UH Ventures Program Spotlights Tech Startups in the Fight Against the Opioid Crisis

CLEVELAND – Nine out of the 12 startup projects that last fall won funding from Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge came together on Jan. 18 at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center to share their ideas, provide feedback to each other, and look for opportunities for collaboration.

The companies were hosted by UH Ventures, UH’s innovations and ventures arm, in a program called “Startups vs. the Opioid Crisis.” It was the first program in UH Ventures’ new Health Voyagers series.

Each company made a 12-minute presentation about its technology projects that have the potential to help curb increasing rates of opioid-related addiction, overdoses, and deaths.

“Today’s event advances our efforts to build and scale the technologies needed to mitigate the tides of the opioid epidemic,” explained Eric Beck, DO, MPH, an emergency physician and President of UH Ventures. “We need platforms like this to connect with each other, learn from each other, and find creative ways to work together, especially in the face of one of the most devastating health crises of our time.”

The companies presenting:

• Apportis from Dublin, Ohio, which created an integrated platform allowing patients to connect electronically to licensed health care professionals and opioid addiction resources, as a complement to medication-assisted therapies.

• Brave from Vancouver, Canada, which built an online platform for remote supervision of people who use drugs in isolation, providing them with community-based support and access to overdose prevention and response.

• Innovative Health Solutions from Versailles, Ind., which developed a device for addressing symptoms of opioid withdrawal.

• InteraSolutions from Orem, Utah, which developed an opioid risk assessment screening app that identifies patients with risk factors for opioid abuse.

• OpiSafe from Denver, is developing an automated patient monitoring system for opioid prescribers that would include alerts about opioid dosage, pain and function scoring, and toxicology lab integration.

• relink.org from Aurora, Ohio, has developed a website to enable people struggling with addiction to find recovery service providers, ranging from detox to housing to employment.

• Prapela from Concord, Mass., is developing a device to help treat opioid-exposed newborns with postnatal drug withdrawal syndrome.

• DynamiCare Health from Boston, has created a digital platform, using evidence-based psychosocial treatments to help patients struggling with opioid addiction.

A UH team presented its own program developed in Northeast Ohio, UH Care Continues, a computer-based technology for opioid surveillance, which also received funding the Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge.

The Ohio Opioid Tech Challenge awarded each of these companies, as well as three others, $200,000 from the “challenge” portion of the competition. They will go on for the next phase called the “product” portion, in which four recipients will receive a prize of $1 million.

Company presentations were followed by panel Q&A, tech demonstrations and networking opportunities.

Approximately 100 people attended from Northeast Ohio’s biotech community and UH.

“UH Ventures is a critical part of our strategy to move our system forward to its next generation,” said Thomas F. Zenty III, UH’s Chief Executive Officer. “UH Ventures was built to draw on the historic and current strengths of University Hospitals to pursue the innovative opportunities that will drive definitive, sustainable and scalable value to the way we care for our patients. Today’s program allowed us to evaluate the ideas, innovators and capital we can put together to make a more powerful and sustainable impact on the opioid crisis.”