As attention turns to new drugs that can address the growing burden of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in an aging global population, Retispec Inc. has developed a noninvasive test that may be able to detect early signs of the neurodegenerative disease decades before clinical symptoms appear – and when therapies appear to be most helpful in slowing or reversing Alzheimer’s. By using “off-the-shelf” ophthalmic equipment, the Toronto-based company’s solution enables assessment by optometrists or other eye professionals during a standard eye exam.

Know Labs Inc. has received approval from an independent institutional review board for an internal clinical study of its noninvasive glucose monitoring technology. The aim is to further validate the Bio-RFID (radio frequency identification) platform’s ability to accurately measure and detect changes in blood glucose levels. The study will be conducted at the Seattle-based company’s new research and development laboratory and include 200 subjects.

Glooko Inc. acquired Xbird GmbH to further build out its diabetes management platform by adding Xbird’s just-in-time artificial intelligence (JITAI) system to provide adaptive interventions that can enable better informed decision making in the moment. The company declined to provide details of the transaction.

Israel and U.S.-based Rsip Vision Ltd. has released a new supporting technology for intraoperative video analysis. The company says its offering provides real-time and accurate anatomical measurements in surgical videos. This supports a variety of clinical use cases, such as bariatric surgery and small bowel resection.

Stockholm-based Alex Therapeutics AB is joining forces with pharmaceutical company Pfizer Inc. to roll out digital therapies to patients in Germany. The partnership will utilize Alex Therapeutics' Alex DTx platform for nicotine addiction in Germany. The platform combines cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy with artificial intelligence (AI) to create treatments for a wide range of psychiatric and somatic disorders.

A year after announcing its intention to sell most of the assets of IBM Watson Health, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) finally reached an agreement with Francisco Partners. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2022, were not disclosed. The gutting of Watson Health comes less than two months after IBM spun off its $19 billion managed technology services business, Kyndryl Holdings as a standalone company.

A homegrown company in Pakistan has developed a multi-grip bionic arm that aims to mimic the movement of real limbs while costing a fraction of what prosthetic arms normally cost. Anas Niaz and Ovais Qurshi founded Karachi-based Bioniks Pte. Ltd. in 2018 to developed efficient and low-cost robotic prosthetic limbs.

Canadian company Future Fertility Inc. is hatching plans to expand the user base for its flagship egg prediction software product, Violet, for egg cryopreservation. The noninvasive image analysis tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate the reproductive potential of mature eggs. Investors are backing the Toronto-based company with $6 million in series A funds, so it can expand internationally and develop additional assessment products.

Cancer trials that stratify patients using biomarkers increase their likelihood of proceeding to the next phase more than 500% compared to trials run without biomarkers, Canadian researchers recently determined, and biotech companies have invested heavily in identifying new biomarkers for a wide range of applications. Genialis Inc. has tackled the problem of huge investment in biomarkers with little return by developing a platform that combines artificial intelligence and machine learning.

PARIS – Milvue SAS completed a series A round, raising more than $9 million towards deployment of its artificial intelligence-based software solution used for diagnosis and full triage of osteoarticular pathologies in emergency departments.