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February 1, 2022 (NEW YORK, N.Y.)—Holmusk, a leading global data science and health technology company building the world's largest real-world evidence (RWE) platform for behavioral health, has signed an agreement with Metrocare Services based in Dallas, Texas on the use of real-world data to drive development of tools for improvements for mental health care. Metrocare Services is the largest provider of mental health and developmental disability services in North Texas, serving over 55,000 adults and children every year.

The agreement will play an important role in advancing both behavioral health research and care by enhancing Holmusk’s RWE platform through secured, de-identified AI-powered analytic models that help drive improved clinical outcomes. In addition, Metrocare will have access to Holmusk’s data analytics tools to provide insights that will improve delivery of care within its health system.

"Metrocare and Holmusk share a vision that to achieve the most effective mental health intervention of our time requires robust analytics that drive outcomes," said Dr. John W. Burruss, Metrocare’s Chief Executive Officer. “As the largest provider of behavioral health care in North Texas, predictive analytics allows us to be even more proactive in responding to our community’s needs and prioritizing patient care.”

"We are thrilled that Metrocare has chosen to work with us,” said Scott Kollins, PhD, Holmusk’s Chief Medical Officer. “This partnership with a trusted health system that touches so many lives will be transformative, as it will allow for the application of real-world evidence to drive insights for behavioral health care delivery. It will be a privilege to collaborate with Metrocare to increase our understanding of mental health conditions and—most importantly—to improve the care that is delivered to patients in Dallas and around the world.”

NEW YORK, US - [December 6, 2021] - Holmusk, a leading global data science and digital health company building the world’s largest Real-World Evidence (RWE) platform for behavioral health, today announced the closing of a strategic investment round. The round included new investors Novartis (dRx Capital), Northwell Holdings, the venture investment arm of Northwell Health, and another leading healthcare corporate venture group, as well as initial investors Optum Ventures, Health Catalyst Capital and Heritas Capital.

The new funding round enables Holmusk to expand its global operations, as well as deepen its investment in its proprietary technology and growth of its data asset to better harness and analyze behavioral health real-world data to accelerate drug development and data-driven medicine.

“Holmusk is redefining the Electronic Health Record from a simple repository of data to an advanced clinical decision support tool underpinning the next generation of evidence in behavioral health,” said Michael Weintraub, Holmusk Board Chair. “This strategic round marks an exciting milestone for Holmusk as we continue to reinvent the ways in which we care for patients with behavioral health needs.”

“Today’s news demonstrates industry validation of our Real-World Evidence strategy in behavioral health with the addition of leading pharma and provider players,” said Nawal Roy, Holmusk Founder & CEO. “We are extremely fortunate to bring on new partners in Novartis, Northwell and others who can support our mission through their deep understanding of the importance of evidence-based care.”

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NEW YORK, Aug. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Holmusk, a leading global data science and health technology company building the world's largest Real-World Evidence (RWE) platform for behavioral health, has signed data license agreements with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and The Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD (The Harris Center) in Harris County, Texas.

The UTHealth Harris County Psychiatric Center (HCPC) is the largest inpatient psychiatric care provider in Houston. The Harris Center is a large publicly funded outpatient behavioral health safety net provider serving the third largest county in the country. Together, they provide care to over 80,000 patients annually, and have a strong collaborative relationship to offer comprehensive, coordinated care to patients referred between the two centers.

The agreements give Holmusk access to deidentified health care data, which will be used to develop AI-powered analytic models that drive improved clinical outcomes. Holmusk will leverage its expertise in behavioral health data analytics to overcome the challenge of creating longitudinal patient records across the two facilities, which store data in multiple legacy Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. Holmusk will leverage its proprietary Natural Language Processing (NLP) models and AI capabilities to create clinically relevant analytic tools, such as identifying patients at higher risk of 30-day hospital readmission. This dataset will fuel NeuroBlu, Holmusk's RWE platform for behavioral health. NeuroBlu is currently the leading source of behavioral health Real-World Data, with over 20+ years of longitudinal clinical data with structured disease severity scores and NLP-derived symptoms, external stressors, and side effects.

"The Harris Center has worked closely with UTHealth HCPC for a number of years to provide the best continuum of care for our patients in and around Harris County," stated Wayne Young, Chief Executive Officer of The Harris Center. "With thousands of patient referrals from UTHealth HCPC to The Harris Center every year, it's imperative that we have a robust data set to not only make informed health-related decisions, but to continue to create innovative solutions for those with severe behavioral health conditions."  

"A fundamental premise at Holmusk is that real-world data can unlock our understanding of patient needs. We see significant potential to understand optimal care delivery and improve outcomes by using data efficiently to address the unmet need in mental health. We are excited to work with UTHealth HCPC and The Harris Center to bring together patient records and work with them to improve care delivery for future patients," said Holmusk's Chief Medical Officer, Scott Kollins.

"We are excited to partner with these premier behavioral health providers to integrate data sources in a way that, prior to now, has been impossible," said Joydeep Sarkar, Holmusk Chief Data Analytics Officer. "Our data science capabilities will greatly facilitate the interoperability of patient health data across the care continuum to optimize outcomes."

