Daily Archives: February 17, 2022

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Feb. 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- GuideWell, a health solutions company and parent to the leading health insurer in Florida, andOlive,the automation company creating the Internet of Healthcare, today announced an innovative collaboration of health care and technology. Through this collaboration, GuideWell's subsidiary, Florida Blue, becomes the first U.S. payer to automate prior authorization approvals through AI-powered clinical reviews, resulting in faster care for patients and greater provider satisfaction. This partnership will transform a frustrating, labor-intensive process, accelerating GuideWell's mission to help people and communities achieve better health through innovation and collaboration.

"Olive's AI platform helps GuideWell create a best-in-class utilization management model that reduces the administrative burden on our providers while creating a better experience for our members," said Dr. Elana Schrader, Florida Blue senior vice president, healthcare services and GuideWell Health president. "By being the first health plan to automate approvals, we are leading the way for insurers to close the technology gap to better serve our members and providers."

For most of the industry, the prior authorization process is a time-consuming endeavor for both providers and payers, requiring phone calls and faxes to provide patient medical records. Incomplete and inconsistent data can cause delays and lead to a 15-day cycle before a member receives authorization for a procedure. GuideWell's health plan companies receive hundreds of thousands of prior authorization submissions.

By deploying Olive's AI platform, prior authorization decision-making moves to the point of care (such as a doctor's office).The solution will enable members to receive authorizations faster by giving providers an immediate approval from GuideWell (sometimes before a member leaves their provider's office) when Olive's artificial intelligence determines the prior authorization request meets GuideWell's medical necessity requirements.

This increase in decision-making at the point of care provides patients with the right care, at the right place, at the right time. As a result, clinical staff spend less time on administrative functions and more time on patient care. Olive refers to this process connecting the industry's systems to more rapidly deliver intelligence that results in better human outcomes as creating the Internet of Healthcare.

GuideWell launched a pilot with Olive in Florida last year and saw impressive results: a massive reduction in time to decision by 10 days when immediate responses were available and a 27 percent decrease in unnecessary prior authorization requests, lessening the provider's burden and operational costs and 48 percent faster decisions leading to faster patient care.

"Olive is proud to partner with GuideWell to apply automation and AI to automatically prepare, submit and deliver payer-approved prior authorizations one of the most broken processes in health care today," said Jeremy Friese, MD, president, payer market at Olive. "Together, we are reimagining the care experience for patients, payers and providers."

The companies will begin rolling out the AI platform in April, with a full-scale implementation in July for more than 2.5 million commercial members.

About GuideWellGuideWell Mutual Holding Corporation (GuideWell) is a not-for-profit mutual holding company and the parent to a family of forward-thinking companies focused on transforming health care. The GuideWell organization includes Florida Blue, the leading health insurance company in Florida; Triple-S Management, a leading health care services company in Puerto Rico; GuideWell Health, a portfolio of clinical delivery organizations; GuideWell Venture Group, a portfolio of companies including Onlife Health and PopHealthCare focused on creating human-first and innovative health solutions for health plans; GuideWell Source, a provider of administrative services to state and federal health care programs; and WebTPA, a market leading administrator of self-funded employer health plans. In total, GuideWell and its affiliated companies serve more than 46 million people in 45 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. For more information, visit http://www.guidewell.com.

About OliveOlive is the automation company creating the Internet of Healthcare. The company is addressing healthcare's most burdensome issues through automation delivering hospitals, health systems and payers increased revenue, reduced costs, and increased capacity. People feel lost in the system today and healthcare employees are essentially working in the dark due to outdated technology that creates a lack of shared knowledge and siloed data. Olive is driving connections to shine new light on healthcare processes, improving operations today so everyone can benefit from a healthier industry tomorrow. To learn more about Olive, visit oliveai.com.

SOURCE GuideWell

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GuideWell and Olive Debut First-Of-Its-Kind AI Solution to Accelerate Access to Health Care - PRNewswire

AI has the potential to change almost every industry, and digital marketing is no different. Tom Welbourne, founder and director at The Good Marketer, looks at the evolution of AI and what marketers can do about it.

Huge growth is predicted in the global AI market over the next few years, with its value reaching $190.61 billion by 2025.

