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Blue Highway Team Presents at Neurotechnology Institute

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Blue Highway team members Greg Gdowski, Jeff Fuchsberg, and Laila Kobrossy Audi just returned from the first annual RADIANT CREATE Summer Institute in Neurotechnology Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship (NICE).  The Rehabilitative and Diagnostic Innovation in Applied Neurotechnology (RADIANT) program was held at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.  The program brought together 18 Ph.D. and masters students from several Canadian and U.S. Universities with backgrounds ranging from science and engineering to business, economics and experimental psychology.

The RADIANT initiative was developed to expose students in neurotechnology-related fields to the world of innovation and entrepreneurship.  Program Director Aaron J. Newman, Ph. D., has seen many promising projects fail due to challenges on the road from the academic lab to the marketplace.  He believes that “significantly greater progress could be made if scientists were trained in the practices of innovation and entrepreneurship.”

RADIANT’s philosophy is well-aligned to our mission here at Blue Highway.  We seek to remove the barriers to innovation to create a wide-open space where people are free to pursue their ideas.  Leveraging an extensive global network of world renown scientific, engineering and clinical talent in combination with diverse industry thought leaders, we facilitate the effective translation of research into commercial products in a fraction of the time and cost of in-house R&D efforts.

On Wednesday, Gdowski, Fuchsberg and Kobrossy Audi led a presentation titled, “From Invention to Innovation.”  The topics covered include:

  • The Commercialization process: from prototype development and feasibility studies to business models and funding opportunities
  • The vetting process
  • Types of innovation
  • Barriers to innovation
  • Technology assessment: intellectual property (IP), business and technical  considerations
  • Idea evaluation:  How significant is your innovation? How big is your market and who are your competitors?
  • Patent requirements
  • The tools for IP evaluation

“We had a great time interacting with the students,” said Kobrossy Audi.  “Personally, I feel this is such an exceptional experience for them- to be able to combine their STEM background with a new understanding of how to apply their knowledge to real world challenges through commercializing their ideas, and to make a difference in people’s lives through innovative technologies that they have the ability to develop.”

During the course of the two week program, the students are required to identify a problem or need in a specific neuroscience focus area, and to come up with an innovative solution.  They will pitch their business plan and ideas, based on what they have learned these two weeks, on Friday to a board of faculty members.

Context-Aware Heart Rate Monitoring

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Blue Highway researcher Dr. Min Xu, will be presenting her research on context-aware heart rate monitoring at the upcoming 34th International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Conference (EMBC 2012). In addition to Min, additional team members on this research project are Blue Highway researchers Albert Goldfain and Jim DelloStritto, with earlier work performed by former Blue Highway student intern Satish Iyengar. The EMBC 2012 will be held in San Diego from August 28th through September 1st. Blue Highway’s research features a novel technique that incorporates contextual information into ambulatory health monitoring.

Remote patient monitoring has opened a huge window of opportunity for advancements to the quality of medical care. Current technologies allow providers to monitor a patient’s health status by remotely and continuously measuring various vital signs. The ability to accurately detect abnormalities in vital signs allows intervention and prevention of problems before clinical signs are even present. The challenge of early detection of the onset of these abnormalities is in doing so efficiently and accurately.

Current methods use fixed models of measuring vital signs, such as heart rate, by comparing the immediate reading with a preset threshold. This method fails to account for relevant contextual information. For example, false alarms may be activated when a patient’s heart rate increases due to exercise. Due to these concerns, it is necessary to incorporate contextual information within the data gathered to identify the health condition of the patient.

Context is the ability to characterize a situation in order to better adapt to changing circumstances and respond appropriately. Blue Highway’s research team has proposed an adaptive Kalman filter technique to relate heart rate response with respect to activity level. Their experiments have demonstrated that this model provides a more accurate description than the model with fixed parameters.
For more information about this research project, please contact Dr. Xu at mxu@blue-highway.com.

Blue Highway to Present at Neurotechnology Summer Institute

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Blue Highway researchers Greg Gdowski, Jeff Fuchsberg, and Laila Kobrossy Audi have been invited to participate at Dalhousie University’s RADIANT CREATE Summer Institute in Neurotechnology Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship (NICE) in Halifax, Canada. This 12-day intensive experience, kicking off on August 13th, will be filled with interactive workshops and lectures that are designed to develop an innovative mindset in the next generation of neuroscientists. Students will be applying their acquired knowledge by working in teams to develop innovative solution to a posed problem. At the end of the two weeks, each team will pitch their findings to a panel of invited entrepreneurs.

Here at Blue Highway we seek to remove the barriers to innovation in order to tackle the challenges of emerging technologies quickly and efficiently. Our approach of rapid, high-impact innovation is what we hope to instill in the students at RADIENT. Many RADIANT students may have creative ideas for advancing neurotechnologies. At the end of our presentation, we hope to help show them how to effectively translate their research into commercial products.

Do you have advice for the students of RADIANT? What do you think is the most important lesson regarding the commercialization process?

