrete and glass industries. Cement manufacturing is notoriously a huge polluter, so with regulations coming in, they and everyone else are jonesing for green processes and raw materials. I wrote this up in more detail here! Unbox: QA doesn’t get enough love in the ML world, but it matters. ML models can be biased as heck, or simply broken. Unbox wants to help ML team members, both technical and not, to find issues in ML models and create tests to check to make sure that fixes work. The team hails from Apple. Unbox did not share growth metrics. Fizz: Fizz is building a debit card that helps college students in the U.S. start building out their credit without having to learn lessons about overzealous credit use the hard way. Building good credit early is critical but can be tough for college students operating on tight budgets, Fizz is building a platform designed for college students specifically. Mentorcam: A marketplace connecting people with those they admire for advice — sorta like Cameo for 1:1 advice. Charging $20-$300 per video, they saw $7,000 in gross sales in August. Notably, the company says, nearly half of its users are repeat customers. Telmai: Data quality can make or break a startup, so Telmai wants to be the reliable sidekick that sniffs out inaccuracies or anomalies before you do. The data observability platform uses a no-code onboarding process and claims it can begin working for clients within minutes. Beyond fighting bad data, Telmai offers high-level visualization, and soon, proactive alerts and user inputs for correctness. For data analytics teams, which are constantly deciding whether to escalate a blip, Telmai is meant to take some of the guesswork out of their days and more broadly simplify operations. Amenli: Amenli is the first licensed online insurance broker in Egypt. Able to sign customers up in a few minutes for low-cost premiums around $200 per year, it’s hard to see how this can be anything but a runaway success assuming they do it right. Go get it, Amenli! Nash: This is fun. Nash has built software atop mass-market delivery APIs (it listed DoorDash and Uber, among others) to allow other companies to offer same-day delivery. Why is it neat? Because SMBs can’t code, having another company plug them into delivery networks could unlock the delivery market for companies that can’t afford an engineering team. Per Nash, it has a 10% take rate and is doing around $60,000 in GMV. Byte Kitchen: Byte Kitchen wants to build ghost kitchens that make the best dishes from the best restaurants in the country, licensing brands and recipes and bringing them access to more markets. Its first kitchen is live, and the team says its has “20+ LOIs with popular restaurants.” Tenyks: Helps AI developers figure out how/why their computer vision systems are doing what they’re doing and build more reliable systems. With both co-founders having Ph.D.s in “Explainable AI,” this one seems like a good fit. Founder Botty Dimanov says they’re currently working with one customer, with four more getting set up now and seven+ on the waitlist. Maroo: “Save the date” doesn’t exactly scream stable revenue, so Maroo is building a payments service for the wedding industry. The startup is rethinking how the business owners within the wedding industry — from caterers to that charming venue you eye every time you drive past it — receive payments. As for the happy couple, Maroo offers a buy now, pay later service for a more accessible financing option, Tavus: Here’s one that might make you squint a little. Tavus wants to replace written outreach (think sales emails and such) with computer-generated deepfakes. Yes, you read that correctly. Customize the name, company and other aspects and get hundreds of tailored videos that look just like someone recorded a video message just for the recipient. Is it a good idea? We’ll see … but like it or not it’s here, and it seems to be effective. Let you and I proceed into this strange new world together, my friend. Enso: The team at Enso is building a data processing tool that helps automate developer processes that require a ton of repetitive manual work. The no-code platform wants to put components built by its community of experts into the hands of data scientists. Brite: When your employer offers you a zillion different benefits/insurance options, Brite helps you wade through it and figure out what’s right. Co-founder Ben Hale says they’ve already worked with over 400,000 employees (across 250+ employers) and are seeing an MRR of $28,000. Metlo: The truth wins, and that’s a lesson for life and for startups. Metlo, built by former Facebook and Uber engineers, helps companies store their business metrics (like “daily active users”) in a standardized, transparent way across different tools without a bunch of duplicated work. In seven weeks, the startup landed four design partners. MergeQueue: When you’ve got 20 engineers all coding separately to build a new feature, it can take as long to integrate and reconcile their work as it does to do it in the first place. MergeQueue automates code submission workflows to avoid build failures that result in costly code reviews and delays. The team encountered this issue at Google (easy to imagine) and hacked together their own solution there — now they’ve built something for everyone else to use. CostCertified: Bringing price transparency to an opaque market is never too bad an idea. CostCertified wants to make the worlds of construction materials and labor more transparent with a marketplace and “real-time quoting engine” that it has built. Per the startup, it has around $250,000 in ARR from SaaS revenues today and intends to take a 1% cut of GMV in the future. The post Here are all the companies from Day 2 of Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day – TechCrunch recently appeared on Medical Update News.
