Digital Health Coffee Time Briefing ☕

Your morning summary of digital health news, information and events to know about if you want to be “in the know”. 

👇 News 

🤝 GigXR, Inc., a global provider of extended reality (XR) solutions for healthcare training, and CAE Healthcare have announced their partnership to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of clinical simulation. The collaboration between GigXR and CAE Healthcare streamlines the ability to implement and manage multimodal simulation for medical schools, nursing schools, hospital systems, first responders, and government – spanning analog, immersive and digital modalities that can be used to create full curricula.

💡 Innovative technology to help women deal with menopause symptoms in the workplace, satellite monitoring to limit the spread of disease in trees, and cutting-edge drone and thermal imaging systems to manage deer populations are just some of the solutions which have been selected for the Accelerator stage of CivTech Round 9. A total of 13 companies have made it through to the final stage of the CivTech Accelerator, responding to a range of environmental, healthcare, economic and cyber-crime challenges facing the public sector. The winning companies will spend the next few months working closely with their Challenge Sponsors to develop their solutions with a view to developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). At the end of the process, the businesses will hope to win contracts ranging in value from several hundred thousand pounds to £1.3 million.

💰 RDS, the medical device start-up responsible for developing MultiSense, its patented connected solution for Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), has welcomed MACSF (Mutuelle d’Assurance du Corps de Santé Français) to its investor pool. MACSF invested €1 million, taking the total funding raised since the inception of the start-up in 2020 to €14 million. The insurer is also undertaking to contribute to RDS’ series A funding round, planned for 2024. This funding will enable RDS to progress with the anticipated commercial launch of MultiSense in early 2024. The series A fundraising will facilitate the marketing of MultiSense in Europe, the continued development of the company’s products, the launch of new clinical trials and product registration with the US authorities, ready for its release there in 2025.

💊 Large-scale genetic analysis has helped researchers uncover the interplay between cancer-driving genetic mutations and inherited genetic variants in a rare type of blood cancer. Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Cambridge, and collaborators, combined various comprehensive data sets to understand the impact of both cancer-driving spontaneous mutations and inherited genetic variation on the risk of developing myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN). The study, published in Nature Genetics, describes how inherited genetic variants can influence whether a spontaneous mutation in a particular gene increases the risk of developing this rare blood cancer. In the future, this knowledge could aid drug development and interventions that reduce the risk of disease.

📱 The Breathing App has launched the first app that allows people to manage and alleviate their chronic stress associated with diabetes. By providing scientifically proven slow breathing practices, The Breathing App for Diabetes allows users to reduce their stress levels by as much as 44 percent in 28 days. The app targets one in 10 Americans who are living with diabetes and 537 million adults who grapple with diabetes globally. An adjunctive support tech solution tailored by experienced entrepreneurs and scientists, it addresses diabetes-related stress and its silent, unseen symptoms.

❓ Did you know that?

New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal that, compared to the previous year, 2022 saw an increase of 3.7% in the number of centenarians (a person aged 100 or more) in England and Wales. The number of UK centenarians has more than doubled since 2002. 

Many more women than men live to be 100 or more in the UK. That’s still backed up by the numbers. In mid-2022, there were 12,390 female centenarians in England and Wales, up 3.5% on 2021. However, the number of men living to be 100 or more, while still relatively low (2,730), was 5% up on 2021 and that number is growing fast. The ratio of female to male centenarians has almost halved in the last 20 years. In 2002, there were 8.2 women to every man aged 100 or over, while in 2022, there were 4.5 women to every man. 

📖 What we’re reading 

Forbes – Monitoring People’s Health Was A Notable Theme At CES 2024

🚨 This week’s events 

18 January 10:30am-12.30pm, techUK – Crown Commercial Service Digital Capability for Health 2 Supplier Engagement Event