With this in mind, let's take a look at the impact AI is having on the digital marketing industry.

With so much data involved in the digital marketing industry, the impact that AI will have is huge. Common marketing tasks that involve data such as customer segmentation, campaign automation, and A/B testing will all feel its impact. AI will be able to carry out these tasks more efficiently than humans.

AI is also causing areas of marketing such as SEO, email marketing, lead generation, content marketing and predictive marketing to change. These changes will be disruptive, but as long as digital marketers stay aware and have an open mind, there's no reason to fear them.

AI has become a core component of search engine algorithms, including Google's BERT and Rankbrain. There are now also AI-powered SEO tools on the market that can help marketers, particularly with on-page SEO and content creation.

Tools such as MarketMuse help marketers analyze top-performing content, perform keyword research, create content briefs, and assist with other time-consuming activities. AI-powered content writing tools such as Jarvis.AI help you create original content and social media content using AI.

While these tools are useful, it's important to note that they only work well with human input. For example, one common issue with AI content writing tools is that they can struggle to incorporate a brand's tone of voice. This content can then require editing from a content writer to incorporate the brand's tone.

Another area of digital marketing where AI is having an impact is email marketing, particularly with email creation and email send times.

Traditionally, it would take a marketer a lot of experimentation to test out different subject lines to see which performs the best. AI can help marketers come up with subject lines that will generate a high open and click-through rate by using algorithms to analyze the results of previous marketing campaigns. This will help marketers improve their subject lines over time.

AI-powered writing software can also help marketers with the entire email creation process, from writing email body copy to suggesting images and promotions.

While primarily used for customer service, AI chatbots are a useful tool in a digital marketer's toolbox. On many websites today, visitors will be welcomed by a chatbot when they enter a page. Sometimes these are operated by a human, but often these chatbots will be AI-powered or AI-assisted.

This process can be useful for capturing the contact information of visitors who land on a page and solving their queries. Digital marketers can benefit from this as AI chatbots can help a business gain a continuous stream of new leads without a human present.

Similar to how AI chatbots help marketers and customer support teams simultaneously, the same can be said for AI functionalities in a CRM platform. Each CRM will have its own unique functionalities, but many can be set up to help identify factors that could indicate that a customer is close to churning.

For example, if a CRM has an integration with a SaaS product and analytics indicate that a user of that SaaS platform has not logged in for a certain period of time, a marketer could set up an email sequence that triggers when a user has not logged in or been inactive for a specified period of time.

Now that we've looked at some of the different areas of digital marketing, we can ask the question, how does AI impact the digital marketer's role now and in the future?

While the future is somewhat uncertain, what we can see is that AI isn't replacing digital marketers anytime soon. Instead, it's helping marketers automate and streamline cumbersome tasks, and helping them segment and personalize their communications with prospects and customers.

Some predict that instead of replacing marketers, the rise of AI will actually end up creating more jobs than it replaces. Many AI marketing tools require human input to work correctly, so this prediction has some weight behind it.

If digital marketers can keep up to speed with the changes that AI will bring to marketing, they will be well-equipped to deal with any significant changes in the industry.

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How AI is changing the role of the digital marketer - The Drum

In the second half of 2021, the number of artificial intelligence deals decreased by 9.1% from the same period in 2020. This marks an acceleration in growth from the 27.3% decrease in deals that occurred in H1 2021 relative to the same period a year earlier.

GlobalDatas deals database looks at mergers, acquisitions, and venture capital and private equity investments taking place daily between thousands of companies across the world.

During second half of 2021, artificial intelligence deals accounted for 2.5% of all deals taking place in the sector. This represents an increase from the figure of 2.4% in second half of 2020.

GlobalData's thematic approach to sector activity seeks to group key company information on investments to see which industries are best placed to deal with any issues they may encounter.

These themes, of which artificial intelligence is one, are best thought of as "any issue that keeps a CEO awake at night", and by tracking them, it becomes possible to ascertain which companies are leading the way on specific issues and which ones have some work to do.

