The US healthcare industry is undergoing a major transformation as healthcare reform encourages consumers to play a far more active decision-making role. Yet despite this traditionally business-to-business industry moving quickly to a business-to-consumer model, companies have been slow to join the digital movement. Unlike successful B2C companies in other industries—which offer mobile solutions, provide personalized product recommendations, and empower customer-service agents with a 360-degree view of the customer—most healthcare providers and payors are lagging, as are pharmaceutical companies and medical-device manufacturers.

The angel investor market in Q1,2 2014 showed signs that the five year moderate growth has continued in the first half of 2014. Total investments in Q1,2 2014 were $10.1 billion, an increase of 4.1% over Q1,2 2013, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. A total of 30,270 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding in Q1,2 2014, a 5.9% increase from Q1,2 2013, and the number of active investors in Q1,2 2014 was 143,140 individuals, an increase of 6.1% from Q1,2 2013. The increase in total dollars and the larger increase in total investments (deals) resulted in a deal size of $332,120 in Q1,2 2014, a decline from the deal size in Q1,2 2013 of $337,850. These data indicate that angels remain major players in this investment class and at valuations similar to Q1,2 2013. The market exhibited a sustained growth pattern over a five year period and the angel market has now recovered from the correction in 2008.

More than half of all healthcare practitioners, or 57 percent, said that on “most days” they feel more attached to computers than their patients, according to a recent survey conducted at the Integrative Health and Medicine conference.

Big pharma companies are making greater efforts to improve access to medicines in the developing world, but corruption and intellectual property (IP) issues are areas of concern, says a new report.

The biannual Access To Medicines Index (ATMI) - which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK and Dutch governments - puts GlaxoSmithKline at the top of its rankings in 2014 for the fourth time, followed by Novo Nordisk and Johnson & Johnson.

As part of ongoing research into national healthcare spending, the Deloitte Center For Health Solutions recently published their findings based on health data from 2012. According to the new report, there’s an additional amount of healthcare consumer spending that isn’t included in the federal calculations (often referred to as the National Healthcare Expenditure or just NHE). The new Deloitte calculations represent out‒of‒pocket expenses by consumers and amount to an additional $672 billion for 2012.  By Deloitte’s accounting, this additional amount puts the NHE for 2012 at $3.46 trillion.

Patients and doctors often don’t know if surgery to remove cancerous tissue was successful until scans are performed months later. A new kind of nanoparticle could show patients if they’re in the clear much earlier.

The nanoparticles—dubbed nanoflares—attach themselves to individual cancer cells in a blood sample and then glow, allowing cancerous cells to be detected and sorted with the help of a laser.

Americans include two health-related issues among the 10 most important problems facing the U.S., according to a recent Gallup survey. Healthcare in general ranked fourth on the list, with Ebola coming in at no. 8. But is Ebola really among the biggest health problems for Americans? Not when we look at the chances of actually being infected. 

Seniors in the University of Maryland’s Fischell Department of BioEngineering (BioE) design and build devices designed to improve patient outcomes and health care while lowering costs. BioE teams are typically matched with a pair of advisors including a BioE faculty member and a physician from the University of Maryland Medical Center. The teams are assisted by University engineers for fabrication and by business advisors for entrepreneurship. This year, there are 91 students comprising 18 teams of innovators full of fearless ideas.

Eighth grader Lily DeBell won the 2014 NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, presented by the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth.

DeBell, who is still in middle school, finished ahead of 40 other student entrepreneurs from across the county – almost all of them were either High School or college age students.

