Affimed, MD Anderson in Immuno-Oncology Development Collaboration

Affimed N.V. (Nasdaq:AFMD), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing highly targeted cancer immunotherapies, and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center today announced an exclusive strategic clinical development and commercialization collaboration to evaluate Affimed’s TandAb technology in combination with MD Anderson’s natural killer cell (NK) product.

NK-cells are white blood cells which monitor the body for infected and cancerous cells. The technology to grow NK-cells from umbilical cord blood was developed at MD Anderson.

This collaboration will leverage MD Anderson’s expertise in NK-cells and translational medicine, and Affimed’s capabilities to develop tumor-targeting bispecific TandAb immune cell engagers.

“In our effort to broaden the applications of our NK-cell engager products, we are excited to partner with the world-leading NK-cell experts at MD Anderson to investigate their unique product together with our first-in-class NK-cell engager AFM13 in Hodgkin lymphoma,” said Adi Hoess, Ph.D., CEO of Affimed. “Harnessing the advantages of both antibody-based and cell therapy approaches has the potential to better exploit the therapeutic activity of NK-cells. We believe this partnership could benefit many hematological malignancies, including in multiple myeloma, where Affimed is developing AFM26, a BCMA/CD16A bispecific antibody. For us, this partnership is an important step in executing our strategy to develop transformative cancer therapies.”

Collaborative studies will research, develop, and eventually commercialize novel oncology therapeutics resulting from this combination of products. MD Anderson will be responsible for conducting preclinical research activities aimed at investigating its NK-cells derived from umbilical cord blood in combination with Affimed’s lead NK-cell engager, the CD30- and CD16A-targeting TandAb AFM13. These are intended to be followed by a Phase 1 clinical trial. Affimed will fund research and development expenses for this collaboration and the agreement includes a provision for the potential expansion of the partnership. Affimed holds an option to exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize any product developed under the collaboration.

“We look forward to joining the cord blood-derived NK-cells developed at MD Anderson with our collaborator’s technology which we believe will benefit our patients,” said Katayoun Rezvani, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at MD Anderson.

AFM13 is a bispecific NK-cell TandAb simultaneously targeting CD16A on NK-cells and CD30 on tumor cells. AFM13 is designed to treat CD30-positive malignancies including Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and T-cell lymphoma (TCL) and is currently in Phase 2 development in HL patients. Based on its safety profile, AFM13 is being developed both as monotherapy and in combination with other therapeutics such as Merck’s checkpoint inhibitor KEYTRUDA^®.

Elizabeth Shpall, M.D., professor of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy at MD Anderson, and Rezvani’s co-leader on the project, believes the collaboration “holds true potential to produce a novel cellular therapeutic for the treatment of high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma.”

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/01/04/903097/0/en/Affimed-and-MD-Anderson-Announce-Clinical-Immuno-Oncology-Development-Collaboration.html

Olfactory Ensheathing Cells May Open New Route to Glioblastoma Therapy

A special type of cell essential to the ability of olfactory neurons to regenerate may be genetically engineered to deliver anticancer therapy to glioblastomas, according to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers who published their study (“Olfactory Ensheathing Cells: A Trojan Horse for Glioma Gene Therapy”) in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The team describes using olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) to deliver an anticancer agent only to tumor cells and how the treatment reduced tumor size and prolonged survival in a mouse model.

“We show for the first time that autologous transplantation of OECs can target and deliver therapeutic transgenes to brain tumors upon intranasal delivery, the natural route of OECs to the CNS, which could be extended to other types of cancer,” write the investigators.

“Glioblastomas are the most aggressive and malignant type of brain tumors, and despite intensive treatment with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, they almost always recur, leading to a five-year survival rate of less than 10%,” says senior author Bakhos Tannous, PhD, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, and associate neuroscientist at the neuro-oncology division in the MGH department of neurology. “Olfactory ensheathing cells, which are present in the nose throughout life in all mammals, including humans, can migrate from the nasal cavity to sites of inflammation and have the potential of acting as a ‘Trojan horse,’ delivering cell-killing therapies that bypass the barriers that keep other anticancer agents out of the brain.”