About Holmusk

Holmusk is on a mission to reinvent behavioral health and transform lives with Real-World Evidence and digital innovation. Headquartered in Singapore and New York, Holmusk generates evidence and builds digital solutions to advance behavioral health research, innovation, and care. 

NeuroBlu, Holmusk's flagship product, synthesizes Real-World Data (RWD) with seamless analytic tools, enabling users to create actionable insights that drive behavioral health transformation. NeuroBlu is powered by an industry-leading and continually growing behavioral health clinical dataset, with over 20 years of data on 560,000+ patients and 20+ million encounters. Holmusk uses advanced proprietary analytics to enrich the data, with Natural Language Processing and predictive disease models designed specifically for behavioral health. Holmusk augments its data and analytic offerings with powerful digital solutions that enhance patient engagement, support disease self-management, and capture patient-reported outcomes to help guide clinical decisions and analytics. For more information, please visit www.holmusk.com.

SOURCE Holmusk

PRINCETON, NJ – [July 6, 2021] Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization, Inc. (“Otsuka”), announces today that it has entered a three-year collaboration with Holmusk Inc. (“Holmusk”), a global data science and digital health company building the world’s largest real-world evidence (RWE) platform for behavioral health. 

Together, Otsuka and Holmusk will work to drive a deeper understanding of unmet patient needs and real-world outcomes by employing proprietary analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) on multiple real-world data sources. These insights can have application across Otsuka’s portfolio and have the potential to improve patient lives. The new collaboration, worth up to $4 million annually, marks an expansion of the existing relationship that started with an exploration of real-world outcomes in behavioral health in 2020. 

“Holmusk is a global leader in real-world evidence and owns distinctive data assets for behavioral health. This collaboration strengthens Otsuka’s capabilities in serving people living with complex, chronic diseases,” said Christoph Koenen, MD, executive vice president, and chief medical officer, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization, Inc. “This is the next step in Otsuka’s journey to utilize real-world evidence to improve clinical development with the goal of achieving better patient outcomes. We look forward to working together.” 

“We’re thrilled to collaborate with Otsuka,” said Nawal Roy, Holmusk founder and CEO. “Their commitment and passion to help patients suffering from poor behavioral health aligns with our mission.  The expertise they provide to guide these efforts ensure we are targeting the right questions and allow us to get the most from our digital and analytics assets.” 

As part of the collaboration, Otsuka’s affiliate, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Limited (“OPEL”), transferred its Otsuka Health Solutions (OHS) digital assets based in the U.K. to Holmusk. OHS improves mental health services delivery through predictive analytics.

“Otsuka remains committed to supporting mental health and this collaboration ensures we are invested in the future success of Holmusk, which will continue to enhance delivery of care with providers in the UK,” said Sahil Kirpekar, M.D., head of Business Development at Otsuka. Fraser Finance acted as an advisor to Otsuka to support the transfer of the Otsuka Healthcare Solutions assets in the UK.

About Otsuka

Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. is a global healthcare company with the corporate philosophy: “Otsuka–people creating new products for better health worldwide.” Otsuka researches, develops, manufactures, and markets innovative products, with a focus on pharmaceutical products to meet unmet medical needs and nutraceutical products for the maintenance of everyday health.

In pharmaceuticals, Otsuka is a leader in the challenging areas of mental, renal and cardiovascular health and has additional research programs in oncology and on several under-addressed diseases including tuberculosis, a significant global public health issue. These commitments illustrate how Otsuka is a “big venture” company at heart, applying a youthful spirit of creativity in everything it does. 

Otsuka established a presence in the U.S. in 1973 and today its U.S. affiliates include Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development & Commercialization, Inc. (OPDC) and Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc. (OAPI). These two companies’ 1,700 employees in the U.S. develop and commercialize medicines in the areas of mental health, nephrology, and cardiology, using cutting-edge technology to address unmet healthcare needs. 

OPDC and OAPI are indirect subsidiaries of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company, Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Otsuka Holdings Co., Ltd. headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. The Otsuka group of companies employed 47,000 people worldwide and had consolidated sales of approximately USD 13.3 billion in 2020.

All Otsuka stories start by taking the road less traveled. Learn more about Otsuka in the U.S. at www.otsuka-us.com and connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter at @OtsukaUS. Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.’s global website is accessible at www.otsuka.co.jp/en/.

About Holmusk

Holmusk is on a mission to reinvent behavioral health and transform lives with Real-World Evidence and digital innovation. Headquartered in Singapore and New York, Holmusk generates evidence and builds digital solutions to advance behavioral health research, innovation, and care. 

NeuroBlu, Holmusk’s flagship product, synthesizes Real-World Data (RWD) with seamless analytic tools, enabling users to create actionable insights that drive behavioral health transformation. NeuroBlu is powered by an industry-leading and continually growing behavioral health clinical dataset, with over 20 years of data on 560,000+ patients and 20+ million encounters. Holmusk uses advanced proprietary analytics to enrich the data, with Natural Language Processing and predictive disease models designed specifically for behavioral health. Holmusk augments its data and analytic offerings with powerful digital solutions that enhance patient engagement, support disease self-management, and capture patient-reported outcomes to guide clinical decisions and analytics. For more information, please visit www.holmusk.com. 