Funding and Research Opportunities

The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:

Notices:

• Findings of Research Misconduct
• (NOT-OD-15-021) Office of the Director, NIH
• Findings of Research Misconduct 
• (NOT-OD-15-022) Office of the Director, NIH
• Findings of Research Misconduct 
• (NOT-OD-15-023) Office of the Director, NIH
• Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for Science of Behavior Change: Assay Development and Validation for Self-Regulation Targets (UH2/UH3)
• (NOT-RM-15-003)
• NIH Roadmap Initiatives
• Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for Science of Behavior Change: Assay Development and Validation for Stress Reactivity and Stress Resilience Targets (UH2/UH3)
• (NOT-RM-15-004)
• NIH Roadmap Initiatives
• Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for Science of Behavior Change: Assay Development and Validation for Interpersonal and Social Processes Targets (UH2/UH3)
• (NOT-RM-15-005)
• NIH Roadmap Initiatives
• Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for NIH Science of Behavior Change Resource and Coordinating Center (U01)
• (NOT-RM-15-006)
• NIH Roadmap Initiatives

Requests for Applications:

• T32 Training Program for Institutions That Promote Diversity (T32)
• (RFA-HL-16-007)
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
• Application Receipt Date(s): February 18, 2015, September 18, 2015 (resubmissions only), February 18, 2016, September 19, 2016 (resubmissions only); February 18, 2017, September 18, 2017 (resubmissions only) by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization.

Program Announcements:

• Administrative Supplements for Research on Sex/Gender Differences (Admin Supp)
• (PA-15-034)

Startup Maryland (http://www.startupmd.org) today announced the Great two top Finalists from the 2014 Pitch Across Maryland celebration.

After qualifying and posting more than 150 video pitches from Maryland entrepreneurs that were captured during the three-week Pitch Across Maryland tour | celebration, Startup Maryland is proud to announce Vheda Health (Howard County/MCE) and BrinkBit (uBalt, ETC, EAGB, GBC) as Winner and Runner-up, respectively.

Swiss drugmaker Roche said Friday that the Food and Drug Administration approved its drug Avastin as a treatment for ovarian cancer.

Roche said the FDA approved Avastin in combination with chemotherapy as a treatment for recurrent cases of cancer that are resistant to platinum-based chemotherapy.

Join us Nov. 20 for the 15th annual Bioscience Day at the University of Maryland, where we will explore "Scientific Advances in Treating Trauma and Disease."

Registration is free and lunch is provided.

LabCentral and Roche announced an agreement in which Roche would provide technology and financial support to LabCentral, a first-of-its-kind shared laboratory space designed as a launchpad for high-potential life-sciences and biotech startups. 

If you’re a foreign entrepreneur looking to break into the U.S. market, the State of Maryland wants to help.

On the third floor of a nondescript office building perched on a busy commercial strip in College Park, Maryland, foreign-owned startups can get a boost at the Maryland International Incubator, a first-of-its-kind incubator focused exclusively on foreign companies settling in the United States.

The 1776 incubator, which is interested in helping startups break down geographic barriers and collaborating with other incubators and accelerators has announced a partnership with a major physician association — the American College of Cardiology, according to a company statement. The cardiology association will play a role not only in the incubator’s Challenge Cup, but also longer term.

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett is hoping to broaden Montgomery County’s reach in biotech and other high-tech areas as he leads a delegation of two dozen County businessmen and businesswomen to India this month.

Among those joining Leggett are Maryland State Delegate Aruna Miller, Montgomery County Councilmember Nancy Floreen, Montgomery College President Dr. DeRionne P. Pollard, Global LifeSci Development Corporation executive vice president Jonathan Genn, President & CEO of the India-US World Affairs Institute Vinod Jain, and former White House communications director Ann Lewis.

WellDoc®, a leading digital health care behavioral science and technology company has launched a multi-stage collaboration effort with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, to improve the lives of those living with type 2 diabetes and explore next generation diabetes devices and product offerings.

View gallery . The parties share a vision for leveraging technology to empower patient self-management and provider clinical decision-making. They each have commercialized unique and powerful health care platforms that when combined, can deliver unparalleled support to patients with diabetes.

In a breakthrough in the design of batteries, a research funded by the US Department of Energy has produced a remarkable new prototype battery that just needs 12 minutes to get fully recharged compared to the hours the conventional cells take up to get replenished.

Researchers at the University of Maryland who were involved in this research stated that their new invention can work towards the long sought-for miniaturization of energy storage components. This breakthrough can certainly help towards allowing electric cars to give petrol-powered vehicles a run for their money.

