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Category: Therapeutics

Biotech Startup Innovent Files for Hong Kong Debut

Innovent Biologics, a Chinese biomedical developer backed by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong after the bourse opened the door for pre-profit biotech startups to list.

Innovent didn’t disclose the size of the planned IPO in its prospectus submitted to the Hong Kong stock exchange last week. Reuters reported earlier that the company is looking to raise between $300 million and $500 million. Innovent said funds raised from the IPO will be used to accelerate its clinical trial work and commercialization of drugs.

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Orchard Therapeutics Appoints Jim Geraghty as Chairman of its Board of Directors

BOSTON and LONDON — Orchard Therapeutics, a leading commercial-stage biotech company dedicated to transforming the lives of patients with rare diseases through innovative gene therapies, today announced the appointment of Jim Geraghty as chairman of its board of directors. Ben Auspitz, a partner at F-Prime Capital, who served as Orchard’s chairman since 2016, will transition from his current role on the board.

“Orchard is privileged to have Jim join its board of directors at this crucial phase in the company’s lifecycle, given his unique experience and insights in building a global organization over the long-term,” said Ben Auspitz. “At Genzyme, Jim played an important role in the company’s transformation from a start-up with a strong technology base in the 1980s to a leading global rare disease company. Orchard has the potential to undergo a similar transformation as a leader of the gene therapy revolution and will greatly benefit from Jim’s experience.”

Jim Geraghty is an industry leader with over 30 years of strategic experience including more than 20 years as a senior executive at biotechnology companies developing and commercializing innovative therapies. Over his career, Jim served as senior vice president, North America strategy and business development at Sanofi, and previously as senior vice president international development at Genzyme, president of Genzyme Europe, and founding president and CEO of Genzyme Transgenics.

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BurstIQ Blockchain Healthcare Company Partners with VitalWare For Business Expansion

BurstIQ Inc has announced its partnership with VitalWareTM, LLC, a leading revenue cycle SaaS solutions provider specializing in Health-IT technologies and the delivery of the most comprehensive regulatory code library and auditing tools in the healthcare industry.

BurstIQ, Inc.,is an industry-leading blockchain enablement company, offering enterprise-level blockchain solutions for the health and healthcare industry.

A Win-Win partnership

VitalWare, the Washington-based firm that provides revenue cycle management services to over 600 hospitals nationwide, says the partnership will help it scale.

On its part BurstIQ said VitalWare has been recognized multiple times as one of the fastest-growing and most disruptive companies in the healthcare industry. It added that the partnership will bring its blockchain-based data platform to VitalWare’s client base of over 600 hospitals and demonstrate the value that the platform can provide to health systems.

BurstIQ’s proprietary blockchain-based big data platform will enable VitalWare to securely manage clients’ data at scale, automate key processes and gain new insights through the platform’s machine learning capabilities.

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University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) to Utilize Kyruus Technology to Enhance Patient Access and Patient-Provider Matching

BOSTON — Kyruus, a leader in provider search and scheduling solutions for health systems, today announced that the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), has selected the company’s ProviderMatch for Access Centers solution to optimize patient access to its network of providers across the state of Mississippi. The only academic medical center in the state, UMMC includes 800-plus providers who deliver care at 170 locations, including the organization’s six hospitals. ProviderMatch for Access Centers will make it easier for call center agents to identify the right provider for patients’ needs, enabling more precise patient-provider matching to support both patient and provider satisfaction.

With its network of providers delivering care to over 600,000 patients a year across 82 counties, UMMC first needed a modern solution that would enable it to gain a single point of access to provider information and a deeper level of insight into providers’ areas of expertise. The KyruusOne™ provider data management platform – which powers each of the ProviderMatch solutions – offered that consolidated view, along with comprehensive provider profiles configured using Kyruus’ 16,000-term clinical taxonomy. The taxonomy allows providers to indicate what they do at a detailed level, going beyond specialty and subspecialty to include specific conditions and procedures, so call center agents have more of the information they need at their fingertips.

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WelbeHealth Raises $15 Million Series B to Accelerate Growth of Innovative Care Programs for Seniors

MENLO PARK, Calif. — WelbeHealth, a healthcare services company delivering coordinated and value-based care to medically frail seniors, today announced that it raised a $15 million Series B financing. The financing was co-led by Longitude Capital and Ulysses Diversified Holdings (Ulysses) with participation from former Medicare Chief Andy Slavitt’s Town Hall Ventures, as well as existing investors F-Prime Capital and .406 Ventures. In conjunction with the financing, Gregory Grunberg, M.D., Managing Director of Longitude Capital, and Errik Anderson, Founder and Managing Partner of Ulysses, joined WelbeHealth’s board of directors.

“We are thrilled to have the support of our new and our existing investors,” said Si France, M.D., co-founder and CEO of WelbeHealth. “The healthcare expertise Longitude and Ulysses bring to the company will be incredibly valuable as we seek to execute our mission of serving the most vulnerable seniors with greater quality and compassion in a value-based model.”

The proceeds from the financing will be used to support the launch of WelbeHealth’s Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), which deliver comprehensive healthcare to the most vulnerable elderly patients. PACE serves medically frail, Medicare-Medicaid eligible seniors who would otherwise qualify to live in state-funded nursing homes. WelbeHealth’s model of care leverages industry leading technologies to support highly coordinated interdisciplinary care teams and cultivates a service-oriented mentality in attending to each individual patient’s health and social needs.