Rita Long is likely well-known in the area for her position as the Perkins County Clerk, but there is much more to know about Long besides her public position. Long grew up in the small town of Clemons, Iowa with her parents, Wendell and Laurene (Web) Price and her two brothers, one of whom who has since passed away. Her mother was born and raised in Iowa, and her mother’s grandfather came from Norway, but other than that Long said she does not know much about her family’s history. She left Clemons and attended college at Marshalltown Community College in her home county where she took some business courses. Long met her husband Michael “scoopin’ the loop” (also known as “dragging Main”) back in Marshall County, Iowa when they were younger, and the couple has since been married for 46 years. Together they have three children: Stephanie Jones, Michelle Cartwright and Tanner Long. She now has seven grandchildren as well: Noah, Reese, Harper, Braxton, Jayden, Stevie and Elliott. 32 years ago, Long and her husband moved to the area from Marshalltown, Iowa because Michael had started a job with Wendell’s fertilizer, and they have been in Grant ever since. One of the things Long likes most about living in Southwest Nebraska is small town living. She also appreciates the friendly people in the area. Before being elected to her current position, Long ran a day care in her home for a while, and then spent 13 years working at First Insight Eyecare. She decided to run for the clerk position because she thought there might be a good opportunity there, and she enjoyed the work it provided, such as the accounting aspect of the job. In 2006, Long was elected to be the Perkins County Clerk, where she has handled elections, District Court work, registration of deeds and more As far as handling elections go, Long said she makes sure they run as smoothly as possible, orders ballots and helps get people registered in a timely fashion. She also works in the court system with civil and criminal cases, as well as jury trials, and she handles the recording of deeds, mortgages, surveys, easements and more for the county. On the clerk side of her job, Long takes commissioner meeting minutes, handles accounts payable and payroll, and does monthly, quarterly and yearly reports. Her favorite thing about her job as the county clerk is how no two days are ever the same. Long attends the Grant Methodist Church, and she is also a member of the Philanthropy Education Organization (P.E.O.) Sisterhood. The P.E.O. Sisterhood is a U.S.-based international women’s organization of about 230,000 members, with a primary focus on providing educational opportunities for female students worldwide. The Sisterhood is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa, with chapters throughout the United States and Canada. Through this organization, Long has helped decorate the tree at the local museum every year for Christmas, worked concessions, and given scholarships to women. Read Along about Rita Long Long enjoys her position as the Perkins County Clerk, and if she had to choose a new career, she would not pick teaching, as she believes it is a job she would be terrible at. “Teachers are my heroes,” Long said. “I had some great teachers and so did my kids. In fact two of my kids are teachers because of the examples of teachers they had.” However, she feels she lacks the patience to handle so many kids every day. She said she had patience for her children, and she can extend that patience to her grandchildren, but it would become repetitive. When she was a kid, Long said she wanted to become a veterinarian when she grew up because she loves animals and she had many pets including a cat, a dog and a horse. However, allergies to animal dander hit and Long was unable to fulfill that dream. She isn’t able to have any pets of her own now for this reason. One of the things Long enjoys doing the old fashioned way is canning. “I love to can fruits and vegetables,” she said. “I have my mom’s pressure canner that I still use.” She particularly enjoys canning tomatoes, as there are many different ways to can them. For example, she cans whole tomatoes, salsa, tomato juice, stewed tomatoes and more. She also cans plenty of peaches, beets and other fruits and vegetables. The single best day on the calendar in her opinion is Christmas, because it is celebrating the birth of Jesus which gives her hope. Long’s favorite movies come from Disney, Pixar and Hallmark. Hallmark also contributes to her favorite television shows, as do HGTV and the Food Network. Her favorite sports teams are all Nebraska Husker teams, particularly football, volleyball and baseball. Long’s favorite hobby is reading, and just a few of her favorite authors include Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, Danielle Steel and Debbie Macomber. She is currently re-reading Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” for the first time in a long while. She doesn’t have a particular favorite band, musician or song. She says she simply just enjoys listening to music in general. Her drink of choice if she is looking to treat herself is any drink containing caramel from Starbucks, but water and ice tea are her everyday beverages. Her favorite home-cooked meals are anything Italian in nature, and due to her love for Italian food they also make up her favorite kinds of restaurants. Long’s favorite travel destinations include the mountains and anywhere she can see her grandchildren. The Rocky Mountains are the closest, so they are what she tends to visit, but she said she would like to see other mountains as well. The perfect day in Long’s mind is getting to wake up and leisurely have coffee before going about the day’s business without any sort of strict schedule. Her proudest accomplishment is being elected Perkins County Clerk, because she enjoys being able to serve the residents of Perkins County. The greatest days in Long’s life are the day she married her soul mate Michael, and the days each of her children were born. In the next ten years, Long is looking forward to retirement and spending more time traveling. She is also looking forward to visiting and spending more time with her children and grandchildren. The post Getting to know you: Rita Long recently appeared on Medical Update News. Do Vladimir Putin and Justin Bieber look alike? They do if you think they have similar personalities, shows a new study by a team of psychologists. Its findings, which appear in the journal Cognition, reveal that knowledge of a personâs personality can influence the perception of a faceâs identity and bias it toward unrelated identities. For example, if Vladimir Putin and Justin Bieber, a pair of faces among many tested in the research, have more similar personalities in your mind, then they visually appear more similar to you as well, even if they lack any physical resemblance. âOur face is anotherâs portal into our thoughts, feelings, and intentions,â explains Jonathan Freeman, an associate professor in New York Universityâs Department of Psychology and the paperâs senior author. âIf the perception of othersâ faces is systematically warped by our prior understanding of their personality, as our findings show, it could affect the ways we behave and interact with them.â The paperâs other authors were DongWon Oh, a postdoctoral researcher in NYUâs Department of Psychology, and Mirella Walker, a researcher at the University of Basel. The authors add that the research informs fundamental scientific understanding of how face recognition works in the brain, suggesting that not only a faceâs visual cues but also prior social knowledge plays an active role in perceiving faces. Face recognition is essential to everyday lifeâin identifying a neighbor at the supermarket, an actor in a film trailer, or a relative in a photograph. And, in recent years, it has been applied to technologies, ranging from the Apple iPhone to extensive counterterrorism and law enforcement applicationsâwith many raising concerns over accuracy. The Association for Computing Machinery called for a suspension of both private and government use of facial-recognition technology, citing âclear bias based on ethnic, racial, gender, and other human characteristics,â Nature reported last year. To better understand how our own perceptionsâand biasesâmight influence how we recognize faces, the researchers conducted a series of experiments centering on perceptions of well-known individualsâBieber, Putin, John Travolta, George W. Bush, and Ryan Gosling, among others (Note: White males were selected in order to establish a racial and gender baseline across tested faces). Racially and ethnically diverse male and female participants were drawn from âMechanical Turkâ (MTurk), a tool in which individuals are compensated for completing small tasks; it is frequently used in running behavioral science studies. Overall, they found that when a participant believed any two individuals were more similar in personality, their faces were perceived to be correspondingly more similar. To provide causal evidence, the researchers determined if the effect held for individuals they had never encountered before. The participants viewed images of other White males whom they reported no familiarity with. If the participants learned that these individualsâ personalities were similar (as opposed to dissimilar), their faces were perceived as more visually similar, too. The researchers used several techniques to assess how faces were perceived at a less conscious level. Subjectsâ responses were measured with an innovative mouse-tracking software Freeman previously developed; it uses individualsâ hand movements to reveal unconscious cognitive processes. Unlike surveys or ratings, in which test subjects can consciously alter their responses, this technique requires subjects to make split-second decisions, thereby uncovering less conscious tendencies through subtle deflections in their hand-motion trajectory as they move a mouse during experiments. They also used a technique known as reverse correlation, which allowed the researchers to generate face images depicting how participants perceived others âin the mindâs eye.â âOur findings show that the perception of facial identity is driven not only by facial features, such as the eyes and chin, but also distorted by the social knowledge we have learned about others, biasing it toward alternate identities despite the fact that those identities lack any physical resemblance,â observes Freeman.