Holmusk, a leading global data science and digital health company building the world’s largest Real-World Evidence (RWE) platform for behavioral health, announced today that it has acquired Otsuka Health Solutions (OHS), a UK-based mental health, predictive analytics provider. The acquisition from Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd (Otsuka) deepens Holmusk’s footprint in the UK and paves the way for Holmusk to expand its partnerships with health systems working to transform behavioral healthcare. 

With the acquisition, Holmusk adds OHS’s award-winning product, Management and Supervision Tool (MaST), to its suite of digital and analytic solutions to improve behavioral health outcomes. MaST, a powerful and easy-to-use digital platform for care teams, leverages predictive analytics to identify people at greater risk of using crisis services and those who may require different services to support their recovery. As a result, fewer people in crisis require inpatient admissions when compared with standard community management.

With MaST already deployed across several NHS mental health trusts Holmusk will be able to advance into the UK market with momentum. Building on MaST’s success, Holmusk now has the opportunity to integrate its cutting-edge technologies to drive the next stage of the product’s journey. This strategic acquisition will enable Holmusk to leverage its scientific capabilities and dedicated suite of solutions to support MaST’s growth and advance the shift towards data-driven healthcare in the UK and beyond. 

“This acquisition is an important milestone in our ambition to lead behavioral health innovation globally,” said Nawal Roy, Holmusk Founder and CEO. “The UK has long held a reputation as a center of excellence for mental health research, and we are excited to bolster our presence here, leveraging OHS’s current role as a key partner with NHS Trusts, mental health research institutions, and providers.”

“My team and I are delighted to join Holmusk on their ground-breaking journey, with our shared vision of transforming mental health with digital solutions powered by analytics,” said Caroline Gadd, now Director of Healthcare Solutions, Holmusk and 2020 NHS Innovation Accelerator Fellow. “Holmusk’s capabilities and experience in measuring patient-reported outcomes will accelerate MaST’s development, allowing us to strive towards continually improving mental health outcomes as new models of care emerge across the NHS.”

About Holmusk

Holmusk is on a mission to reimagine behavioral health and transform lives with Real-World Evidence and digital innovation. Headquartered in Singapore and New York, Holmusk generates evidence and builds digital solutions to advance behavioral health research, innovation, and care.

NeuroBlu, Holmusk’s flagship product, synthesizes Real-World Data (RWD) with seamless analytic tools, enabling users to create actionable insights that drive behavioral health transformation. NeuroBlu is powered by an industry-leading and continually growing behavioral health clinical dataset, with over 20 years of data on 550,000+ patients and 20+ million encounters. Holmusk uses advanced proprietary analytics to enrich the data, with Natural Language Processing and predictive disease models designed specifically for behavioral health. Holmusk augments its data and analytic offerings with powerful digital solutions that enhance patient engagement, support disease self-management, and capture patient-reported outcomes to help guide clinical decisions and analytics. For more information, please visit www.holmusk.com.

About Otsuka Health Solutions  

Otsuka Health Solutions was founded in 2015 as a separate division of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd that uses health records data to gain valuable insights into mental health in the UK. Their flagship product, MaST uses predictive analytics to inform on resource allocation, supporting patient flow, and identifying people at risk of using crisis services.

The OHS team works closely with front line NHS staff and management teams to understand the day-to-day challenges in providing care and to ensure that their solutions help to meet the needs of staff and service users in mental health services.

The OHS team and MaST product are now part of Holmusk Europe and the OHS name will no longer be in use.

For more information please visit www.holmusk.co.uk

NEW YORK – April 20, 2021 – Holmusk, a leading global data science and digital health company building the largest Real-World Evidence (RWE) platform for behavioral health, announced today the opening of its headquarters in New York City and addition of three new members to its management team to drive the company’s ambitious growth plans.

New hires include Tony Tramontin, PhD (Chief of Strategic Partnerships), Scott H. Kollins, PhD (Chief Medical Officer), and Holly J. Logue (General Counsel). This expansion strengthens Holmusk’s position as a global leader, with strong partnerships and presence in Asia-Pacific, North America, and Europe.

“Formally establishing a base in New York City solidifies our strategic growth plans in the US and elevates our ability to engage deeply with our partners here,” said Nawal Roy, founder and CEO of Holmusk. “While we have always been a global-first company, we know healthcare challenges need to be solved at the local and regional level. Our New York office is strategically located in the Northeast Biotech corridor, with superb access to our pharma partners, regulatory bodies, policy organizations, and investors.”

