PARIS – Biospectal SA has just closed a $4.3 million seed round to scale its Optibp smartphone blood pressure monitoring application and data platform technology worldwide.
PARIS – At some point, scientists reported, it may be possible to quarantine viruses rather than humans. For the last two years, European research consortium Virofight has been working on a form of nanotechnology intended to neutralize viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, HIV, influenza and hepatitis viruses.
PARIS – Peek Health SA raised $3.5 million in series A funding to ramp development of its 3D pre-op digital planning tools used in orthopedic surgery. This investment was led by two Portuguese venture capital firms: Grosvenor House of Investments SCR SA and Portugal Ventures SA.
PARIS – French sovereign bank Bpifrance SA, the Digital Health Agency (ANS) and Impact Healthcare SAS have just published results from the first survey on progress being made by digital health startups in France. The survey, with financial support from Astrazeneca plc from the U.K. and French law firm Delsol Avocats Selarl, was carried out among roughly 100 founders of digital health startups in France. It reveals a lot of information relating to the progress made by digital health projects 18 months following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is a matter of recognizing there are barriers to the French market even though e-health products and services are booming following the COVID-19 crisis,” Jean-Yves Robin, managing director of Impact Healthcare and co-author of the study, told BioWorld.
PARIS – The French government reported setting up the “Artificial Intelligence and Cancer” association, a public-private partnership that brings together the French National Cancer Institute (INCA), the Health Data Hub and the Health Industry Alliance for Research and Innovation (ARIIS), along with eight commercial firms. The eight commercial firms, whose identities have not yet been released, are drawn from a large consortium of pharmaceutical and information technology firms and health care insurers, that has been around since 2019.
PARIS – Royal Philips NV is working with the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) on an ultrafast cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocol that could reduce scanning times to just a few minutes.
PARIS – Aleva Neurotherapeutics SA reported the first successful implantation of its Directstim directional deep brain stimulation (DBS) system into a patient suffering from Parkinson’s disease. The procedure involving this new generation of active brain device was performed by neurosurgeon Stephan Sobottka, from the Clinic for Neurosurgery at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus in Dresden, Germany.
PARIS ‒ Kiomed Pharma SA reported it has signed an exclusive agreement with fellow Belgian company, Moveup SA for the development and licensing of a mobile companion application intended for personalized conservative management treatment for patients suffering from intra-articular osteoarthritis.
PARIS – One year on from launch, Digitale Gesundheitsanwendungen (DiGA), or digital health applications, are gaining widespread acceptance in Germany. Digital therapeutics (DTx) have been available since 2020 to the 73 million people in Germany covered by public health.
