News Briefs

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and LifeMap Solutions, a digital-health subsidiary of BioTime, announced initial results and new clinical features for their free Asthma Health app. Released six months ago, the app enables individuals with asthma to participate in a large-scale medical research study through their Apple iPhones. The app’s newest features — a “Doctor Dashboard” and integration with the Epic electronic health record system — will help Asthma Health study participants to use the app with their physicians. (For more on the asthma-focused partnership, see “LifeMap Solutions Teams Up with Mount Sinai on Digital Health.”) Press release

Results of a TactioRPM pilot project in a senior home were presented at the Stanford Medicine X Conference. The pilot, a joint effort between Tactio Health Group and Pharmacy 3.0, equipped 40 residents between the ages of 60 and 89 with health monitoring devices including scales, blood pressure monitors and glucometers, and activity trackers, connected wirelessly to either an iPad-hosted dashboard app or a digital hub that was deployed both at the pharmacy and at the senior facility. The initiative is now expanding to three additional facilities, while the Quebec-based pharmacy chain that funded the pilot plans to deploy TactioRPM in 15 of its pharmacies this fall. Press release

Tute Genomics entered a commercial partnership with Genatak, a large center for genomic medicine in the Middle East. Genatak recently deployed Tute Genomics’ cloud-based platform to advance and scale the center’s genetic diagnostic service, and now plans to make the platform available directly to other clinical laboratories and hospitals throughout the Middle East. Press release

Veeva Systems acquired Zinc Ahead, a provider of commercial content management solutions. Zinc Ahead serves more than 120 life sciences companies with Zinc MAPS, while Veeva Systems’ solution Vault PromoMats is now utilized by more than 70 customers. The joint company will offer a software and services solution for digital content creation, review, and multichannel approval and withdrawal, combining elements of both companies’ platforms. Press release

goBalto announced a two-year partnership with the Society for Clinical Research Sites (SCRS), a global trade organization dedicated to representing the interests of clinical research sites. Under the agreement, goBalto will participate as a Global Impact Partner, participating in dialogue between industry stakeholders and clinical research sites. Press release

The tranSMART Foundation, a non-profit organization providing a global, open-source knowledge management platform for scientists to share pre-competitive translational research data, announced that its 2015 tranSMART Annual Meeting will be held October 19-21, 2015 at the National Cancer Institute of the Netherlands in Amsterdam. The conference will include keynote presentations, training sessions, and a Hackathon. There will also be a summary of the Foundation's first Datathon that was held this summer on Cross Neurodegenerative Diseases. Meeting page

New Products

RxEOB partnered with nonprofit pharmacy benefits manager SelectHealth to create a new mobile pharmacy benefits application. Available now for download through Google Play and iTunes, the SelectHealth member app incorporates modules from RxEOB’s personal mobile pharmacy benefits application, emWellics. Like emWellics, which lets users find drug pricing estimates, the SelectHealth app is designed to help members save on their medication purchases. Additionally, the app allows SelectHealth members to view their ID cards, find in-network doctors and pharmacies based on location, and look up claims. Press release

Riffyn announced the upcoming beta launch of its experimental design software for quality and collaboration in life science, chemical and materials R&D. Riffyn’s cloud-based software includes visual design of experiments, real-time data integration, 24/7 analytics and peer-to-peer sharing. Access to Riffyn will be free for both academic and industrial researchers. Press release

CRF Health introduced an eCOA solution to eliminate data collection challenges and reduce patient burden in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) trials. CRF Health's TrialMax eCOA solution provides electronic versions of the St. George's Hospital Respiratory Questionnaire for COPD patients (SGRQ-C) and the COPD Assessment Test (CAT). The result is an eCOA solution that includes activity monitor data, patient-reported outcome and symptom data. The SGRQ-C and CAT instruments have undergone electronic equivalence testing on the TrialMax eCOA solution to demonstrate that the questionnaires are interpreted and responded to in the same way as their paper counterparts. Press release