Bringing together a range of exceptional industry and scientific experience, the new executive leaders will play a critical role in driving the company’s traction and growth:

• Tony Tramontin, PhD, Chief of Strategic Partnerships, drives new long-term strategic engagements with partners across the healthcare ecosystem, including pharma, health systems, and payers. Tony was previously Chief Scientific Officer at Axcella Health and a partner in the Life Sciences & Healthcare Practice of McKinsey & Company.
• Scott H. Kollins, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, leads the company’s collaborations with academic, clinical, and regulatory stakeholders, with a focus on building Holmusk’s platform at the intersection of technology, data science, and healthcare. Scott developed expertise in clinical research and digital health as a faculty member at Duke University School of Medicine. He also served as the Global Lead for ADHD and Substance Use Disorders, and Co-Lead for the Digital Health Solutions Initiative at the Duke Clinical Research Institute.
• Holly J. Logue, General Counsel, oversees all legal and policy activities related to corporate governance. Holly brings wide-ranging expertise relevant to life sciences and machine learning technology, as well as in legal aspects of growing innovative businesses, from intellectual property to global compliance. She previously was Head of Strategic Assets and General Counsel at Drawbridge Health, a medical device and diagnostic company.

Michael Weintraub, Holmusk Board Chair, commented: “I am thrilled to welcome these new leaders, with their extensive capabilities and broad expertise across healthcare and life sciences. Holmusk’s unique platform has the potential to powerfully change behavioral health, and these strategic additions to the leadership team will enable the company achieve this ambitious vision.”

Following the successful US$21.5 million series A in 2020, led by Optum Ventures and Health Catalyst Capital, Holmusk has significantly grown its US-based team with over two dozen new hires spanning all functions from business operations, tech, and data science. Holmusk’s US footprint began in 2016 with the acquisition of MindLinc, a gold standard behavioral EHR system built by Duke University School of Medicine. The New York and Singapore headquarters will anchor Holmusk’s global operations and lead existing offices in Durham (North Carolina), Shanghai, London, Basel, and Kuala Lumpur. Holmusk has been able to rapidly expand its global reach through its membership in JLABS, a premier life science incubator operated by Johnson & Johnson Innovation, with residencies in New York and Shanghai.

About Holmusk

Holmusk is on a mission to reimagine behavioral health and transform lives with Real-World Evidence and digital innovation. Headquartered in Singapore and New York, Holmusk generates evidence and builds digital solutions to advance behavioral health research, innovation, and care.

NeuroBlu, Holmusk’s flagship product, synthesizes Real-World Data (RWD) with seamless analytic tools, enabling users to create actionable insights that drive behavioral health transformation. NeuroBlu is powered by an industry-leading and continually growing behavioral health clinical dataset, with over 20 years of data on 550,000+ patients and 20+ million encounters. Holmusk uses advanced proprietary analytics to enrich the data, with Natural Language Processing and predictive disease models designed specifically for behavioral health. Holmusk augments its data and analytic offerings with powerful digital solutions that enhance patient engagement, support disease self-management, and capture patient-reported outcomes to guide clinical decisions and analytics. For more information, please visit www.holmusk.com.

CONTACT: Paul Feldhausen, paul.feldhausen@holmusk.com

SOURCE: Holmusk

RELATED LINKS: http://www.holmusk.com

Publication details how Holmusk’s NLP models can transform unstructured psychiatry notes from EHRs into a structured, quantifiable format to enable analysis and rich insights

SINGAPORE & NEW YORK, NY, February 16^th, 2021

Holmusk, a leading global data science and digital health company building the largest Real-World Evidence (RWE) platform for behavioral health, today announced the publication of its scientific article “Natural Language Processing-Based Quantification of the Mental State of Psychiatric Patients”, in Computational Psychiatry (MIT Press). Full text here: https://cpsyjournal.org/articles/10.1162/cpsy_a_00030/.

 With this publication, Holmusk has validated its unique library of proprietary Natural Language Processing (NLP) models that translate unstructured psychiatry notes into quantifiable indicators of patient statuses (e.g., symptoms, side effects, and external stressors). Used to enrich data that reside within health systems, these quantifiable indicators can estimate patient disease severity across the spectrum of behavioral health disorders and create longitudinal trajectories of patient status. By establishing these quantifiable indicators, Holmusk’s models generate robust Real-World Evidence of disease progression and treatment efficacies for psychiatric disorders for the first time.  Holmusk will use the objective measures from these models to support measurement-based care and personalize care delivery in behavioral health across health systems.

Holmusk partners with Merck to help improve outcomes for Diabetes & Prediabetes patients in Asia-Pacific.

Singapore, November 11, 2020 –Singapore-based Holmusk announced a collaboration with the Healthcare business sector of Merck, a leading science and technology company to support patients and physicians in Asia-Pacific with a holistic treatment approach for prediabetes and diabetes. This partnership involves Holmusk’s GlycoLeap, a leading mobile digital therapeutics platform that utilizes a highly data-driven approach to deliver personalized dietary feedback, interactive educational lessons, and 1-1 guidance with a qualified health coach. The goal is to help patients achieve weight loss and improved blood glucose control.

Lifestyle and behavior change are foundational for good management of patients with prediabetes & diabetes, yet often difficult to implement by healthcare providers due to limited resources and lack of time. Digital health solutions like GlycoLeap have the potential to track, personalize and influence patient behaviors in an effective, engaging and scalable way.