Olfactory neurons have the ability to regenerate, which is rare within the nervous system. New neurons in the nasal cavity must project axons to the olfactory bulb within the brain itself. OECs surround the growing axons, assisting in their regeneration and also engulfing debris from dead and damaged cells. The ability of OECs to promote neural regeneration has led to studies of their potential in the treatment of spinal cord injuries and the neurodegenerative disorder amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Because of the direct connection between the nasal cavity and the brain, intranasal drug delivery is being studied as a means of bypassing the blood-brain barrier. The ability of OECs to travel into the brain and their attraction to inflammatory molecules, including those secreted by tumor cells, led the MGH team to investigate their potential use against glioblastomas. They first showed that labeled OECs introduced into the nasal cavity of mice with experimentally induced human gliomas not only traveled to sites where tumor cells had been injected but also followed tumor-initiating cells as they infiltrated adjacent brain tissue.

The team then genetically engineered OECs to express fusion protein CU that converts nontoxic prodrug 5-FC into a cell-killing chemotherapy agent (5-FU). After confirming in cellular experiments the ability of CU-expressing OECs to convert 5-FC to 5-FU, leading to the death of tumor cells, the team administered either CU-expressing OECs or a control agent into the nasal cavities of mice a week after tumor-initiating cells had been injected into the animals’ brains. Seven days later, both groups of animals received daily injections of 5-FC for another seven days. Two weeks after that, mice that had received the transgenic OECs has significantly smaller tumors at the injection site, less tumor migration through the brain, and greater death of tumor cells than the control group. The single OEC treatment also led to significantly longer average survival among the treated mice.

“Our findings indicate that, upon intranasal delivery, CU-expressing OECs migrate through their natural route towards the brain, target brain tumors in a very specific manner and convert 5-FC into an active 5-FU drug at the tumor site, leading to an efficient, tumor-cell-killing effect through what is called a ‘bystander effect’,” says Litia Carvalho, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Tannous’s lab and the lead author of the study.

Dr. Tannous adds, “Due to their strong attraction to inflammatory cues secreted by tumor cells, we believe OECs could be used as a therapeutic tool against different types of brain cancer and tumors located in other parts of the body, something we are actively investigating.”

https://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/olfactory-ensheathing-cells-may-open-new-route-to-glioblastoma-therapy/81256278

Best way to avoid back pain? Lift heavy things

Most people think that the human spine is one of evolution’s great flaws. After all, around 80 per cent of adults suffer from lower-back pain. What more evidence do you need? The truth is, the spine is a robust structure. We’re just using it incorrectly.

Everybody “knows” that you put your back out if you lift objects that are too heavy. As a result, many workplaces have introduced lifting training and ergonomic equipment, such as hoists, in an effort to reduce back injuries.

The common advice from lifting training is to avoid heavy lifting where possible. However, research has shown that such training is largely ineffective at reducing back pain and back injury. It seems that a different approach is needed.

Human tissue needs to be exposed to loads to become strong – and the spine is a good example of this. Regular loading prepares the joints, muscle and ligaments for normal tasks. Nobody would expect to run a marathon without preparing the body for such loading, so it seems logical that to be able to lift a weight requires exposure to that activity.

Lack of loading has been shown to have damaging effects on the spine. Studies on astronauts have shown that lack of exposure to loading in microgravity causes muscle wasting, spine stiffness and disc swelling. These previously healthy astronauts developed back pain after space flight. Prolonged unloading caused an unstable or weak spine leading to back pain.

A lack of load causes back problems for astronauts (Getty)

Those teaching that lifting should be avoided, indicate that it is not just the one-off heavy lift that is the problem. Repeated and regular bending and lifting of the spine is cited as a risk for back injury, particularly when combined with twisting. Research in elite rowers examines this concept.

  

Elite rowers fully flex and load their lower backs hundreds of times a day every time they train. Around one-third of this group will complain of an episode of back pain in a 12-month period, of which the vast majority will recover fully.

This shows that most rowers do not injure their lower back and that the spine is very tolerant of this activity. It does, however, suggest that bending and loading is indeed an activity that can be associated with the onset of back pain, but that there must be more to the story.

There appears to be a loading “sweet spot” where the lower back is gradually trained to cope with the load. Rapid increases in training load with poor recovery is associated with onset of back pain in rowers. Rowers who move well through their hips, knees and other joints are less likely to get back pain.