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Precision BioSciences Raises $110M to Advance ARCUS Genome Editing Programs

DURHAM, N.C. — Precision BioSciences today announced the closing of an oversubscribed $110M Series B financing to further product development efforts based on its ARCUS® genome editing platform. The financing was led by ArrowMark Partners and was joined by new investors Franklin Templeton Investments, Cowen Healthcare Investments, Brace Pharma Capital, Pontifax AgTech, OCV Partners, Adage Capital Management, Cormorant Asset Management, Gilead Sciences, Vivo Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, Ridgeback Capital, Agent Capital, and entities affiliated with Leerink Partners. Existing investors venBio, F-Prime, RA Capital Management, Amgen Ventures, Osage University Partners, DUMAC, and the Longevity Fund also participated in the financing.

Precision intends to expand applications of its ARCUS genome editing platform in the areas of immuno-oncology, genetic disease, and food on its way to building a fully integrated biotechnology company. ARCUS is Precision’s proprietary, homing endonuclease-derived genome editing platform that leverages the small size and high specificity of a natural genome editing system. During 2018, Precision plans to utilize the proceeds from this financing to accelerate and expand its product portfolio. Specifically, Precision targets taking its lead, off-the-shelf CAR-T product into the clinic while advancing both its lead in vivo gene therapy program into IND-enabling studies and its flagship food program into field trials.

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Italian Pharmaceutical Manufacturer and CMO, IBI Lorenzini, Selects TraceLink to Comply with Global Serialization Regulations

NORTH READING — TraceLink Inc., the World’s Largest Track and Trace Network for connecting the life sciences supply chain and providing real-time information sharing for better patient outcomes, today announced that IBI Lorenzini has selected TraceLink’s solutions to ensure compliance with global serialization regulations.

IBI Lorenzini, IBIGEN group, is an Italian-based, family-run pharmaceutical company and contract manufacturing organization (CMO) that was founded over 100 years ago. IBI’s pharmaceutical products are distributed in 20 countries across all five continents, including Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and the U.S., which accounts for 80% of its exports. In 1961, IBI obtained FDA approval for the production of sterile penicillin for the U.S. market.

“IBI Lorenzini is a unique business, operating as both a pharmaceutical company and a CMO in a number of markets, which adds an additional layer of complexity when implementing a serialization solution. After careful analysis of serialization solutions and a strong recommendation from our pharmaceutical brand customers, we selected TraceLink’s Life Sciences Cloud platform to deliver the flexibility and scalability we needed to connect with both our partners and customers as quickly and efficiently as possible, while providing a simple connection into the EU Hub,” said Luca Pezzano, Operations Director at IBI Lorenzini.

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BurstIQ Announces Partnership with VitalWare(TM), Bringing Blockchain to Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management

DENVER — BurstIQ, Inc., a leading healthcare blockchain data company, announced today a major OEM integration with VitalWareTM, LLC, one of the fastest growing companies in the healthcare industry. The Washington-based firm provides revenue cycle management services to over 600 hospitals nationwide. BurstIQ’s proprietary blockchain-based big data platform will enable VitalWare to securely manage clients’ data at scale, automate key processes and gain new insights through the platform’s machine learning capabilities.

VitalWare’s suite of revenue cycle solutions and services addresses all aspects of mid-revenue cycle management, including documentation, coding, charge capture, auditing and lost revenue recovery. Incorporating BurstIQ’s proprietary blockchain-based health data platform will allow VitalWare to apply advanced analytics and machine learning to their services – gaining new insights that provide significant value for their health system clients. In addition, the platform hosted on VitalWare’s private cloud will significantly improve data security and automate key knowledge processes.

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Surface Oncology Recognized as one of the “Best Places to Work” by Boston Business Journal

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Surface Oncology (NASDAQ:SURF), a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company developing next-generation immunotherapies that target the tumor microenvironment, today announced that it has been recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in 2018 by the Boston Business Journal.

The award was presented last night during a special event at Boston’s Symphony Hall. Ten members of the Surface team, including Vice President for Human Resources Lisa McGrath, were on hand to accept the award for the small company (50 to 99 employees) category.

“It is an honor to be recognized as one of the Boston Business Journal’s Best Places to Work,” said McGrath. “We dedicated ourselves to becoming a company with not only a clear scientific and patient focus, but also one with a strong sense of community and shared purpose. Our employees have been our foundation since the beginning, and as we grow we will continue to foster a workplace built on collaboration, development and mutual respect.”

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VitalWare™ Introduces Advanced Charge Auditing Capabilities within Existing VitalAuditor™ Tool

VitalWare, a leading provider of revenue cycle SaaS solutions, today introduced ChargeAssuranceTM, a new solution with advanced features to add charge audit capabilities within the existing VitalAuditorTM mid-revenue cycle solution.

VitalAuditor™ gives our healthcare provider partners a granular view of their mid-revenue cycle performance through retrospective claims auditing and coding analytics. With the addition of the ChargeAssurance module, VitalAuditor now assists healthcare providers in building world-class charge assurance processes across inpatient and outpatient service lines. With our automated compliant charging and coding analytics, ChargeAssurance identifies missed charges and overcharges that can be tracked to the root cause level. The resolution of those charging issues leads to improved compliance, cost capture, and increased revenue. By adding ChargeAssurance, providers minimize revenue leakage, see less over- and undercharges, and impact coding and billing practices that lead to a more efficiently run mid-revenue cycle.

Kerry Martin, CEO of VitalWare, comments “I am very excited to add ChargeAssurance functionality to our VitalAuditor platform and assist our hospital clients in finding additional revenue to further their ability to care for patients.”

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