By linking patients with a personal health coach, GlycoLeap will complement medications for diabetes and prediabetes and contribute to diabetes prevention and improving chronic disease outcomes. The Diabetes Prevention Program randomized clinical trial demonstrated that lifestyle intervention and metformin therapy reduced progression to diabetes by 58 and 31%, respectively, in people at-risk of Type 2 diabetes¹.

Dr. Ulrike Hostalek, Executive Medical Director and Head of GMA General Medicine and Endocrinology at the Healthcare business sector of Merck, said:

“Expanding the therapeutic offering beyond the medication is a key pillar of how we envisage to support patients and contribute to better treatment outcomes. Lifestyle intervention plays a critical role in controlling Impaired Fasting Glucose. With Holmusk we are glad to have found a partner who is able to deliver an evidence-based and scalable program to relevant patients across South East Asia, a region highly impacted by Prediabetes. We are also very pleased to further develop our partnership with Holmusk after their successful participation at the “Merck 350 research challenge – Changing the world of Prediabetes” in 2018.”

Dr Yau Teng Yan, Chief of Digital Therapeutics at Holmusk, said:
“This is an important step in the right direction to provide patients in Asia-Pacific with a culturally-tailored digital tool for holistic care. We’ve never been more excited to work with Merck, who is fully aligned with our vision to improve patient outcomes and pioneer beyond-the-pill solutions for its patients.”

Beginning with China, Malaysia and Hong Kong, patients with diabetes and/or prediabetes, depending on the Marketing Authorisation in each country, will be able to get access to GlycoLeap through their doctors later this year.

References

1. Vanita R. Aroda, Robert E. Ratner.Metformin and Type 2 Diabetes Prevention. Diabetes Spectrum 2018 Nov; 31(4): 336-342

_________

About Merck

Merck, a leading science and technology company, operates across healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 57,000 employees work to make a positive difference to millions of people’s lives every day by creating more joyful and sustainable ways to live. From advancing gene editing technologies and discovering unique ways to treat the most challenging diseases to enabling the intelligence of devices – the company is everywhere. In 2019, Merck generated sales of € 16.2 billion in 66 countries.

Scientific exploration and responsible entrepreneurship have been key to Merck’s technological and scientific advances. This is how Merck has thrived since its founding in 1668. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed company. Merck holds the global rights to the Merck name and brand. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the business sectors of Merck operate as EMD Serono in healthcare, MilliporeSigma in life science, and EMD Performance Materials.

About Holmusk:

Holmusk is a data science and digital therapeutics company on a mission to transform the
lives of people with behavioral health and chronic diseases through evidence-driven medicine.
Headquartered in Singapore with a global footprint, it is building the world's largest Real-World
Evidence platform for mental health and chronic diseases and enabling engaging behavioral
change programs for individuals. For more information, please visit www.holmusk.com.

SOURCE: Holmusk

Contacts:

Holmusk: 

rishi.tandon@holmusk.com

DURHAM, N.C. – Innovations in Healthcare announced the selection of ten organizations to be a part of its 2019 innovator cohort. The annual cohort was selected through a rigorous, multi-step process that sources and scouts organizations from around the world dedicated to expanding access to affordable and quality healthcare. This year, the innovator applicant pool included hundreds of global healthcare organizations operating in 109 countries.

Over the past eight years, Innovations in Healthcare has worked with more than 90 organizations through the innovators network, including the 2019 cohort, that utilize innovative methods and technology to transform healthcare and health. Innovations in Healthcare strengthens the growth and development of its innovator network; connects them with investors, funders, and other supportive networks; scales their presence; facilitates adaptation into new settings; and generates new evidence about healthcare innovations.

The 2019 innovator cohort comprises Care2Communities, Carepay Kenya, MiracleFeet, RubiconMD, SystemOne, ThinkMD, TNH Health, Twiage, Vezeeta, and Wellthy Therapeutics. These organizations’ innovations include mobile health financing solutions, chatbot nurse assistants for patient self-efficacy and education, artificial intelligence to predict health events, simplified data collection via mobile integration, IoT (Internet of Things) diagnostic devices, and more. 

 “We are thrilled to welcome such an inspiring cohort of disruptive healthcare innovators into our Network,” said executive director Krishna Udayakumar. “These organizations are improving health and healthcare in promising ways, and we look forward to collaborating closely to help scale their impact.”

About Innovations in Healthcare

Innovations in Healthcare is a nonprofit organization hosted by Duke University and founded in 2011 by Duke Health, McKinsey & Company, and the World Economic Forum. We aim to improve healthcare worldwide by supporting the scale and impact of promising innovations. We receive support from and collaborate with a global and diverse group of organizations, including corporations and foundations that are committed to strengthening and increasing the scale of healthcare innovations.

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DURHAM, N.C. – Several Duke University organizations, led by the Duke Global Health Innovation Center (GHIC), are partnering with  the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other global development organizations to evaluate the Saving Lives at Birth program and help organizations scale up maternal and newborn health innovations more quickly and sustainably.