For more information on our interactive workshops, feel free to contact us at innovation@blue-highway.com.

Digital Health Trends

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Financial services firm Burril & Company reported that private financing in digital health tripled in the first half of 2012.  During this time, four digital health startups received funding that amounted to $211 million, exceeding the total digital health funding in 2011.

Within this expanding industry there are several key emerging trends:

  • Mobile health (mHealth)has changed how physicians and patients interact.  This trend has allowed for ambulatory health monitoring that gives the provider the ability to remotely monitor the desired health state of a patient in real-time.  This July, an analysis of consumer health apps revealed that there are over 13,000 iPhone health and fitness apps available.   These apps have increased patient independence by transforming a smart phone into a personal health assistant that can help you with everything from daily diet and exercise to smoking cessation and chronic conditions.  “Social and digital channels enable- and are really all about – listening and a two-way dialog.  They enable physicians to be there with their patients all the time- not just in the exam room,” said Ted Eytan, Director at Kaiser Permanente within the Permanente Federation, LLC. 
  • Electronic Health Records (EHRs) allow practices to have an organized, systematic filing system of patient history that automates and streamlines the clinician’s workflow.  EHR reduces medical error due to accuracy and clarity of records and makes health information readily available thus reducing duplication of tests and delay in treatment.
  • Social media has expanded into the digital health market with an array of websites.  There are support networks for cancer, doctor reviews and ratings, healthcare comparison sites and websites that allow you to make appointments online.  Bigger social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter enable these sites to spread rapidly.
  • Gaming has also managed to expand into the digital health industry.  In 2011, the gaming industry totaled $70 billion trumping the music ($40 billion) and movie ($30 billion) industries.  “The beauty of a game is that it gives you a goal” said Debra Lieberman of the Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research (ISBER) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Games have been developed for medical professional training, symptoms monitoring and even support games such as “Re-Mission,” a video game for young people living with Cancer.

What are some other emerging trends in health care?  Are they advancing our health care system or is it complicating it?  What do you think of the direction digital health has taken so far this year?

The 5 Culprits Holding Back a Strategic Planning Process and What to Do About Them

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An article authored by Al Di Rienzo, Blue Highway co-founder, President and CEO was featured in Frost & Sullivan’s Quarterly Medical Devices eBulletin (July 2012).  In addition to describing five major culprits that can play a role in inhibiting a company’s strategic planning process, Di Rienzo identifies and offers possible solutions to effectively address and effectively pursue these challenges.    

“Strategic planning is the process by which an organization establishes its future direction, and the necessary steps for achieving that direction,” says Di Rienzo.  “More often than not, however, the desired outcome is not attained.  Even though much thought and consideration were put into the process, the organization looks and functions much like it did prior to the planning exercise. The only real change is that it has wasted valuable limited resources: financial, material, personnel, and time.”

What is the reason that so many companies are unable to transition their ideas into practice?

Al Di Rienzo I sums it up into 5 main culprits:

  • An intolerant culture
  • Inadequate, or nonexistent metrics and oversight
  • Lack of resource patience
  • An over-constrained work environment
  • Poor communication and expectation setting

To read more, the complete text is available online.

Do you find dealing with similar issues in your company?  Do you have any advice you could add to Al’s?

FDT Alzheimer’s Screener

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Blue Highway researchers Greg Gdowski and Ed O’Neil recently attended the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in Vancouver, which drew over 4,300 people, marking it as the biggest Alzheimer’s disease meeting in the world.

Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States and the only cause of death, among the top 10, which cannot be prevented, cured or even slowed.  Medicare costs are three times higher for those with Alzheimer’s and other dementias.  The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that, unless something is done, costs of Alzheimer’s will total $1.1 trillion by 2050 and costs to Medicare and Medicaid will increase nearly 500 percent.

Currently available diagnostic methods are expensive, invasive and inefficient.  Patients must present with symptoms of significant cognitive decline before an accurate diagnosis can be made.  Consequently, and at this point of disease progression, preventative measures are without benefit.

Dr. Ed O’Neil, one of Blue Highway’s Bioengineering Researchers, says one focus of this year’s conference was to identify individuals at a preclinical stage of disease.  If individuals were diagnosed before the onset of cognitive decline, new therapies, when developed, could be administered.   

Welch Allyn and Blue Highway recently collaborated on a study that found patients with Alzheimer’s disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment have diminished contrast sensitivity in their visual fields.  In the future, the degree of contrast sensitivity loss may be used to differentiate Alzheimer’s disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.  In the trial, an individual’s contrast sensitivity was assessed using Welch Allyn’s proprietary frequency doubling technology (FDT).  This 5-minutes test is non-invasive, inexpensive and provides almost immediate results.

The FDT Alzheimer’s Screener is a next generation device that enhances physical assessment capability and improves continuity of care.  We look forward to sharing promising news and updates about further clinical studies with our Alzheimer’s disease screener in the upcoming months.

