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Bear Institute PACK logo

Winners of the third annual Bear Institute PACK Event

Bear Institute PACK logoOracle Health and Children’s National Hospital, announced the winners of the third annual Bear Institute’s Pediatric Accelerator Challenge for Kids (Bear PACK), a start-up competition aimed at fostering digital health innovation for children. The winners — Bend Health Inc., Kismet Health, RareCareNow, and Thynk Inc. — were recognized across four innovation tracks for their efforts to improve child health outcomes, enhance the care experience for patients, family, and clinicians and reduce the cost of care for patients and health systems.

With more than 250 standalone pediatric hospitals in the U.S. today, there is a significant opportunity for technology startups focused on pediatric care to overcome unique funding and go-to-market challenges to more successfully build and sustain their businesses and have a positive impact on the lives of thousands of children and their families.

“Bear PACK targets the entire pediatric healthcare community to help close the gap in innovative solutions dedicated to helping children, said Jessica Herstek, M.D., chief medical information officer, Children’s National Hospital. “Together, Oracle Health and Children’s National Hospital are helping startups accelerate innovation and technology adoption by showcasing new products and connecting startups with pediatric healthcare providers and administrators.”

“With less than one percent of global digital health funding being allocated for children’s health1, the Bear PACK challenge has never felt more important or needed,” said Nasim Afsar, M.D., MBA, MHM, senior vice president and chief health officer, Oracle Health. “Working with Children’s National Hospital, we’re continuing to make meaningful progress on bringing more digital health solutions for kids to market, helping to improve pediatric patient experience and health outcomes globally.”

The 2023 winners in each category are:

Using a telehealth platform, RareCareNow is helping patients who have been diagnosed and are seeking treatment for rare and genomic diseases in the U.S. With molecular diagnostics integrated earlier in the care process, patients can more quickly identify and connect with a specialist using RareCareNow’s network of physicians providing care specific to their needs. Patients will not only receive genetic counseling and treatment plans but will have a long-term provider for ongoing care coordination and symptom management.

“Our goal is to reimagine how genomic medicine is practiced by bringing cutting edge molecular diagnostics into the care process earlier and then providing ongoing care and coordination for all patients so they can benefit from their genomic results. While we’re improving access to care for patients with genomic and rare diseases, we also aim to ease the uncertainty of the diagnosis and the diagnostic odyssey. By embracing telehealth and technology, we will enable patients and families to be more proactively involved in their own care.” — Alexander Katz, chief medical officer and co-founder, RareCareNow

Designed by and for providers, Kismet Health’s pediatric virtual care platform offers a digital playspace that allows clinicians to communicate with patients through their language of play, increasing overall patient engagement and effectiveness. Kismet’s collaborative care technology allows providers to bring healthcare access to families where and when they need it most, allowing for longitudinal care throughout the entire year and more equitable outcomes.

“It’s an honor to be selected for this innovative program with like-minded individuals who are also passionate about revolutionizing the future of pediatric healthcare. Kismet has launched with digital health companies and smaller clinics, with the goal now to integrate with EHRs like Oracle Health’s to expand to children’s hospitals, health systems, and government programs — ultimately meeting families where they are and closing the gap in care access.” — Christie Sander, co-founder, president and COO, Kismet Health

Thynk Inc. developed an immersive game designed to help children improve cognitive skills and overall mental wellness in a safe and fun environment. Youth play an adventure game on a mobile device while wearing a headset that uses proprietary EEG technology that reads brainwaves to determine their level of focused attention. This measured focus level also controls the speed and success of the in-game character as it completes various missions, and the difficulty level adjusts accordingly. With regular use, children can improve 13 cognitive skills including focused attention, impulse management, and develop their self-regulation skills, all of which are important for academic success and personal growth.