Another finding in rowers, which contradicts traditional “manual handling” training, is that they load their backs with a bent spine. The fact that the lower back is tolerant to being loaded in this position can be explained.

The spine is in fact a more stable structure when it is curved. Advice to keep the back straight and bend at the hips when lifting is to encourage the use of the large muscles around the hips and in the legs, to help with the load. This advice may be misguided if these muscles are weak due to misuse. The emphasis should be on strengthening these muscles.

People are becoming less active and more overweight, which means they are becoming less fit and less able to tolerate the activity and loading for which we were designed. Recent expert advice highlights that the best way to prevent back pain is with exercise.

Rather than advise people to avoid lifting, they should be taught to make regular lifting part of their everyday routine. To build the muscles of the spine, the load must be heavy enough, as with any weight training.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/best-way-avoid-back-pain-lift-heavy-things-a8291446.html

Boehringer, Puma repurposing lung cancer drugs in leukemia

EGFR inhibitors, which block a key signaling pathway in solid tumor growth, are best known as treatments for lung cancer. But a new study led by scientists at the University of Liverpool found that some of them could potentially be used against blood cancers, too.

Their effectiveness in blood cancers is not related to the EGFR mechanism, they believe. Instead, it’s the drugs’ off-target effect on a pseudo-kinase known as TRIB2, which is part of a protein family called Tribbles, named after the small, fluffy fictional species from Star Trek. Just like tribbles in the sci-fi universe move slowly but reproduce rapidly, Tribbles in the real biology world are unable to catalyze chemical reactions. That’s why they are sometimes referred to as “zombie” enzymes. But they do promote cell survival and drug resistance in both solid tumors and blood cancers.

In their study, the researchers found that the unique disposition of cysteine residues in TRIB2 makes it vulnerable to destabilization by several seemingly unrelated FDA-approved EGFR inhibitors, including Boehringer Ingelheim’s Gilotrif, Puma Biotechnology’s Nerlynx and AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso. The researchers described their findings in the journal Science Signaling.

Using a human acute myeloid leukemia cell line, the team showed that Gilotrif and Nerlynx could successfully kill blood cancer cells in vitro. The drugs, which are actually dual EGFR/HER inhibitors, are 10- to 20-fold more effective at cell killing compared to two EGFR-specific inhibitors, Astellas and Genentech’s Tarceva and AstraZeneca’s Iressa.

EGFR mutation is associated with about 30% of non-small cell lung cancers. Gilotrif was first approved by the FDA in 2013, having been shown to delay tumor growth 4.2 months longer than what was seen in patients receiving chemotherapy. The drug has yielded share to new generations of EGFR inhibitors such as Tagrisso.

Repurposing could give drugs like Gilotrif a second life, the authors of the new study believe. “A long-standing goal in cancer research is drug-induced degradation of oncogenic proteins. Our study highlights how information obtained with ‘off-target’ effects of known drugs is potentially useful because it might be exploited in the future to help eliminate a protein that is involved in a completely different type of cancer,” said Patrick Eyers, the study’s senior author, in a statement.

Interestingly, not all dual EGFR/HER2 blockers examined by the team worked in the same way or showed the same level of potency. Novartis’ Tykerb and Takeda’s investigational TAK-285 actually stabilized TRIB2 in vitro rather than disrupting it.

The preliminary data opens the possibility of using EGFR inhibitors as TRIB2-degrading agents. For future studies, the researchers plan to better quantify the effects of these drugs on the TRIB2 protein by studying clinical samples from patients “as part of broader proteomics approaches to establish all the intracellular targets of such compounds,” they wrote in the study.

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/star-trek-protein-helps-repurpose-egfr-lung-cancer-drug-for-leukemia

Bacteria’s hibernation, eating habits spur new ideas for tackling resistant infections

To effectively combat stubborn infections, drug developers need to better understand why bacteria are able to evade destruction with antibiotics. One team at the University of Copenhagen has discovered a surprising talent that some bacteria have that allows them to resist antibiotic attacks: hibernation. It’s one of two recent discoveries that could spark new ideas for developing medicines to treat resistant infections.

The University of Copenhagen researchers discovered that some pathogenic bacteria enter a dormant state, much like hibernation, in the presence of antibiotics. When the antibiotics are gone, the bugs wake up and return to business as usual. The team published the finding in the journal Science Signaling.