Saving Lives at Birth:  A Grand Challenge for Development seeks groundbreaking prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the time of delivery.  The effort is funded by a partnership of international development organizations including USAID, the Government of Norway (Norad), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada), the U.K.’s Department for International Development (DFID)and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).

The Duke Global Health Innovation Center, the Duke Global Health Institute’s Evidence Lab and the Duke Center for International Development will receive up to $2.8 million over five years to evaluate the impact of the Saving Lives at Birth program and innovations, including their health and economic impact. They will also analyze the program and its portfolio in real time over the course of the next three to five years. This program will be co-led by Krishna Udayakumar, MD, MBA, director of the GHIC, and Joy Noel Baumgartner, PhD, director of the DGHI Evidence Lab.

“This is a great opportunity where Duke was able to bring together different capabilities in evaluation, innovation, and analysis of the economics of international development to help Saving Lives at Birth understand the program’s effectiveness and return on investment to date,” said Udayakumar.

“We look forward to examining how Saving Lives at Birth investments have impacted innovations that seek to move the needle on reducing maternal and neonatal deaths as well as how the program has influenced the global maternal and newborn health innovation landscape more broadly,” said Baumgartner.

The GHIC, along with non-profit global innovator and entrepreneur support organization VentureWell, will also receive up to $10.5 million from USAID over three years to accelerate the scaling and impact of dozens of innovations funded by the Saving Lives at Birth program over the past seven years. Together, they will provide tailored support and access to networks to help them bring innovations to scale.

“We will be working to build the capacity of dozens of grantees in the Saving Lives at Birth portfolio so that they are better prepared to implement innovations at scale in a sustainable way and to provide the organization as a whole with insights to refine its own scaling strategy,” added Udayakumar, who co-leads this new program with Laura Sampath, Vice President of Programs at VentureWell.

“Global health at Duke aims to have impact”, said Duke Global Health Institute director Chris Plowe, MD, MPH. “Working across multiple disciplines to evaluate effectiveness and strengthen capacity for Saving Lives at Birth is exactly what is needed to ensure that this critical work is successful and sustainable.”

“Increasing the value of global health innovations is the kind of work that Duke University does well, and is a focus of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy,” said Mark McClellan, MD, PhD, director of Duke-Margolis. “We are proud to support GHIC’s work on identifying valuable innovations, and on improving global policies to scale and sustain them.”

The November issue of the journal Health Affairs highlights three studies from Duke University and collaborators that examine implementation of accountable care worldwide, and lay out key lessons from a global analysis of accountable care reforms and frugal innovations that could improve healthcare delivery and outcomes in the United States.

Study 1: Accountable Care Reforms Improve Women's and Children's Health in Nepal

Study 2: Improving Care and Lowering Costs: Evidence and Lession from a Global Analysis of Accountable Care Reforms

Study 3: Global Lessons in Frugal Innovation to Improve Health Care Delivery in the United States

HYDERABAD: For dialysis patients in rural areas, a ride to the nearest city hospital for treatment is usually a trying one. But a state in southern India is now ensuring that it is no longer part of the deal, with a little help from a startup. 

The Andhra Pradesh government recently tied up with dialysis provider NephroPlus for setting up of dialysis centres in the state's 13 district hospitals. The partnership is a sign of how established healthcare startups in the country are forming public-private partnerships to provide affordable and quality healthcare to people living below the poverty line, and to also scale their businesses at a higher pace. 

“The problem with Obamacare is that it is focused on finding the money to pay for what good healthcare costs; instead we should be focused on lowering the cost of healthcare so that people can afford it. ”

So says Dr. Devi Shetty, a world renowned heart surgeon who owns and manages about 32 hospitals in India. At 62 years of age, he has already performed over 20,000 surgeries. That’s about five or six times the number a typical American surgeon performs over a life time. Remarkably, he has successfully performed surgery on a fetus while it was still in the womb. He was the personal physician to Mother Teresa.

Fast Company names Noora Health as one of the top-50 most innovative companies for 2016!

The right answers to a lot of the most vexing problems in health care delivery are already out there. The trick is to find those solutions in action and amplify them.

At Innovations in Healthcare, we believe that the right answers to a lot of the most vexing problems in healthcare delivery are already out there. Our job is to identify and amplify healthcare innovation around the world.

"I had just attended too many funerals, people dying from completely preventable causes and treatable diseases.

Stephanie Koczela is one of the founders of Penda Health, and she's explaining what motivated her and her colleagues to open their first clinic in the town of Kitengela.

The BasicNeeds Model has the potential to enhance community collaborations and empower those affected by mental illness in fragmented, resource-poor systems of care in the U.S.

BasicNeeds is excited to share recent progress on our planning to adapt and implement the BasicNeeds Model for Mental Health and Development to address mental health and community development needs in the United States. In partnership with Innovations in Healthcare at Duke University, BasicNeeds is nine months into a detailed exploration of replicating the model in the U.S. At this important juncture, the joint team has thoroughly examined the feasibility of applying the BasicNeeds Model to the U.S. context, and is beginning to envision and plan for implementation.