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DongWon Oh et al, Person knowledge shapes face identity perception, Cognition (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104889 Citation: This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no The post People look alike if we think they have similar personalities, new study finds recently appeared on Medical Update News. The U.S. is poised to begin rolling out booster shots in a matter of weeks, with still one major sticking point to resolve: It’s not entirely clear yet that third shots are needed. President Joe Biden recently vowed to begin deploying boosters the week of Sept. 20, pending a green light from federal regulators. But health experts advising the government on that decision say the August announcement by Biden’s political appointees came as somewhat of a surprise. It also was unclear, they said, why that date was chosen at all. Evidence for boosters is still mixed, and announcing a timetable — while likely popular with much of the public — put independent government regulators in a corner by suggesting they would sign off no matter what. “That doesn’t mean you can’t get out (of the decision), but I think the public expectation is that boosters are needed now,” said Dr. Henry Bernstein, a pediatrician at Northwell Health Cohen’s Children Medical Center in New York who has advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. “There’s a lot more data to be reviewed and work to be done in evaluating whether boosters are needed in various populations,” Bernstein added. The question of whether America’s immunity is waning has become an urgent question in recent months with the rise of the delta variant and large pockets of the country still unvaccinated. The latest analysis, released Monday by the CDC, found troubling signals on the ability of vaccines to prevent infections and to keep older people out of the hospital. Whereas the vaccines were 90% effective in June at preventing hospitalization in people ages 75-plus, that number fell to around 80% in July. But even with such a drop, the data still suggests extraordinary protection against becoming seriously ill with COVID-19. It also raises more questions than it answers: Is immunity waning with time? Is the delta variant making people sicker? Is this a problem mostly for older Americans, whose immune systems are less robust to begin with? Young adults under age 49 are still 24 times more likely to end up hospitalized if unvaccinated. And the vast majority of people in the hospital are unvaccinated, suggesting the vaccines are holding up in real world scenarios. “We don’t have a lot of evidence of reduced vaccine effectiveness against important outcomes in most of the population based on our current data,” said Dr. Beth Bell, a professor at the University of Washington and independent adviser to the CDC who will help decide whether to recommend boosters to Americans. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who works with the CDC advisory panel on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was among those who said the Sept. 20 date was a surprise and that it’s unclear why it was chosen. During a meeting of CDC advisers, Maldonado said she was fielding text messages from colleagues asking: “Why are we rolling out detailed plans for this when it sounds like we still don’t know?” Typically, the Food and Drug Administration reviews data before announcing any decision on whether a vaccine can be administered. Then a CDC advisory group of experts weighs in, and the CDC director signs off on whether to recommend the vaccine to the public. In this case, Biden’s political appointees involved in the pandemic response — including acting FDA chief, Dr. Janet Woodcock — agreed on the Sept. 20 date before that process played out. And with the crisis in Afghanistan still unfolding, the president switched gears to the pandemic, publicly unveiling his commitment to every American getting a booster shot eight months after their immunization. Pfizer and BioNTech, which partnered to develop the nation’s first vaccine, have said they have early data suggesting that a booster dose anywhere from six to 12 months after the initial vaccination will help maintain a high level of protection. That data has not yet been shared publicly. “The frustration too comes in part due to the sense of urgency here as well, because of the public pressure to get the booster. Everyone would like data that are still evolving,” Maldonado said. On Tuesday, the FDA confirmed two longtime vaccine officials were planning to depart the agency. Their exit, addressed in a memo to staff, followed news reports citing the officials’ frustration with the process. Woodcock told colleagues she was confident in the leadership of the FDA’s vaccine chief Peter Marks, who planned to remain in his position. “We have put together a plan that will allow us to continue prioritizing science, while meeting timelines that are important to ensuring the end of this devastating pandemic,” she wrote in the staff email. Other top political appointees also defended the Sept. 20 date on Tuesday. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters during a White House press briefing that there was international data that will be presented and likely play a role in the regulatory decision on boosters. Jeff Zients, Biden’s COVID coordinator, noted that the FDA and CDC had signed on to the plan for a Sept. 20 rollout. “The bottom line, this virus has proven to be unpredictable, and we want to stay ahead of it, and plan for every scenario, and that’s been our approach from day one and will continue to be our approach,” he said. The post Evidence for vaccine booster shots isn’t clear, as Biden moves ahead anyway recently appeared on Medical Update News. Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews says restrictions will only ease when 70% of eligible residents receive their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine. That’s expected to happen on or around September 23. So far, 56% of people aged 16 and above have received their first dose. “What we must do is suppress case numbers sufficiently to buy us time to get people vaccinated. What that means is that we can’t ease restrictions today in any profound way,” Andrews said. Victoria recorded 120 new cases on Wednesday, up from 76 on Tuesday, but substantially less than the 1,116 cases recorded in neighboring New South Wales, which also reported four new deaths. The leaders of both states concede they will not be able to eliminate the virus and are racing to vaccinate their populations before removing most lockdown restrictions, in line with the national plan. Sydney is now entering its third month of lockdown after imposing restrictions on movement on June 26. NSW officials said the pathway back to freedom is higher vaccination coverage. So far 37% of people in the state above 16 years of age are fully vaccinated, with easing of some curbs promised once that rate hits 70% or 80%.