The United States has over 5,700 hospitals, and most of them are central to their communities for an obvious reason: They help people get healthier. When I look at these hospitals, I see an untapped resource, a way they could provide greater value to their communities and the country.

Intellectual assets — the ideas and know-how in the heads of clinicians — are vital, intangible resources for most hospitals. They’re equivalent to the research assets at universities. In addition to knowledge and know-how, clinicians working in hospitals are creating ideas for new health care technologies (apps, processes, devices, therapies, drugs) and cost-effective care models, often as part of their response to the value-based care principles of health care reform.

QIAGEN N.V. (Nasdaq: QGEN) today announced it has entered into a master collaboration agreement with the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG (NYSE: NVS) to enable the development and commercialization of companion diagnostics to be paired with existing Novartis pharmaceutical products as well as compounds in its development pipeline.

The non-exclusive agreement with Novartis creates a framework for collaborations that would include developing QIAGEN companion diagnostics to guide treatment decisions for Novartis pharmaceutical products. The scope of the collaboration can cover all QIAGEN platforms, indications or biomarkers. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Funding and Research Opportunities

The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:

Notices:

• Notice Announcing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for RFA-RM-14-016 "Model Organisms Screening Center for the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) (U54)
• (NOT-RM-15-001)
• NIH Roadmap Initiatives

Requests for Applications:

• Stem Cell-Derived Blood Products for Therapeutic Use (R01)
• (RFA-HL-15-022)
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
• Application Receipt Date(s): February 20, 2015
• Stem Cell-Derived Blood Products for Therapeutic Use: Technology Improvement (R41) 
• (RFA-HL-15-029)
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
• Application Receipt Date(s): February 20, 2015
• Stem Cell-Derived Blood Products for Therapeutic Use: Technology Improvement (R43/R44) 
• (RFA-HL-15-030)
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
• Application Receipt Date(s): February 20, 2015 (Phase I or Fast-Track); February 20, 2016 (Phase I; Phase II; or Fast-Track); February 20, 2017 (Phase II only)
• NHLBI Bench to Bassinet Program Administrative Coordinating Center (U01)
• (RFA-HL-16-004)
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 
• Application Receipt Date(s): March 17, 2015
• Short-Term Research Education Program to Increase Diversity in Health-Related Research (R25)
• (RFA-HL-16-008)
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
• Application Receipt Date(s): September 18, 2017

Program Announcements:

• Collaborative Activities to Promote Metabolomics Research (Admin Supp)
• (PA-15-030) 
• NIH Roadmap Initiatives
• National Cancer Institute
• Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.

Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.

A Johns Hopkins astrophysicist will share in a $3 million prize for his discovery that the universe is expanding rapidly, contrary to earlier belief.

Adam Riess, who previously won a Nobel Prize for his work, has been awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Riess shares the award with research partner Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University and University of California, Berkeley astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter.

The MdBio Foundation, Inc. (MdBio), a nonprofit organization, today announced that it has received a grant of $50,000 from AstraZeneca and its Gaithersburg, Md.-based global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune. The grant will enable the foundation to expand its focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and prepare today’s students to become the workforce of tomorrow.

“Our goal is to show students the many possibilities their future can hold with a strong foundation in STEM,” said Brian Gaines, CEO of MdBio. “AstraZeneca’s and MedImmune’s generosity will enable us to expand our programs to ensure that we reach students who can benefit from enhanced educational opportunities. Our state is well-known for its strength in the bioscience market, and we hope to foster the next generation of employees for the companies that call Maryland home.”

Let's face it: pre-Election Night, this year's race for Maryland governor was pretty underwhelming, the kind where your mother might reveal she's thinking of voting for Republican businessman Larry Hogan because she remembered his dad to be a nice guy back when he was Prince George's County executive in the 1970s.