“Our product has proven lasting effects in improving focus and attention for children who may be struggling with such skills. The outcomes of eight successful clinical studies with more than 300 users of our product have shown improvements in behavior, test scores, homework completion, and math and reading fluency. In addition to teaming with healthcare organizations, we’re working to also reach underserved populations who may lack access to the tools needed to improve cognitive skills.” — Christopher Tracy, co-founder, board director and chief operating officer, Thynk Inc.

Bend Health designed a virtual mental health platform for kids and their families to increase access, reduce wait times, and decrease costs of pediatric mental healthcare. As the only provider using the Collaborative Care Model in partnership with pediatric primary care, Bend’s data-driven platform allows primary care providers to easily refer and connect patients with virtual therapists. They then receive regular updates on care progress, more closely aligning medical and behavioral care. Offering services such as coaching, therapy, and expedited psychiatric care, Bend integrates virtual video visits, chat messaging, and digital experiences to achieve better outcomes through measurement-based care. Collaborating with leading insurers, employers, health systems, and providing self-pay options, Bend Health ensures widespread accessibility to its services.

“At Bend Health, pediatricians receive regular patient progress updates, empowering them to make informed care decisions based on timely mental health measures. Bend’s collaborative care teams enable practitioners to accurately diagnose children and provide a holistic approach that consistently achieves clinically significant results for both kids and their families. Our six peer-reviewed studies demonstrate these positive outcomes, with 80% of kids showing improvement in 60-90 days, and 4 out of 5 caregivers reporting reduced stress within a month of joining Bend.” — Dr. Monika Roots, President and Co-Founder, Bend Health

More information on this year’s winners can be found on the Bear Institute PACK website.

1Children’s digital health innovation received less than 1% ($167 million) of global digital health funding ($22 billion) in 2020, according to StartUp Health’s annual report on digital health funding.

Bear Institute PACK logo

Bear Institute Pediatric Accelerator Challenge for Kids winners announced

Bear Institute PACK logoIn December 2022, the Bear Institute, along with Children’s National Hospital and Oracle Health, hosted the second annual Bear Institute PACK (Pediatric Accelerator Challenge for Kids), a start-up competition aimed to foster pediatric digital health innovation.

Bear Institute PACK is inclusive of the entire pediatric health care community and addresses the large disparity in digital health innovation funding dedicated to children versus the rest of the population. “We have to do more for children, a population that can’t advocate for itself,” says Matt Macvey, M.B.A., MS, executive vice president and chief information officer at Children’s National Hospital. “Bear Institute PACK is an all-hands effort to provide increased support to those start-ups trying to bring new solutions to market for kids.”

Start-ups share their innovations and receive valuable feedback from expert judges while competing for a chance to win an on-site pilot and software development support. The competition features three rounds of judging: an initial review of applications from the Bear Institute PACK team, judging from participating pediatric healthcare providers and administrators and review from an expert panel of judges during finalist start-ups’ live pitches. This year’s start-up participants competed across four innovation tracks in the following areas of development: Early-Stage Innovation, Concept Validation, Early Commercialization and Growth Trajectory.

This 2022 winners, in four innovation tracks, are:

  • Early-Stage Innovation (“Even the biggest ideas start small”) Winner: PigPug Health
    Its solution uses neurofeedback, a non-invasive approach to treating brain-related conditions, and artificial intelligence to help children with ADHD and autism become more socialized.
  • Concept Validation (“Now it’s time to test it”) Winner: Global Continence, Inc.
    Its Soluu™, Bedwetting Mitigation Device, helps rapidly and permanently mitigate bedwetting with a neuromodulation process.
  • Early Commercialization (“Countdown to launch”) Winner: PyrAmes Inc.
    Its solution Boppli™ provides continuous, non-invasive blood pressure monitoring and streams data via Bluetooth to a mobile device.
  • Growth Trajectory (“The investment is growing”) Winner: maro
    Its full stack child development kit equips a child’s caretakers (at home, school and clinic) with easy access to tools and data needed to help them navigate tough conversations including mental health, diversity, empathy, and puberty and helps identify mental health at-risk students in schools.