Despite the recent flare-ups, Australia has managed to keep its coronavirus numbers relatively low, with nearly 54,000 cases and fewer than 1,050 deaths.
In a bid to boost supply — one of the major constraints on the vaccine rollout — Australia entered into a vaccine swap agreement with Singapore on Tuesday for 500,000 Pfizer doses, which will arrive soon. The government has also bought about 1 million emergency shots from Poland. Neighboring New Zealand has recorded 75 new confirmed Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, all but one of which were in the city of Auckland. Auckland and the surrounding areas have been in lockdown since August 17, which is referred to as Alert Level 4 in New Zealand. But speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said the higher numbers was “not unexpected,” saying the reproductive rate of the virus in the community was still “promising.” “Of the cases we reported yesterday, just 25% were considered to have been infectious in the community in the time before they were diagnosed,” he said, adding he expected the number of cases to continue to decline. “We are successfully breaking the chains of transmission.” The post Australia Covid-19: Cases rise in Victoria despite lengthy lockdown recently appeared on Medical Update News.
Sam Grewe made a choice when he was 13 to have his right leg amputated after he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer. He could have chosen to keep the leg, but he said it would have been a frail limb once surgeons carved out the “fist size tumor.” That procedure would also have ruled out any sports for life. CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM “There’s no doubt in my mind that I made the right decision,” Grewe said Tuesday after taking gold in the high jump in the T64 class at the Paralympics. Grewe said he thought at the time about still wanting to be an athlete. “I want to lose my leg if that’s what it takes,” he recalled. His winning jump Tuesday of 1.88 meters was just under the world record he holds for the class at 1.90 (6 feet, 2 3/4 inches). He beat silver medalist Mariyappan Thangavelu of India, who won gold five years ago in Rio de Janeiro. Grewe settled for silver last time. Grewe, who jumps with a prosthetic blade, cleared the winning height on his final jump of three after his Indian rival missed all three attempts. “I remember very vividly at my start, looking up at the board and seeing my name second,” Grewe said. “I knew with that jump I was going to clear it because I was not ready to walk away with that silver again.” Now he has gold. And now the real challenges begin for a 23-year-old man who has already faced many. Grewe enrolled a month ago in medical school at the University of Michigan, hoping to be the kind of physician he never saw when he was a patient — a doctor with a disability. He’s been studying six hours daily in Tokyo, which he described as “therapeutic.” His professors apparently don’t know the word “timeout.” “When I lost my leg I had a great health care support system; great doctors, great nurses but none of them had disabilities,” he said. “When I lost my leg I found myself kind of lost. They didn’t point me in any sort of direction. I felt I was kind of dumped out into the world, one leg down.” Grewe flashed the kind of black humor that is typical of some athletes with disabilities. It could make for an interesting bedside manner. Asked what area of medicine he might pursue, Grewe suggested orthopedic surgery. “You know, I feel it’s just karma to cut a few legs off here and there,” he said, snickering a bit. “Yeah, it’s just karma to cut off a few legs.” Grewe has been a mentor — actually more than that — to fellow American jumper Ezra Frech, who was born without a left knee and left fibula (a bone below the knee). As a 2-year-old boy, he had surgery to remove most of the leg. “Sam is an older brother for me, he’s really like family,” said Frech, who cleared 1.80 on Tuesday but failed to win a medal. Frech is 16 and the youngest member of the American Paralympic track and field team. “I watched Sam compete in Rio, and I realized that’s what I want to do with my life,” Frech added. Grewe said Frech would call him almost daily and send videos of his jumping technique. Grewe could empathize easily, already filling a spot as coach, role model, and caregiver. “I think there are so many lessons that can’t be learned in a textbook for doctors,” Grewe said. “Things like compassion, empathy, taking a holistic approach when you’re working with a patient.” Grewe said a man in Tokyo encountered him recently as he was walking to the track and handed him a note. It explained that his 10-year-old son had been diagnosed with the same bone cancer that Grewe had, and also went ahead with the choice of losing his leg. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Grewe said the man had seen him jump, which offered assurance that his son would also recover and have a full sporting life. He said the young boy was now playing soccer in middle school, a moment he said that brought him back “full circle” the the young boy he once was. “I wouldn’t wish any of my peers to go and get cancer so they could experience what it’s like to be a patient,” Grewe said. “But I learned so much during my time as a patient. It almost felt irresponsible to not go out and give back those lessons to people like me who are going through similar experiences.” The post High jumper Sam Grewe wins gold, heads to medical school recently appeared on Medical Update News.
University Hospitals’ medical helicopter program UH AirMed has established a day base at UH TriPoint Medical Center, one of the first programs to arrive in Lake County as a result of the integration of Lake Health into the UH system. The additional base arrival provides Lake County and its surrounding communities access to potentially lifesaving air medical services, according to a news release. Lake Health officially became a member of UH in April. “As part of the Lake Health and University Hospitals integration, we are committed to expanding services to meet the growing health care needs in the community and coordinating care with our EMS and fire departments,” Cynthia Moore-Hardy, president and CEO of Lake Health, said in a provided statement. “Together, we can strengthen the delivery of high-quality care close to home for our residents and patients, transporting them to the right place at the right time as safely and efficiently as possible.” Lake Health provides 24/7 emergency services in Lake County at TriPoint Medical Center in Concord, Lake West Medical Center in Willoughby and the Madison Emergency Department, according to the release. UH also has nearby emergency departments at UH Richmond and UH Geauga medical centers. UH AirMed’s twin-engine helicopters fly under a range of weather conditions to transport critically ill and injured patients to tertiary care, providing enhanced 24/7 access to verified trauma centers across UH. UH operates a network of state-designated trauma centers in Northeast Ohio, including Level 1 regional trauma centers at UH Cleveland Medical Center and UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital. UH also has Level 3 trauma centers at UH Geauga Medical Center, UH St. John Medical Center, Southwest General Health Center, UH Portage Medical Center, UH Parma Medical Center and a provisional Level 3 trauma center at UH Elyria Medical Center. Level 3 centers can provide life- and limb-saving resuscitative measures and stabilize patients with needs beyond their capabilities who can then be transferred to the Level 1 trauma center, according to the release. “UH is always searching for appropriate ways to provide access for our patients, whether they’re traveling to or being treated within our health system across Northeast Ohio,” Eric Beck, UH chief operating officer, said in a provided statement. “This additional base will enhance our ability to offer the safest, most advanced life-saving air medical services for patients with time-sensitive health issues.” PHI Air Medical, which provides all UH AirMed aviation services, maintains a dedicated crew of pilots, nurses and communications specialists at each base who are trained to respond to crises and are familiar with Northeast Ohio’s geography, according to the release, which notes that the teams “adhere to rigorous protocols to ensure optimal care quality and safety.” UH is a member of the Northern Ohio Trauma System, which coordinates regional trauma care to patients in Cuyahoga County and throughout the seven-county region. The post UH TriPoint Medical Center gets AirMed helicopter base recently appeared on Medical Update News.
AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Officials with Amarillo Family Eyecare announced Tuesday it will be providing free eye exams and glasses for children, ages 17 and younger, without vision insurance at 8:30 a.m. Sept. 11 at its location at 2921 I-40 Frontage Rd. This event will be hosted through the Essilor Vision Foundation Changing Life Through Lenses program, a news release states. This program provides lenses and lab services at no cost for participants on a first-come, first-served basis. “We know there are children in our community who lack access to much needed vision care,” Mackenzie Weir, an optometrist with Amarillo Family Eyecare, said in the release. “We can make a significant impact in our community and demonstrate our commitment to helping children see clearly by participating in the Changing Life through Lenses program.” Kim Schuy, the president of the Essilor Vision Foundation, said in the release that the foundation has given more than 500,000 pairs of glasses through its efforts across the United States. “It is thanks to partnerships with offices like Amarillo Family Care that we are able to provide children the tools they need to succeed in school and life,” she said in the release. The post Amarillo Family Eyecare to host free vision services for eligible children | KAMR recently appeared on Medical Update News.
Medrio, Inc. a leading provider of decentralized and eClinical technology to pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, diagnostics, and animal health markets and PHASTAR, a global specialist biometrics clinical research organization (CRO) offering industry-leading data management, data science, statistical consulting, and clinical trial reporting services, announced today that they have partnered to leverage metadata surrounding electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePRO) for advanced data visualization, providing insight into patient compliance and burden. PHASTAR ran a pilot with 33 volunteers completing EQ-5D, a health-related measure of quality-of-life questionnaire, to understand how metadata may be used effectively to monitor ePRO data collection during a study. “Whilst sites may monitor compliance at the individual subject level, data management teams can take a broader view. We looked at how the metadata surrounding the ePRO data can be used to monitor compliance, patient burden, and any anomalies that may ultimately impact the interpretation of the results,” explained Jennifer Bradford, Director of Data Science at PHASTAR. The PHASTAR team used Medrio ePRO for initial data collection and Medrio’s Export API to funnel the ePRO and metadata into PHASTAR’s data visualization tool, PHIZUAL. “Data visualization provides data management teams the ability to monitor compliance and see any anomalies in real-time, ultimately providing the highest quality data reflective of the patient population as a whole rather than at the subject level,” detailed Bradford. Bradford also stated that “this wouldn’t have been possible without Medrio’s ePRO and Export API. These tools offered us an intuitive customer and patient-friendly experience while seamlessly integrating the data we needed. We would not have been successful without the flexibility and agility that Medrio provided along with their world-class support team.” “Medrio is thrilled to support and enable data visualization with PHASTAR. At Medrio we continuously look to be innovative and stay ahead of the curve to provide efficiencies and accurate data that serve not only our sponsors and CROs but the patients as well. Getting a holistic view of patient data is a necessary piece to the democratization of clinical trials. We look forward to continuing to work with PHASTAR on improving data quality and accuracy,” said Fred Martin, Chief Product Officer of Medrio. About Medrio At Medrio, we believe that clinical trial technology shouldn’t be difficult to use. That’s why our full-service eClinical Data Management suite helps streamline and decentralize your research and unify your solutions so you have more time to focus on your patients, rather than multiple vendors. Since 2005, our flexible technology has evolved alongside our customers to include an integrated suite of EDC, DDC, eConsent, RTSM, and ePRO/eCOA solutions that support your teams and sites, while reducing patient burden. Let our solutions put you back in the driver’s seat with adaptive technology that easily powers mid-study changes and accelerates your trials, without compromising data quality. Or lean on our global team of experts who are available 24/7 to support you where you need it most. We’ve worked alongside Sponsors, CROs, and sites—spanning all therapeutic areas and trial phases—to secure over 770 approvals because we know it takes a village to achieve a healthier world. Discover the Medrio difference today by visiting us at medrio.com. About PHASTAR PHASTAR is a global specialist biometrics contract research organization offering industry-leading data management, data science, statistical consulting, and clinical trial reporting services by providing expert consultants and managing and delivering in-house projects, FSP style arrangements, and preferred partnerships. PHASTAR currently has over staff across 14 offices (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Kenya, Japan, India, and China) with plans to open additional locations in the future to serve prospective and existing clients. PHASTAR’s number one priority is to ensure that the work produced is of the highest quality. Every project PHASTAR undertakes utilizes unique internal processes which are designed to ensure optimal quality. All PHASTAR’s statistical, programming, data management, and data science staff are trained in the “PHASTAR Discipline” – an in-house approach to data analysis and collection. This comprises a set of common sense (but commonly ignored) principles that, if followed, guarantee error-free outcomes. The “PHASTAR Discipline” also includes a series of intranet-based checklists highlighting potential pitfalls and points to consider when conducting clinical trials, enabling over 4,000 years of combined technical knowledge to be shared across the company. Share article on social media or email: The post Medrio, Inc. and PHASTAR Unite to Offer Data Visualization for Clinical Trials recently appeared on Medical Update News. A flurry of COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates in New York recently has ignited a heated legal debate, and at least one lawsuit, challenging the governmentâs authority to impose rules to protect public health. The latest move involved a state Department of Health council on Friday issuing an emergency regulation granting Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker broad powers to require people ages 2 and above to wear masks in select settings. Zucker promptly issued an indoor mask mandate, regardless of vaccination status, for public and private schools, as well as nursing homes, health-care settings and public transit, state records show. Masks are also now required indoors under many circumstances at adult care homes, correctional facilities, detention centers and homeless shelters, according to the new order issued Friday. Amid the highly contagious COVID-19 delta variant surge, Zucker cited a tenfold increase in cases in New York since July as the primary reason for resuming select mask mandates, which were previously dropped when the pandemic-related state of emergency in New York was declared over in late June, state records show. âMultiple real-world studiesâ have also shown masks can reduce the virusâs spread during outbreaks, Zucker added, citing U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports on the roughly 70% reductions in cases when mask wearing was deployed in a U.S. Navy ship and various