Innovative Surface Modification for Enhanced Heat Transfer Solutions

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AI deals decreased in the power industry in H2 2021 - Power Technology

South Korea-based Genuv is bolstering its ATRIVIEW drug discovery platform with Finland-based Aiforia Plc's AI and Deep Learning technology. The addition of AI means faster drug discovery and faster development of therapeutics aimed at Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Genuv's lead drug candidate, SNR161 has been shown to restore CNS functions in preclinical models of ALS and Alzheimer's disease. It is now being studied in a Phase I/IIa clinical trial for ALS.

ATRIVIEW is used to screen both existing drugs and new substances for neuroprotective and neurogenerative effects.

"Aiforia is helping Genuv bring the power of deep learning artificial intelligence to our unique ATRIVIEW drug discovery platform," Sungho Han, founder and chief executive officer of Genuv said in a statement. "The additional speed will enable Genuv and our partners to bring more drug candidates to the clinic more quickly."

For Finland's Aiforia, this is the first time its AI platform has been applied to neurodegenerative drug discovery. Korea's Genuv joins pharma giants Sanofi, Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca and Bristol Myers Squibb as Aiforia clients.

"We're excited to help Genuv extend the capabilities of the remarkable ATRIVIEW platform with the help of our powerful, deep learning technology," Jukka Tapaninen, CEO of Aiforia said in a statement. "Aiforia brings increased efficiency and precision to medical image."

Elsewhere around the globe:

Azafaros BV Netherlands-based Azafaros announced positive data from its first-in-human Phase 1 study with AZ-3102, the company's lead program in development as a potential treatment for pediatric neurogenetic lysosomal storage disorders. AZ-3102 is an azasugar, orally available, small molecule designed to be a potent and selective inhibitor of two target enzymes involved in glycolipid metabolism by modulating the metabolism of glycosphingolipids. Data from the Phase 1 study with AZ-3102 in healthy volunteers demonstrate its positive safety and tolerability profile and provide the first clinical proof of the compound's mechanism of action.

ProBioGen Germany-based ProBioGen forged a multi-product commercial license agreement with AstraZeneca for the company's GlymaxX technology. AstraZeneca is expected to incorporate the technology. GlymaxX improves target cell killing orchestrated by natural killer cells, enhancing antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC). GlymaxX also allows using the same modified cell line to produce antibodies of varying levels of fucosylation.

Sequana Medical Based in Belgium, Sequana has received Medical Device Regulation (MDR) certification from the British Standards Institution for its alfapump system.

Opthea Limited Australia's Opthea presented data from a prespecified subgroup analysis of a Phase IIb dose-ranging study of intravitreal OPT-302 in combination with ranibizumab, compared with ranibizumab alone, in participants with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD). OPT-302 combination therapy had a safety profile consistent with standard of care anti-VEGF-A monotherapy while demonstrating greater improvements in best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) and less retinal fluid compared to ranibizumab monotherapy.

Noema Pharma Switzerland-based Noema announced it will initiate a Phase IIb study of the mGluR5 inhibitor NOE-101 in trigeminal neuralgia (TN) following clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The LibraTN trial will evaluate the efficacy and safety of NOE-101 in adults with pain associated with TN. NOE-101 has previously been found to be safe and well tolerated in adult subjects.

AC Immune SA Also based in Switzerland, AC Immune announced new interim 10-week data from the high-dose cohort of a placebo-controlled Phase Ib/IIa trial evaluating ACI-35.030, a first-in-class phosphorylated-Tau (pTau) vaccine candidate in participants with early Alzheimer's disease. The interim data shows that the high-dose of ACI-35.030 led to the strong induction of antibodies selective for pTau and its aggregated form, enriched paired helical filaments (ePHF).

Trinity Biotech PLC Based in Ireland, Trinity received approval for its new HIV screening product, TrinScreen HIV, from the World Health Organization (WHO). TrinScreen HIV is a rapid test providing results in less than 12 minutes from a finger stick drop of blood.

OxDx University of Oxford spinout OxDx raised 2.6 million (about US$3.53 million) in pre-seed funding for its AI-powered diagnostic technology that can recognize and identify specific species and strains of viruses, bacteria and other pathogens within a sample in seconds. The company intends to develop an ultra-fast analysis platform capable of rapidly scaling for many diseases via simple software updates improving the cost and access to infectious disease diagnostics worldwide. The funding is co-led by IQ Capital and Ahren Innovation Capital with participation from Science Creates Ventures.