A provider of low-cost, high-quality ophthalmic care to Mexico’s mid- and low-income populations, salauno, has joined the Business Call to Action with a plan to increase the number of patients it treats each year and expand its reach in Latin America by 2020. BCtA is a global initiative that encourages companies to fight poverty through inclusive business models. It is supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and other international organisations.

Edith Elliott co-founded a nonprofit called Noora Health to help parents, spouses and others lighten the burdens in Indian hospitals.

“A technology only solution isn’t going to get us anywhere,” says Shelly Saxena.

He’s referring to the growing number of social enterprises and development initiatives that use mobile phones and telemedicine to deliver healthcare in India. 

“Whether you’re poor, middle class, or wealthy, you want to see a doctor, and you would prefer to see that doctor in person,” he says.

That’s why Saxena developed Sevamob, a hybrid solution to solve India’s healthcare woes– a mobile clinic that arrives on wheels, stays camped out for the duration of the checkups, provides the patient with test results and even basic treatments, and then leaves.

For the Colemans and Riders for Health, winning means nothing less than a new health-care delivery equilibrium on a continent that desperately needs one. Today, on virtually every relevant health indicator, Africa lags. Life expectancy is 10 years shorter than the rest of the world. Child mortality is double the global average. Whereas the United States has 2.4 doctors for every thousand citizens, sub-Saharan Africa has just 0.2. Across the region, some thirty thousand children under the age of five die every day from diseases that are easily treated or prevented with available vaccines and medicines, including diarrhea, measles, and malaria. Immunization programs, even with the massive scale-up in supply made possible by the multilateral Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (“Global Fund”) and a host of NGOs, still fail to reach an estimated 22 million children. Progress remains difficult, despite stated commitments to millennium development goals, decades of foreign aid, and billions of dollars in philanthropy.

BasicNeeds Ghana, a mental health care program based in Tamale and similar to Mr. Akandem’s, spends about $8 per client per month on average, according to Peter Yaro, its executive director. In the United States, it costs $200 to $700 for a single appointment with a psychiatrist.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has provided $280,000 through the Charities Aid Foundation of America for a trial of BasicNeeds’s model in underserved areas of the United States. “It’s part of a growing recognition that programs that are really effective in low-income countries, we can learn from them,” said Deborah Bae, a senior program officer at the foundation.

 Sproxil®, a leading global provider of innovative brand protection and loyalty solutions, and Mobile Health Management Company (mHealth Company), a pioneer within the mobile healthcare space in Saudi Arabia, have established a partnership to bring Sproxil’s award-winning Mobile Product Authentication™ (MPA™) technology to the Saudi Arabian market. mHealth Company will offer MPA alongside its suite of mHealth services, including the YourHealth® tool, which allows users to subscribe to receive interactive content on healthy living in multiple languages.

Sometimes the mind seems to have been left behind. Despite tremendous progress in other branches of medicine, mental health services fail millions who need them, the pharmaceutical armamentarium is inadequate, stigma remains a tremendous impediment to care, and the power of early intervention has not been adequately harnessed. Although researchers and practitioners recognize the influence of social context on mental health, it is too often ignored, especially in resource-poor settings. Teen suicide, depression, including slow-to-be recognized post-partum depression, and age-related dementia are all reminders of unmet needs. How do we get people to view mental health as a basic human right? How do we reduce treatment disparities, develop effective new drugs, and strengthen community health services? Do we need radically new approaches?

Speakers: 
Pamela Collins
Chris Underhill
Seema Yasmin, Moderator

BasicNeeds's work in Pakistan is featured in this segment from PBS News Hour.  "Although up to 40 percent of the population could have mental health issues, getting help isn’t easy in Pakistan. The stigma against mental illness is prevalent, and even for those who do want to get help, psychiatrists are in short supply. As part of our “Agents For Change” series, Fred de Sam Lazaro looks at the efforts being made to change this situation."

When Dr. Laura Stachel stepped into a maternal health clinic in Nigeria for the first time in 2008, she was “stunned and appalled,” the obstetrician-gynecologist told KQED. The off-grid facility was so strapped for resources that, at night, the midwives delivered babies just by light of candles or kerosene lamps. Those conditions would prove precarious for any birth, but were particularly hazardous when a woman experienced such complications as seizures related to preeclampsia.

Baby Fatima, a three-year-old from Lahore, will be able to enjoy full and healthy eye sight thanks to the efforts of a team of doctors at the Hyderabad based LV Prasad Eye Institute.

Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, MD, MBA, is head of global innovation for Duke Medicine. Through Duke Medicine Global, he works closely with leaders across the medical center to expand Duke's international activities and develop global partnerships across translational and clinical research, global health, education and training, health care delivery, health care management, and related areas. Udayakumar also serves as Executive Director of the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery, a non-profit organization affiliated with Duke Medicine that seeks to support innovators to scale and replicate successful health care delivery solutions globally.