“I was very impressed with this year’s start-up participants and their caliber of talent and passion for what they do. The finalist judges were tasked with selecting one winner in each innovation track, but the work each participant is doing for kids makes them all winners,” says Rebecca Laborde, Ph.D., chief scientist, vice president of Health Innovation and Scientific Advisory, Oracle Health. “Thank you to the entire pediatric healthcare community that comes together to help make this event a success. We believe that by bringing together like-minded individuals with the same goals, we can make a real difference in pediatric healthcare.”

More information on this year’s winners can be found on the Bear Institute PACK website.

Mihailo Kaplarevic

Extracting actionable research data faster, with fewer hassles

Mihailo Kaplarevic

Mihailo Kaplarevic, Ph.D., the newly minted Chief Research Information Officer at Children’s National Hospital and Bioinformatics Division Chief at Children’s National Research Institute, will provide computational support, advice, informational guidance, expertise in big data and data analyses for researchers and clinicians.

Kaplarevic’s new job is much like the role he played most recently at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), assembling a team of researchers and scientists skilled in computing and statistical analyses to assist as in-house experts for other researchers and scientists.

NHLBI was the first institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) family to set up a scientific information office. During his tenure, a half-dozen other NIH institutions followed, setting up the same entity to help bridge the enormous gap between basic and clinical science and everything related to IT.

“There is a difference compared with traditional IT support at Children’s National – which will remain in place and still do the same sort of things they have been doing so far,” he says of The Bear Institute for Health Innovation. “The difference is this office has experience in research because every single one of us was a researcher at a certain point in our career: We are published. We applied for grants. We lived the life of a typical scientist. On top of that, we’re coming from the computational world. That helps us bridge the gaps between research and clinical worlds and IT.”

Ultimately, he aims to foster groundbreaking science by recognizing the potential to enhance research projects by bringing expertise acquired over his career and powerful computing tools to help teams achieve their goals in a less expensive and more efficient way.

“I have lived the life of a typical scientist. I know exactly how painful and frustrating it can be to want to do something quickly and efficiently but be slowed by technological barriers,” he adds.

As just one example, his office will design the high-performance computing cluster for the hospital to help teams extract more useful clinical and research data with fewer headaches.

Right now, the hospital has three independent clinical systems storing patient data; all serve a different purpose. (And there are also a couple of research information systems, also used for different purposes.) Since databases are his expertise, he will be involved in consolidating data resources, finding the best way to infuse the project with the bigger-picture mission – especially for translational science – and creating meaningful, actionable reports.

“It’s not only about running fewer queries,” he explains. “One needs to know how to design the right question. One needs to know how to design that question in a way that the systems could understand. And, once you get the data back, it’s a big set of things that you need to further filter and carefully shape. Only then will you get the essence that has clinical or scientific value. It’s a long process.”

As he was introduced during a Children’s National Research Institute faculty meeting in late-September 2019, Kaplarevic joked that his move away from pure computer science into a health care and clinical research domain was triggered by his parents: “When my mom would introduce me, she would say ‘My son is a doctor, but not the kind of doctor who helps other people.’ ”

Some of that know-how will play out by applying tools and methodology to analyze big data to pluck out the wheat (useful data) from the chaff in an efficient and useful way. On projects that involve leveraging cloud computing for storing massive amounts of data, it could entail analyzing the data wisely to reduce its size when it comes back from the cloud – when the real storage costs come in. “You can save a lot of money by being smart about how you analyze data,” he says.

While he expects his first few months will be spent getting the lay of the land, understanding research project portfolios, key principal investigators and the pediatric hospital’s biggest users in the computational domain, he has ambitious longer-term goals.

“Three years from now, I would like this institution to say that the researchers are feeling confident that their research is not affected by limitations related to computer science in general. I would like this place to become a very attractive environment for up-and-coming researchers as well as for established researchers because we are offering cutting-edge technological efficiencies; we are following the trends; we are a secure place; and we foster science in the best possible way by making computational services accessible, affordable and reliable.”