OKYO Pharma Also based in the U.K., OKYO Pharma Limited completed a pre-IND meeting with the FDA regarding the development plans for OK-101 to treat dry eye disease (DED). The regulatory agency provided guidance on a Phase II study based on clinical and nonclinical milestones.

ONK Therapeutics Ireland's ONK and Intellia Therapeutics entered into a licensing agreement for natural killer cell therapies. The agreement grants ONK a non-exclusive license to Intellia's proprietary ex vivo CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing platform and its lipid nanoparticle (LNP)-based delivery technologies. ONK intends to develop up to five allogeneic NK cell therapies. Intellia will be eligible to receive up to $184 million per product in development and commercial milestone payments, as well as up to mid-single digit royalties on potential future sales.

LianBio Based in Shanghai, LianBio announced that the National Medical Products Administration granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation in China for mavacamten for the treatment of patients with obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (oHCM). Breakthrough Therapy Designation was supported by data from the global Phase III EXPLORER-HCM trial of mavacamten in oHCM patients. In the EXPLORER-HCM trial, mavacamten met all primary and secondary endpoints with statistical significance and clinically improved functional status, symptoms, and quality of life.

JCR Pharmaceuticals At WORLDSymposium, Japan-based JCR Pharmaceuticals highlighted the potential benefits of therapies that rely on J-Brain Cargo, a proprietary technology developed by JCR Pharmaceuticals, to deliver medicine across the blood-brain barrier. Presentations focused on the long-term safety and efficacy and potential behavioral effects of JR-141 (pabinafusp alfa 10 mL, intravenous drip infusion), the company's investigational therapy for mucopolysaccharidosis type II (MPS II, or Hunter syndrome). JR-141 is a recombinant iduronate-2-sulfatase enzyme replacement therapy (that was approved in March 2021 in Japan, where it is marketed as Izcargo for the treatment of patients with MPS II.

Elypta Based in Sweden, Elypta initiated the clinical study LEVANTIS-0087A to validate the diagnostic performance of GAGomes the complete profile of human glycosaminoglycans as metabolic biomarkers for Multi-Cancer Early Detection (MCED). The study aims to detect any type of cancer in adults who show no symptoms or have any recent history of cancer.

Revive Therapeutics Canada's Revive Therapeutics was granted Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA for Bucillamine for the prevention of ischemiareperfusion injury (IRI) during liver transplantation. Currently, there are no approved treatments available for IRI. Liver ischemia-reperfusion injury is a major complication of liver transplantation and is one of the leading causes for post-surgery hepatic dysfunction.

InflaRx NV Based in Germany, InflaRx initiated the second dosing cohort of the vilobelimab and PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, pembrolizumab, combination arm of the Phase II clinical trial in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC). The study is investigating two independent arms: vilobelimab alone and vilobelimab in combination with pembrolizumab. The trial's main objectives are to assess the safety and antitumor activity of vilobelimab monotherapy and determine the maximum tolerated or recommended dose, safety, and antitumor activity in the combination arm. The trial is expected to enroll a total of approximately 70 patients.

XO Life Also based in Germany, XO Life raised more than 2 million (about US$2.27 million) to build its patient insights platform for drugs and therapies.

Funding Societies Singapore's Funding Societies, Southeast Asia's largest SME digital financing platform, announced that it has raised US$144 million in an oversubscribed Series C+ equity round. This comes on the back of its US$45 million Series C raised between 2020 and 2021.

Memo Therapeutics Based in Switzerland, Memo closed an oversubscribed Series B financing round. The company raised 37 million Swiss Francs (approximately US$40.16 million). The round was led by Swisscanto Invest. The proceeds will be used to advance the clinical development of its best- and first-in-class neutralizing antibody, MTX-005, targeting BK virus infection in renal transplant patients.

Centauri Therapeutics London-based Centauri closed a 24 million (about $32 million) Series A investment round. The funds will support the continued advancement of the company's antimicrobial resistance (AMR) research and development, using the Alphamer platform to identify and progress novel antibacterial candidates through first-in-human trials for difficult-to-treat infections.

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Global Roundup: Genuv Adds AI to Aid Discovery of Alzheimer's, ALS Therapies - BioSpace