The global health innovation space can be crowded and confusing. Everyone is looking for ways to expand access to quality, affordable care, but one-size-fits-all solutions are nearly impossible to find. An innovation that works well in Africa is not always going to be successful in Mexico or Vietnam or India. The recent International Partnership of Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD) Annual Forum held in Washington, D.C., explored the topic of health innovation replication across populations and from our vantage point (the author is IPIHD’s project manager), there are some guideposts that can help innovators, funders and policymakers get a better handle on how to work effectively in the health innovation space. 

For the past few decades, global health has been the poster child for development aid. Images abound of young African children receiving a vaccine droplet from a Western doctor, aid workers distributing malaria nets in remote villages, and—most recently and poignantly—medical workers covered head to toe in yellow protective suits treating Ebola patients. These images, and the aid they represent, are not inaccurate—donors spent $31.3 billion on global health in 2013, five times the amount spent in 1990—but they are incomplete.

On March 23-24, the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD) held its 4th Annual Forum in Washington, D.C. The forum, which brought together a diverse group of LMIC healthcare innovators (part of the IPIHD innovator network), impact investors, foundation and government donors, and NGOs, explored challenges, lessons learned, and opportunities for achieving quality, access and affordability of healthcare delivery through innovation. Select highlights from the event were captured by the Hub team.

When one thinks of comic book superheroes, colorful characters saving the world in spandex and capes often come to mind. But one afternoon in Washington, D.C., I came across an entirely different kind of comic book superhero: Nia. Nia, whose name means “purpose” in Kiswahili, is a friendly, motivated, adventurous student and the dynamic superhero created by ZanaAfrica, a social enterprise-hybrid-organization that provides affordable sanitary pads and relevant health information to women and girls in East Africa. On the pink and purple pages of the comic book, Nia and her friends explain, in a fun and interactive way, what happens to a girl’s body during menstruation, providing advice, encouragement, and loads of information.

Sylvia Sable, MSc-GH ’13, began her global health journey as an undergraduate at Cornell University, where she majored in “biology and society”—a combination of hard science and humanities courses—and minored in global health and nutrition. After completing fieldwork in Tanzania, she knew she wanted to pursue a global health career.

She was attracted to Duke’s global health master’s degree program because of its strong emphasis on research, a skill she knew would be important to her success in the field of global health. But the most formative experience of the program for Sable was the opportunity not only to learn rigorous research methods, but to simultaneously apply what she was learning to a broader health system context through an intensive internship.

Leamington Spa, UK – BasicNeeds is delighted to have been awarded $280,000 by Charities Aid Foundation of America from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Donor-Advised Fund to assess the feasibility of implementing its Model for Mental Health and Development in the United States. The 15- month project begins this month in collaboration with BasicNeeds UK, BasicNeeds US, and the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD) which is hosted by Duke University.

Funded by USAID, the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD) aims to engage faculty and students to increase the impact of health entrepreneurs and the broader development community. With a network of healthcare innovators in East Africa and India, SEAD is well-positioned to collaboratively develop and test “innovator-friendly” evaluation methods geared toward providing credible evidence for future business engagement and financing. To this end, SEAD recently signed an agreement with the Duke Global Health Institute’s Evidence Lab to create, pilot and finalize an evaluation toolkit for health entrepreneurs.

Shelley Saxena, a mobile technology entrepreneur in Atlanta, had a head start when he launched Sevamob, a distribution system for low-cost preventive health services across India. But that didn’t save him from having to make a few strategic pivots as his new business grew.

Whether delivering babies at one-sixth the cost of comparable providers in the United States, creating a “one-stop-shop” for diabetes care, performing heart surgery for $2,000 (compared to $20,000 to $100,000 in the U.S.) or building mobile platforms to help diagnose patients remotely, solutions to some of our most pressing health problems are already at hand – just not yet in the U.S.

Imagine you are responsible for healthcare in a country where 30 million people are in poverty because of healthcare costs, where you are contending with communicable diseases eradicated in many parts of the world as well as the rising prevalence on non-communicable disease, where the number of hospital beds and doctors per head of population is half the international average and the numbers of nurses and midwives a third. What would you do to deliver the highest quality care at the lowest possible cost? 

Visiting The LV Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI) in Hyderabad as part of the IPIHD study tour, I was expecting to see something along the lines of Aravind's high volume, high quality and low cost cataract care. I expected to be impressed but I was less sure whether there would be lessons for the NHS with its responsibility for comprehensive coverage. I couldn't have been more wrong. 

Much has been said and written over the past few years about the work of Dr Devi Shetty and the Narayana Health system. With 17 hospitals covering a full range of specialities and employing 1300 doctors, it’s one of India's largest – and the world's most economical – healthcare providers with a reputation for its ability to reconcile quality, affordability and scale. 

Have you ever had a meeting that ended with one of the participants rushing off to perform open-heart surgery? Me neither.

So I was surprised to learn that my boss Richard Bartlett, associate director of the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD), rushed out of his meeting at Narayana Health, quickly changed from business tie and cufflinks to blue scrubs, and sprinted to the operating room to observe his first open-heart surgery – performed by the senior surgeon he had just been meeting with moments earlier.