The researchers started by studying E. coli samples from urinary tract infections that had initially responded to antibiotics.

“In time, the bacteria re-awoke and began to spread once again,” said Kenn Gerdes, professor of biology at the University of Copenhagen, in a statement.

Gerdes’ team studied exactly what was happening in the cells that went dormant, and they found an enzyme that they believe put the bacteria in the hibernation-like state.

“The enzyme triggers a ‘survival program’ that almost all disease-causing bacteria deploy to survive in the wild and resist antibiotics in the body,” Gerdes said, adding that developing an antibiotic to target that mechanism could prove useful in fighting resistant infections.

Separately, a team led by the University of Washington School of Medicine and the University of Nebraska Medical Center figured out another quirk some bacteria have that might also be able to be applied to drug development. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which causes infections in the urinary tract and other sites, can be tricked into absorbing gallium, because the bacteria mistake the metal for nutritious food. The gallium disrupts the ability of the bacteria to multiply, the researchers reportedin the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Gallium can fool bacteria because it looks much like iron, a nutrient that helps the bugs multiply and drive infection. “This and other essential processes require iron, and gallium is a monkey wrench that shuts the system down,” said co-author Bradley Britigan, professor of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in a statement.

They went on to test a single dose of gallium in mice and found that it cured lung infections caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Bacteria can slowly develop resistance to bacteria, but when the researchers combined the metal with existing antibiotics, they found the potency of the attack increased.

They went on to test gallium in 20 people with cystic fibrosis, a disease marked by hard-to-fight lung infections. They reported that the dose tested was safe and that they saw an improvement in the patients’ lung function.

Disrupting the process by which bacteria obtain and use nutrients is not a new idea, but developing treatments to accomplish that feat has proven challenging. The authors noted in their study that their preliminary findings would need to be confirmed in a larger, placebo-controlled study, but that they’re encouraged by the prospect of using gallium to fight infections.

“Our proof-of-principle work with P. aeruginosa and the fact that gallium has broad-spectrum activity against many extracellular and intracellular pathogens raise the possibility that gallium or other iron-disrupting strategies may be useful in infections caused by a range of resistant organisms,” they wrote.

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/bacteria-s-hibernation-and-eating-habits-spark-new-ideas-for-tackling-resistant-infections

Amazon primed to streamline healthcare supply chain

When supplies are running low, a Summit Pacific Medical Center employee presses an Amazon Web Services Dash Button or tells Alexa to order more.

The critical-access hospital in Elma, Wash., has a Dash Button in a bin large enough to store five computers. It also placed the internet-connected buttons in containers that hold gloves, paper, syringes, IV flushes and other items that aren’t necessarily checked daily. When there are two computers left, Matthew Palcich or one of his peers presses the button that is configured to order three more from a defined set of vendors via Amazon Business.

It shoots off an email to the corresponding manager who approves the purchase, and the shipment arrives two days later.

When supplies are low, a staff member pushes a button to order more product, triggering a confirmation e-mail.

Fully integrating Amazon Business into Summit Pacific’s supply chain operations has taken the hassle and expense out of tedious procurement processes and freed up the center to focus on patient care, said Palcich, Summit Pacific’s manager of business analytics and logistics.

“At the end of the day Amazon lets us save a bunch of money, especially where we typically struggled with one-off marketing requests and custom orders,” he said. “The breadth of offerings is probably bigger than any other distributor that I have seen.”

Summit Pacific predominantly provides primary care in addition to acute-care and emergency services. Amazon Business is capable of supplying 90% of the hospital’s supply-chain needs, Palcich said, adding that it’s a helpful market research tool with customer service that is often more responsive than that of its vendors.

Like Summit Pacific, a growing number of providers are using Amazon Business to streamline their supply chain. While Amazon Business currently may not be suitable for larger systems yet, the industry disruptor is capable of scaling up, supply chain experts said. Also, the healthcare supply chain is just one of many areas where Amazon continues to explore and expand in the sector.

Cutting costs, Amazon style

Automating Summit Pacific’s procurement process through Amazon Business streamlined operations, reduced shipping costs and added visibility to its supply chain, ultimately reducing supply chain-related labor expenses by 80%.

It also trimmed its vendor portfolio and lowered expenses related to delays in lead time and upcharges on shipping thanks to Amazon Business Prime.

