Biopharma industry leaders in China who were the first to experience the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic shared their thoughts during a closing plenary session of the virtual Bio-Europe Spring 2020 meeting.

The U.S. FDA has OK’d expanded labeling for Physiq Inc.’s continuous remote monitoring system, Pinpointiq, for use during the COVID-19 pandemic. The machine learning-based platform, including Multivariate Change Index (MCI), will allow clinicians to track physiologic changes in homebound, quarantined or high-risk patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 – freeing up hospital beds for the most severe cases and reducing exposure of doctors and nurses to the highly contagious disease.

Leuven, Belgium-based Midiagnostics NV, which is looking to bring miniaturized, rapid, blood-based tests with built-in connectivity to both patients and clinicians, reported the completion of a €14 million (US$15.4 million) investment round. The company intends to use the funds to speed the development of its nanofluidic processor on a chip and prepare it for industrial-scale manufacturing.

More than a dozen robotics researchers expressed the need for robots to play a greater role in managing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, as well as in future preparedness. They pointed to three broad medical areas where robots can make a difference: clinical care with applications such as telemedicine and decontamination; logistics for delivery and handling of medical waste; and reconnaissance such as quarantine enforcement.

TORONTO – That old military saw “an army marches on its stomach” might just as easily apply to transport of much needed ventilators for patients suffering from the coronavirus. Mounting systems for ground and air ambulances like the Bracket Pro Serie for Ventilators launched March 5 by Quebec City-based Technimount System Inc. are the “soldiers” carrying ventilators and other medical devices for hospital bound patients, Technimount CEO Carl Bouchard told BioWorld.