In March 2018 three Coulter funded teams received top awards at the 12th Annual Emory Technology Transfer Celebration of Technology & Innovation. Click here to read more about their projects and awards.
Anemia, defined as low blood hemoglobin levels, affects over two billion people annually and is typically diagnosed and monitored with a complete blood count performed during a clinic or hospital visit. For patients that need to regularly monitor hemoglobin, these frequent medical visits can be both time consuming and costly.
To offer patients a simpler, point-of-care option, Erika Tyburski, BS, a graduate of Georgia Tech’s Biomedical Engineering Program & Wilbur Lam, MD, PhD, a clinical pediatric hematologist and Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, invented the AnemoCheck for rapid, inexpensive, disposable point-of-care hemoglobin determination. Each test requires a small drop of blood from a finger stick and takes two minutes to provide a visual, color-based result that correlates with blood hemoglobin level.
The AnemoCheck team received an award from the Coulter Translational Program during our 2015-2016 funding cycle which enabled them to conduct product design, clinical and regulatory testing, and compilation of an FDA 510(k) premarket notification submission. In September 2017, the first generation AnemoCheck test was cleared by the US Food & Drug Administration for clinical use.
The team founded Sanguina, LLC in 2014, and is currently developing the second generation, over-the-counter version of the AnemoCheck. This updated version offers simple, home-based anemia testing for virtually everyone – ranging from chronically anemic patients and cancer patients to the general population at risk for anemia such as pregnant women, young children, and the elderly.
To become a beta tester or learn more about their product, visit sanguina.com.
A leading cause of surgical fires and patient burns in the U.S. is from overheating lighting instruments in the operating room. These accidental fires can result in hospital staff injury, patient burns and in some cases death.
To address this safety issue, James Rains and Kamil Makhnejia created a fiber-optic light safety shield called GloShield at the Georgia Institute of Technology. GloShield is a disposable safety device that caps endoscopic light cables to reduce the risk of fire and patient burns during laparoscopic procedures.
The GloShield team received a Coulter grant to assist with product feasibly and early-development. Their company, Jackson Medical, has since raised over $100K in investment and as of June 2018 successfully launched nationwide sales.
To learn more about their company and product, visit jackson-medical.com.
Healthcare fraud in the United States costs an estimated $68 billion annually and contributes to rising healthcare costs. Common abuse of the system includes upcoding and unbundling of services, billing for services never rendered and using stolen healthcare data to file fraudulent claims.
In response to this problem, two researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology’s cybersecurity department, Dr. Musheer Ahmed and Dr. Mustaque Ahamad, developed an AI-based platform called FraudScope. The platform uses a proactive technology to automatically identify fraud schemes, including new and emerging ones. In addition to this, FraudScope stands apart as its sophisticated detection technology can be used to identify suspicious activity before claims are paid which helps maximize savings.
The FraudScope team received an award from the Coulter Translational Program during our 2016-2017 funding cycle. The funding and operational guidance provided by the Coulter Team aided in getting them start-up ready in six months, effectively reducing their development timeline by half. Dr. Ahmed noted that, “The interest, energy and focus of key skill sets around our project allowed us to move forward very quickly in a 6 month interval to potential industry partners.”
Fraudscope was founded in 2017 and in that same year successfully raised over $1.6 million in venture capital investments to assist with scaling customer acquisition and expanding product development. FraudScope currently has engagements at several large commercial health plans and has proven successful in identifying fraud schemes associated with health insurance claims.
To learn more about the FraudScope technology, visit fraud-scope.com.
The Coulter Translational Program, in partnership with the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, awarded $765,000 to six biomedical research projects. These awards help bring innovations in patient care into the marketplace.
The Coulter program fund provides annual awards to Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology research teams who create products with commercial potential that address an unmet clinical need. Funding and project management provided by the Coulter program team is used to bridge the gap in development between early stage university research and its commercialization.
Out of 54 applications in this year’s funding cycle, the below innovative projects were selected by a committee comprised of venture capitalists, industry, entrepreneurs, doctors, biomedical engineers and technology transfer experts from both universities.
“There is a rich pipeline of commercializable patient-impacting technologies at Georgia Tech and Emory University. This year’s applicant pool was exceedingly competitive” says Shawna Khouri, managing director of the Coulter Translational Program. “The projects selected to be a part of this cohort have a strong potential for commercialization and we’re eager to work with our PIs to grow these opportunities and advance them aggressively toward the market.”