(Hi, Mom! For the record, I don't know who she ended up voting for.)

iHealth is one of the leading developers of connected health devices, with devices on the market ranging from the BP5 connected blood pressure cuff to the Align wireless glucometer. As we recently highlighted, they have also been at the forefront of integrating the data captured by these devices with the electronic health records used by clinicians.

We had the opportunity to talk with Jim Taschetta, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Retail Sales at iHealth, about their current work at Duke & Stanford exploring EHR integration, views on integration of Android devices, and more.

The University of Maryland earned a gold medal in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) held in Boston from Oct. 30 to Nov. 3, 2014.

The competition engages student-led teams from universities across the globe to present novel synthetic biology projects that address real-world problems.

University of Maryland University College recently swept two divisions of the Maryland Cyber Challenge for the second consecutive year, capturing first place in the College and Professional divisions of the premier Maryland cyber competition held at the annual Cyber Maryland conference in Baltimore.

“This is a tough competition and to beat many great teams just to get to the finals in the college and professional divisions is an amazing accomplishment. We fielded four teams for this competition (two in each division) and all four made it to the final round. That speaks to the quality of our teams, ” said Jeff Tjiputra, chairman of UMUC’s undergraduate cybersecurity program and academic advisor to the cyber competition teams. 

The Pentagon's technology arm is prepared to invest up to $700,000 in a promising idea in the field of biological sciences and technology. The goal is to turn theoretical concepts into actual products, such as better sensors for prosthetic limbs and techniques to cope with infectious disease outbreaks.

Under a new initiative by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, inventors will be able to send in proposals without having to trudge through miles of red tape as they would have to in traditional government contracts.

Photo Credit: DARPA

Dr. William Kirwan, chancellor for the University System of Maryland, announced over the summer that he will be stepping down, but not until his replacement is hired.

He's lost count of the number of college graduations he's been a part of since taking the job as Maryland's education chancellor more than a decade ago.

The Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index enables business leaders, government policymakers, and taxpayers to gauge how their states’ tax systems compare. While there are many ways to show how much is collected in taxes by state governments, the Index is designed to show how well states structure their tax systems, and provides a road-map to improving these structures.

Johns Hopkins University, Biomedical Engineering, CBIDMonday, December 8, 2014 from 3:00 PM to 7:30 PM (EST)Baltimore, MD

Join us December 8th for a review of 16 exciting healthcare design projects at the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design (CBID).  CBID MSE and Undergraduate projects will be presented.  This year we're honored to have as our Keynote Speaker Dr. John Kostuik.  Dr. Kostuik is Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of K2M Inc, a world leading spine surgery company.  The event will also have a Shark Tank competition with a panel of tough judges and real cash prizes.  Refreshments will be provided.

Considering that Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE: EBS  ) has regular government contracts and other manufacturing contracts -- so regular that it's willing to give quarterly guidance, which many companies wouldn't dream of -- it was a little surprising to see by how much the biotech beat the guidance it gave three months earlier. Third-quarter revenue came in at $138 million, substantially higher than the guidance of $110 million to $125 million it gave three months ago.

But, as it turns out, this is just an accounting issue. In the third quarter, Emergent BioSolutions set up a collaboration with MorphoSys to develop its prostate cancer drug candidate ES414. Under the terms of the agreement, Emergent BioSolutions got a $20 million upfront payment -- the biotech recognized $15.3 million of this in the third quarter. Back out the payment, and Emergent BioSolutions' revenue falls within its previous guidance, fortunately at the upper-end.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland have collaborated to build a new center that will preform studies on how to store, process and transmit data using quantum architecture.

The Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science is designed to complement basic quantum research being done at an institute run by NIST, UMD and the National Security Agency, NIST said Oct. 31.

Inspired by a series of new strategic initiatives, BioNJ announced a rebranding today -- BioNJ, The Gateway to Health – that reflects an expanded vision and mission directed to fostering a vibrant life sciences ecosystem in New Jersey where science is supported, companies are created, drugs are developed and patients are paramount.

The rebranding is supported by the launch of a revitalized website at www.BioNJ.org that is contemporary in its look and represents the determination of BioNJ to help move the life sciences industry forward.