Blue Highway Researcher Presents Work at International Conference

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Albert Goldfain, Ph.D, researcher and computer scientist at Blue Highway, Inc., just returned from presenting his paper “Constructing a Lattice of Infectious Disease Ontologies” at the third annual International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO2012) in Graz, Austria.

The work is part of an NIH funded research involving the development of an Infectious Disease Ontology, an open interoperable framework for representing an annotating infectious disease data arising from clinical, biological, epidemiological, and genetic research.

ICBO 2012 was held in succession with the 7th Annual International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems.  Both conferences took place at the Medical University of Graz, Austria, one of the largest hospitals in Europe.

This year’s conference was hosted as an Early Career Symposium designed to give Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers a chance to present their research.  The conference featured papers, workshops and tutorials, as well as software demonstrations and an early research symposium.

For more information about adaptive computing contact Dr. Goldfain at agoldfain@blue-highway.com

Blue Highway Inc. Appoints Laila Kobrossy Audi, Technology Commercialization Manager, Dhaval Malaviya, Researcher, Computer Engineering and Ajay Pawar, Researcher, Electrical Engineering

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Laila Kobrossy Audi, PhD, was appointed as technology commercialization manager. She is responsible for facilitating the translation of newly developed technologies into commercially viable markets. Prior to joining Blue Highway Inc., she was a research associate for Syracuse University’s biology department. Audi earned a Master of Science degree in biology from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon and her PhD in biochemistry from the McGill Cancer Center at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. After completing her PhD, she spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the molecular and cellular biology department at Harvard University.

Dhaval Malaviya, MS, was appointed as computer engineer. He will focus on product development and systems design for smart sensors and medical devices. Prior to joining Blue Highway Inc., he was employed by one of India’s largest technical companies. Malaviya earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering and Electronics form Sardar Patel National Institute of Technology in India and a Master of Science degree in computer engineering from the L.C. Smith College of Engineering at Syracuse University.

Ajay Pawar, MS, was appointed as electrical engineer. He will focus on electronic systems development, product development, ultra low power designs and analog and digital design. Prior to joining Blue Highway Inc., he was a hardware engineer intern for Larsen & Toubro Limited. Pawar earned his Bachelor of Science degree in electronics and telecommunications engineering from Mumbai University in India and his Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the L.C. Smith College of Engineering at Syracuse University.

Al Di Rienzo, Blue Highway president and CEO says, “ I am excited about Blue Highway’s most recent hires. Like all Blue Highway team members, they are accomplished, collaborative, and multi-talented, yet humble. They are an excellent reflection of our company’s capabilities.”

About Blue Highway, Inc.
Since its founding in 2008, Blue Highway has been affiliated with Syracuse University. With a strong focus on research and agile product development, Blue Highway is an industry-leading research, development and engineering services company specializing in the translation of innovative ideas, primarily in the healthcare sector. Working through an advanced triage process that spans multiple scientific disciplines and a myriad of research networks, Blue Highway targets key disruptive marketing opportunities, allowing its clients to have a competitive advantage. Blue Highway is also well experienced in sensing, signal processing, and advanced analytics. For more information about Blue Highway contact us at www.blue-highway.com or e-mail us at innovations@blue-highway.com.

Blue Highway to Benefit from Oak Ridge Affiliation

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Syracuse University recently became a member of Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), a not-for-profit corporation that encompasses 105 major research universities. Founded in 1946, ORAU is a leader in implementing research-based, science education programs, with an emphasis in science, technology, engineering and math.

It connects universities and research laboratories to advance science education and discovery, to create innovative solutions to customers, to provide members with scientific, health and security expertise to advance research and education, protect public health and the environment, and strengthen national security.

The partnership between ORAU and Syracuse University is beneficial for faculty and student development.

It also provides Syracuse University’s Blue Highway subsidiary with the opportunity to leverage more partnerships and collaborations to support its philosophy of open innovation. Al Di Rienzo, Blue Highway president and CEO says, “An open innovation philosophy promotes economic development through translational research across diverse institutions and geographies by employing Blue Highway’s extensive business, legal, and technology expertise.”

Blue Highway CEO awarded IEEE Senior Member Grade

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Al Di Rienzo, Blue Highway’s president & CEO, has been awarded with the Senior Membership grade elevation from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), in recognition for professional excellence and technical accomplishment.  IEEE is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. IEEE and its members inspire a global community through IEEE’s highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and professional and educational activities.

Senior Member is the highest grade for which IEEE members can apply, and candidates must demonstrate experience reflecting professional maturity and significant performance in professional practice. In addition, Senior Member nominees must be recommended by at least three IEEE members holding either a Senior, Fellow or Honorary membership. Less than eight percent of all IEEE’s 400,000 members hold this prestigious grade of membership. The accomplishments of IEEE Senior Members contribute significantly to IEEE’s reputation as the leading technical professional association.

To learn more about IEEE, please visit their website here. Al Di Rienzo’s full biography can be found here.