This allowed Summit Pacific nurses and clinicians to focus more on patients instead of sifting through supply-chain snafus, Palcich said. “We need to keep costs down to support patient care and not be all things for everyone and negotiate for every item. Negotiations are non-value-added unless the deal is good.” More time could be spent researching a product and placing an order than on what the product costs, Palcich added.

Supply chain accounts for healthcare providers’ second-biggest expense behind labor. It’s also been one of the first areas health system managers look to cut costs.

While the Amazon Business platform isn’t outfitted for more specialized items like imaging equipment or implants yet, its scale and capital coupled with its efficiency and reliability would serve it well, industry observers said.

“In time Amazon can be a tremendous force,” said John Kupice, CEO of H-Source, a private marketplace where hospitals can buy, sell and transfer excess inventory supplies and capital equipment with each other. “In the short term, it would be much more effective in critical-access hospitals that don’t have as much infrastructure as medium or large hospitals. It brings them more sophisticated tools than they are able to acquire or implement.”

How it works

Each supply-chain employee at Summit Pacific is armed with an Amazon login, which is tied to their department with a corresponding approving manager who can peruse product pictures and compare prices. Shipping address and payment methods are pre-loaded.

Amazon packages indicate who they are intended for on the exterior label and Amazon drop-ships to Summit Pacific’s off-site locations. Tracking packages and charges is easier through the Amazon ID number, and Summit Pacific is building a list of items purchased to standardize procurement, Palcich said.

Summit Pacific can set up tolerances to allow for shopping variation. It also can negotiate prices with suppliers through Amazon and use the Dash Button or Alexa to place orders with agreed-upon prices. Hospital employees know they can order something and get it quickly, which cuts down on bulk orders and inventory waste, Palcich said.

Summit Pacific Medical Center employees say the Amazon Business platform allows users to easily compare products.

While fulfillment disputes are rare, Amazon resolves them quickly, he said. Training is also almost nonexistent since most employees are familiar with ordering through Amazon.

Amazon’s strategy is to understand the customer’s needs and work backward, said Chris Holt, Amazon’s leader of global healthcare.

In addition to medical supplies, Amazon has been flirting with pharmaceutical delivery, evidenced by its recent purchase of online pharmacy PillPack. It also aims to revamp employee benefits through its joint venture with 
JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway.

“We are just trying to figure out what we learned in other industries and how we have architected our own infrastructure to figure out how we can help healthcare migrate to simpler solutions,” Holt said. “This is not a unique healthcare problem.”

Currently, “tail spend” is where Amazon has had the biggest impact in healthcare, Holt said. Typically, 80% of providers’ spend is with 20% of their suppliers and 20% of their spend is with 80% of their suppliers, the latter being tail spend.

“Amazon freed up a ton of time for us on our tail spend related to IT goods, medical supplies and marketing materials,” Palcich said. “Things are moving more and more to medical supplies. It could be a really good fit for nonstock sterile tools.”

Potential downsides

While Amazon’s medical-surgical supply prices are similar to some of Summit Pacific’s other distributors, and even cheaper if the order is only a few units, verifying vendors can be a challenge, Palcich said. That could change if Amazon develops a mechanism for setting a list of approved vendors tied to a customer account and specific item.

Handling high-margin items that require temperature-controlled storage and other unique conditions could also be a hurdle, experts said.

Still, Amazon has the ability to build the capacity, Palcich said.

“If Amazon is innovating that fast and taking the entire shipping decision out of the supply chain for Summit’s commodities, how do you think they will do with durable medical equipment?” he asked.

Relying on an Amazon-sourced supplier for recalls and alerts could pose problems, said Tim Hagler, director of supply-chain management for the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium.

“Amazon can be totally disruptive, in a good way, to many areas of the supply chain, until you need to depend on a supplier for recalls and alerts. So medical products are a concern,” he said. “But the healthcare value analysis and supply-chain practitioners will eventually engage with solutions, either through Amazon Business or someone else, that will let us move past that issue with confidence.”

The consortium, which helps source and deliver products for providers in rural Alaska, is preparing for a more formalized engagement with Amazon next year, although it may not include medical products in the first phase, Hagler added.

Broken supply chain

Providers have standardized purchases across their systems, contracted directly with manufacturers or even built their own distribution centers; more than 60 health systems in the U.S. have done so, according to a recent survey by supply-chain consultant Jamie Kowalski.