settings in Thailand and China. Zuckerâs mask orders came after the council voted unanimously Thursday to implement a COVID vaccine mandate for health care workers statewide, including the removal of a planned religious exemption as an alternative to vaccination. The council consists of about two dozen health care leaders from private businesses and state government. Gov. Kathy Hochul first referred to the plans during her initial address last week after replacing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned under the weight of sexual harassment allegations. âNone of us want to see a rerun of last yearâs horrors with COVID-19. Therefore, we will take proactive steps to prevent that from happening,â Hochul said last Tuesday. More:Gov. Kathy Hochul to require masks in schools, COVID vaccine or test for teachers Will New York get sued over vaccine, mask mandatesMeanwhile, dozens of workers from the private and public sector have voiced interest recently in pursuing legal challenges to vaccine mandates in New York state, according to Michael Sussman, an Orange County civil rights attorney. About 120 workers from health care, corrections and education spoke with Sussman during a digital legal consultation via Zoom on Aug. 22, he said. All of them were considering legal actions related to current or forthcoming vaccine mandates issued by employers and state government. Mandate: NY approves COVID vaccine mandate for health care workers, removes religious exemption Further, a high-profile Staten Island court hearing is set for Friday in a lawsuit filed by restaurant owners and other local businesses seeking to block New York Cityâs requirement that people must be vaccinated to enter restaurants, gyms and entertainment venues in New York City Sussman said he also consulted with Childrenâs Health Defense about the COVID vaccine mandates. The group has historically sponsored numerous lawsuits seeking to eliminate vaccine requirements, including one challenging a COVID vaccine mandate for students at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Sussman noted he doesnât have âexactly the same positionâ as the anti-vaccine group, calling himself âa constitutional lawyerâ who chose to get himself and family vaccinated against COVID-19. âI donât consider myself ideologically anti-vaccine,â Sussman said, âbut Iâm concerned about the long-term constitutional implications and the propriety of mandates.â More: NY mandates COVID vaccine for health care workers, nursing home staff. What to know What expert says about NY vaccine, mask mandates One of the key issues involved in potentially pursuing lawsuits is whether employers and state agencies allowed a test-out option where people declining vaccination would face regular COVID-19 testing. âThat is a more palatable alternative, though unfortunately many people who are unwilling to vaccinate also raise questions about the masking and testing requirements,â Sussman said. More: Gov. Kathy Hochul to require masks in schools, COVID vaccine or test for teachers Meanwhile, a state Health Department board last week voted to require all health care workers affiliated with hospitals, nursing homes and other long-term care settings to be vaccinated or lose their jobs. It included a limited medical exemption but removed the planned religious exemption as an alternative to vaccination. In contrast, Hochul announced she plans to require all K-12 school personnel to be vaccinated or face weekly COVID testing. It is the same rule being imposed for state employees unaffiliated with health care. The school vaccine mandates were expected to include limited exemptions for religious and medical reasons. Kathleen Hoke, a professor at University of Maryland Carey School of Law, said public health agencies, in general, have broad authority to require employers and schools to mandate vaccinations of workers. But some of the potential legal battles, she said, may involve how employers provide accommodations, such as test-out options or remote work alternatives. âIt is an accommodation that doesnât harm the employee,â she said, referring to state and federal laws related to the issue. âThey can get their work done and not suffer a demotion or any sort of negative effect,â she added. More:New York repeals religious exemption for school vaccinations Vaccine mandates differ for public and private employersThere are also key legal differences in vaccine mandates between public and private employers. Private business, in general, have broad legal authority to deny employment for various reasons, though unionized workplaces must negotiate many details, including vaccination mandates, according to state law in New York. Public employers, however, could face a range of constitutional challenges related to vaccine mandates, as public workplaces fall under a variety of state and federal laws related to individual rights that donât apply in the private sector. COVID: COVID cases in NY hold steady as 52 counties now at âhighâ rate of spread. Hereâs where Hoke also described vaccination and mask mandates as âdifferent categoriesâ held to different legal standards. âIt is about our bodily integrity and the invasion of our bodily integrity,â she said. âSo, it is more heightened if a public entity is mandating vaccination than the wearing of a mask that is not invasive.â Hoke noted vaccine mandates without test-out options are more likely to face legal challenges and endanger health care providers strained by the pandemic. âPragmatically, there is a concern that we donât have enough health care workers,â she said. Another potential legal battleground could involve the State University of New York System, or SUNY, which is requiring student vaccinations for in-person learning on its 64 campuses. The SUNY vaccine mandate was pending full Food and Drug Administration approval of a COVID-19 vaccine, which was granted Aug. 23 for the Pfizer-BioNtech shot. That approval triggered an up to 35-day grace period to allow students to provide proof of vaccination or submit a request for a medical or religious exemption for campus review. Meanwhile, Sussman said the politically divisive climate surrounding COVID vaccines is complicating attempts to simultaneously protect public health and individual rights. âWe have to stop name calling number one, and we have to have a very vigorous and intense public dialogue,â he said, âand given the way our society is functioning right now, that is very difficult â and thatâs tragic.â Before the pandemic, the most recent high-profile court cases related to vaccines in New York unfolded in 2019, as a state law ended religious exemptions for school immunizations and measles outbreaks struck Rockland County and New York City. Sussman represented parents who successfully challenged Rockland Countyâs emergency deceleration that sought to bar children who are unvaccinated against measles from schools, places of worship and other public areas. He also represented parents in a high-profile lawsuit that attempted to reinstate the religious exemptions to vaccination for students, with state and federal judges upholding the state law. More:NY colleges mandated COVID vaccines. Will it keep delta variant off campus? What to know USA TODAY Network New York State Team Editor Jon Campbell contributed to this report. Support local journalism We cover the stories from the New York State Capitol and across New York that matter most to you and your family. Please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription to the New York publication nearest you. David Robinson is the state health care reporter for the USA TODAY Network New York. He can be reached at[email protected] and followed on Twitter:@DrobinsonLoHud The post Will New Yorkâs new vaccine and mask mandates get challenged in court? recently appeared on Medical Update News.
SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) — Families were lined up outside a chiropractor’s office in Venice on Monday night hoping to get medical exemption forms for their children in response to Sarasota County’s new school mask mandate. The mask mandate in Sarasota County schools went into effect on Monday and, while the district says compliance so far has been good, they are dealing with a few challenges vetting medical exemption forms. As the district works through the exemptions to make sure they’re valid and correct, some parents are voicing concerns over the local chiropractor, who confirms to 8 On Your Side he’s signed dozens of exemption forms in the past week. Paulina Testerman says she was in disbelief when she heard claims that Twin Palms Chiropractic was offering up mask exemptions to anyone who wanted one. Her family went to check things out for themselves. “We were in and out, came in, signed a clipboard and handed a sheet,” Testerman said. “Nobody asked to see our children. The forms were pre-signed, there was a stack behind the counter and they were just passed out.” District officials say they’re aware of the situation and are concerned about the claims they’re seeing online. “We have got a fair amount of exemption forms from that practice,” Craig Maniglia with Sarasota County Schools said. “They are being looked into. They have been given to our attorneys.” 8 On Your Side spoke with Dr. Dan Busch outside his attorney’s office to get his side. “This is not a political thing. I am not an anti-mask person or an anti-vax person, but I am a pro-freedom, pro-choice person,” Dr. Busch said. The chiropractor told us his policy is to meet with the student and their legal guardian to see whether or not they qualify for an exemption. “I myself, I will tell you I have not given exemptions to any parents that I have not met with,” Busch said. We asked Dr. Busch what kind of diagnosis chiropractors can make when it comes to a mask exemption. “It is any Florida licensed health care physician. Your dentist could do this, your psychiatrist could do this, your psychologist can do this,” he explained. “You were looking at things like respiratory distress, hypoxia, asthma, anxiety, depression – there are a lot of qualifying conditions.” Testerman says she wants to know why parents don’t just go to their pediatrician for a mask waiver. “That answer is really quite simple. Pediatricians are trained to diagnose and treat children and they recognize the dangers that COVID presents,” she said. “Signing a mask waiver would go against one of their tenants of their Hippocratic oath [to] do no harm.” The post Families line up outside Venice chiropractor’s office to get medical exemption forms for school mask mandate recently appeared on Medical Update News. TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Perimeter Medical Imaging AI, Inc. (TSX-V:PINK)(OTC:PYNKF) (FSE:4PC) (“Perimeter” or the “Company”), a medical technology company driven to transform cancer surgery with ultra-high-resolution, real-time, advanced imaging tools to address high unmet medical needs, today reported financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2021 and provided a corporate update. Second Quarter Highlights Jeremy Sobotta, Perimeter’s Chief Executive Officer stated, “We believe we have made significant progress this past quarter as we continue to ramp-up our commercialization efforts to bring Perimeter’s innovative, ‘real-time’ imaging technology to our target customers. Our initial market development managers, under the direction of our Chief Commercial Officer, are actively meeting with prominent surgeons to place Perimeter S-Series OCT in leading healthcare institutions throughout key regions the U.S. In this highly competitive market, I am proud that we continue to attract top talent to our sales team and across all of our departments, including the additions of Jay Widdig, CFO and Dr. Sarah Butler, VP, Clinical & Medical Affairs, to our senior leadership team.” Mr. Sobotta continued, “Our medical affairs and marketing teams remain sharply focused on clinical education activities that will support our commercial growth plans and help our customers successfully use Perimeter’s technology with the goal of obtaining better patient outcomes and lowering costs. In addition, we continue to make advancements with the clinical development of our breakthrough-device-designated, ‘next-gen’ Perimeter B-Series OCT with ImgAssist AI, which is aimed at helping breast cancer surgeons reduce re-operation rates. We expect to initiate a randomized, multi-site pivotal study in order to generate data to demonstrate how Perimeter’s technology performs against the standard of care.” Corporate Updates
Summary of Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results All of the amounts are expressed in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated and are presented in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (“IFRS”) applicable to the preparation of interim financial statements, including International Accounting Standard (“IAS”) 34, Interim Financial Reporting. Operating expenses for the three months ended June 30, 2021 were $3,056,431 compared to $1,997,959 during the same period in 2020. The net loss for the three months ended June 30, 2021 of $3,238,722 compared to $4,659,480 for the same period in 2020. For the six months ended June 30, 2021, cash used in operating activities was $5,926,277. The cash use during the period was mainly driven by costs associated with research and development as well as expenditures supporting commercial operations. As at June 30, 2021, cash and cash equivalents were $13,734,517 and investments were $886,000. For detailed financial results, please see Perimeter’s filings at www.sedar.com and on the company’s website at https://ir.perimetermed.com/. About Perimeter S-Series OCT Cleared by the U.S. FDA, Perimeter S-Series Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a novel medical imaging system that provides clinicians with cross-sectional, real-time margin visualization (1-2 mm below the surface) of an excised tissue specimen. Giving physicians the ability to visualize microscopic tissue structures “real time” in the operating room has the potential to result in better long-term outcomes for patients and lower costs to the healthcare system. About Perimeter B-Series OCT with ImgAssist AI Perimeter is advancing the development of its proprietary, next-gen “ImgAssist” artificial intelligence technology under its ATLAS AI project, which is made possible, in part, by a US$7.4 million grant awarded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). The U.S. FDA granted Breakthrough Device Designation for Perimeter B-Series OCT coupled with ImgAssist AI, and Perimeter has plans to initiate a randomized, multi-site, pivotal study to evaluate it against the current standard of care and assess the impact on re-operation rates for patients undergoing breast conservation surgery. About Perimeter Medical Imaging AI, Inc. With headquarters in Toronto, Canada and Dallas, Texas, Perimeter Medical Imaging AI (TSX-V:PINK) (OTC:PYNKF) (FSE:4PC) is a medical technology company that is driven to transform cancer surgery with ultra-high-resolution, real-time, advanced imaging tools to address areas of high unmet medical need. The company’s ticker symbol “PINK” is a reference to the pink ribbons used during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, underscoring the company’s dedication to helping surgeons, radiologists, and pathologists use Perimeter’s imaging technology and AI in the fight against breast cancer, which is estimated to account for 30% of all female cancer diagnoses this year. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains statements that may constitute “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. In this news release, words such as “may”, “would”, “could”, “will”, “likely”, “believe”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “intend”, “plan”, “estimate” and similar words and the negative form thereof are used to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information may relate to management’s future outlook and anticipated events or results, and may include statements or information regarding the future financial position, business strategy and strategic goals, competitive conditions, research and development activities, projected costs and capital expenditures, research and clinical testing outcomes, taxes and plans and objectives of, or involving, Perimeter. Without limitation, information regarding future sales and marketing activities, Perimeter’s technology platform, including Perimeter S-Series OCT, Perimeter B-Series OCT, Perimeter ImgAssist (the “Products”), sales, placements and utilization rates, reimbursement for the various procedures, future revenues arising from the sales of the Company’s Products, research and development activities, the Company’s plans to seek further regulatory clearances for additional indications, as well as the Company’s plans for development of the Products is forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results, and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether, or the times at or by which, such future performance will be achieved. No assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking information will transpire or occur. Forward-looking information is based on information available at the time and/or management’s good-faith belief with respect to future events and are subject to known or unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other unpredictable factors, many of which are beyond Perimeter’s control. Such forward-looking statements reflect Perimeter’s current view with respect to future events, but are inherently subject to significant medical, scientific, business, economic, competitive, political, and social uncertainties and contingencies. In making forward-looking statements, Perimeter may make various material assumptions, including but not limited to (i) the accuracy of Perimeter’s financial projections; (ii) obtaining positive results from trials; (iii) obtaining necessary regulatory approvals; and (iv) general business, market and economic conditions. Further risks, uncertainties and assumptions include, but are not limited to, those applicable to Perimeter and described in Perimeter’s Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2020, which is available on Perimeter’s SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com, and could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements. In particular, we note the risk that our technology may not achieve the anticipated benefits in terms of surgical outcomes. Perimeter does not intend, nor does Perimeter undertake any obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking information contained in this news release to reflect subsequent information, events, or circumstances or otherwise, except if required by applicable laws. The post Perimeter Medical Imaging AI Reports Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results and Provides Corporate Update recently appeared on Medical Update News.
Whether scrolling on social media, reading a work report on our laptop, or even watching TV, it is safe to say that many of us spend a lot of time glued to our electronic devices. But did you know, that all of that blue light shining from the screens can end up damaging your eyesight? To find out more about the risks of blue light exposure, we had a chat with Dr. Arjun Malla Bhari, Senior Consultant Ophthalmologist at EyeCare Hospital. What is blue light?“Blue light is part of the visible light spectrum, what the human eye can see,” Dr. Arjun explains. “While visible light contains a range of wavelengths and energy, blue light has very short, high energy waves. Due to its high energy, blue light has more potential to cause harm to the eye than other visible light. While sunlight is the most significant source of blue light, artificial sources include fluorescent lights, ‘energy saving’ bulbs, digital billboards, LED televisions, computer monitors, smart phones and tablet screens. Blue light does have certain health benefits. It boosts alertness, helps memory and cognitive function, and elevates mood. It also regulates the circadian rhythm, the body’s natural wake and sleep cycle. However, there is concern about the long-term effects of screen exposure, especially with excessive screen time and when a screen is too close to the eyes Why is blue light harmful to our eyesight?Blue light has various negative effects on our eyesight. Though further research is necessary to determine whether it directly impacts our eyesight, Dr. Arjun notes that there are both shortterm and long-term risks of prolonged blue light exposure that we already know of. The most common problem caused by blue light exposure is eye strain, which can result in dry eyes, fatigue, and headaches. Furthermore, there are concerns that continued exposure to blue light over time may cause vision problems such as age-related macular degeneration, although Dr. Arjun states that more research is necessary in this regard. However, based on studies conducted on animals, continued blue light exposure has often been linked to various health problems, both physical and mental. “As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, as people spend more time on their screens, these problems have been further aggravated,” Dr. Arjun adds. “This is especially true of children and those with existing eyesight problems.” How can we reduce the negative impacts of blue light?In this digital day and age, although we are exposed to blue light both indoors and outdoors, we can limit the negative effects it may have on our eyesight by simply changing our habits and looking out for our health. One of the most important effective things we can do is to limit our screen time. If you have to use your electronic devices for prolonged periods such as for work or school, make sure to take breaks away from the screen every half hour to give your retinas a rest. Additionally, when picking out bulbs to use at night time, choose ones that emit more red-light wavelengths. Another tip is to try to limit your time watching TV, and if using a smartphone or other devices, turn on their blue light filters. Blue light glasses may also be helpful if you have trouble falling asleep. EyeCare Opticals, the leading eye care service provider in the Maldives, offers blue light glasses as well as consultations with specialists who can help alleviate your concerns. For more information, visit https://eyecare.mv/ The post The Dark Side of Blue Light – How Does It Harm Our Eyesight? recently appeared on Medical Update News. |
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