But supply chain issues still haunt health systems.

Eighty-three percent of 305 surgical staff and hospital supply-chain experts surveyed in November 2017 by distributor Cardinal Health said their organizations are manually counting inventory in some parts of the supply chain while only 15% have implemented radio-frequency identification automation. Inventory mix-ups can result in lost supplies and canceled procedures or jeopardize patient outcomes. Automation reduces costs, according to 39% of respondents, while 1 in 4 said automated systems free up time to focus on patients and produce better outcomes.

“We increased our productivity by setting up certain business areas to request and order through Amazon Business, which allowed our team to focus their efforts on more critical areas of need to ensure we have the right product at the right prices at the right time so we don’t impact patient care,” said James LeRoy, director of strategic sourcing and value analysis at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Confluence Health, a two-hospital system based in Wenatchee, Wash., also uses Amazon Business, which makes sense given Amazon’s vast presence in the Pacific Northwest.

If Amazon can build on its demand-forecasting, that would go a long way toward improving efficiency, Kowalski said. Suppliers can scale accordingly while locking in a regular revenue stream and providers will only buy what they can use and secure better prices, he said.

“If every hospital could do that, that would be huge as to what we could accomplish as an industry,” Kowalski said.

Palcich said Amazon Business’ technology has made Summit Pacific’s relationship with Vizient—which handles its group purchasing and provides consulting—even better. Rather than rely on Vizient for everyday office supplies, it can focus more on accounts payable solutions and leverage its consulting services, which Vizient and other GPOs continue to expand as providers drill down on care coordination.

Vizient helps providers verify whether vendors can deliver on their GPO pricing, liability protections and ordering practices, and delivery needs before finalizing a deal, the company said.

“Working cross-functionally to build consensus and align supply-chain decisions with clinical operations is central to Vizient’s service model and an essential—and differentiating—part of the value we deliver,” according to a Vizient statement.

GPOs have adapted well and will continue to add value, H-Source’s Kupice said.

Still, Amazon could eventually threaten GPOs, Kowalski said. While it doesn’t currently, Amazon certainly has the scale and capital to broaden its healthcare offerings, he said.

“If GPOs continue to provide more value, they’ll have a place in this supply chain,” Kowalski said. “If they don’t, there are no guarantees.”

Summit Pacific will continue to experiment with Amazon Business as it looks to drive more costs out of the supply chain, Palcich said.

“I think there are some legacy things about stocking levels and liability that have caused healthcare providers to stick with tradition,” he said. “But this shows us how we can bring new tools to the supply chain to make it faster and better. And we’re just getting started.”

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20180929/NEWS/180929919/amazon-primed-to-streamline-healthcare-supply-chain

Google program invests in voice assistant startup Aiva Health

• Los Angeles-based startup Aiva Health got a shot in the arm from the Google Assistant Investment Program to support development of its artificial intelligence-powered voice assistant.
• Aiva uses Google Home, Amazon Echo and other smart speakers to engage patients and the elderly and connect them with their caregivers.
• The funding will be used to speed development and commercialization of Aiva’s voice assistant platform.

Voice assistants are a key trend, and everyone is looking to capitalize on Amazon Alexa, Google Home and other voice-activated platforms. A few healthcare organizations have deployed voice control applications, but they have mostly been for a broad base of consumers.

Last September, Mayo Clinic launched a health-related voice control Alexa skill aimed at helping people with first aid advice. More recently, Cigna rolled out “Answers by Cigna,” an Alexa skill to educate consumers on 150 commonly asked healthcare questions.

Tapping into the home health market in a meaningful way could prove lucrative, particularly if the technology enables a growing senior population to remain longer in their homes.

The Google Assistant Investment Program was created earlier this year to support development of innovative voice technologies. The Aiva infusion is the program’s first healthcare investment.

“Voice is the new mobile for delivering better healthcare,” Aiva founder and CEO Sumeet Bhatia said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to be working with the Google Assistant investments team to help expand our offerings and improve care for people who need it the most.”

Aiva’s other investors include Act One Ventures, Mucker Capital, Techstars and the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator powered by Techstars.

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/google-program-invests-in-voice-assistant-startup-aiva-health/533342/