Date: Apr 07, 2015 Source: Company Data (
click here to go to the source)
HealthMyne, Inc., an early stage healthcare informatics company focused on bringing evidence-based imaging analysis to the point of care, received a prestigious Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant is for almost $750,000 with a potential to receive an additional $500,000 in Phase IIB funding.
"The overall thrust of our proposal centers on treating the visible evidence of cancer in medical images, not just as pictures, but as mineable data that can be compared across similar cases," stated Dr. Roger Chylla, CTO of HealthMyne and the project's principal investigator. "Clinical research over the last decade has demonstrated that nodules (early-stage tumors) have reproducible features linked to the probability that they are malignant and/or resistant to certain treatments. For patient care to be improved by these insights, doctors need clinical tools that seamlessly incorporate this evidence into their everyday image interpretation."
HealthMyne's first commercial product will be targeting lung cancer screening. Lung cancer causes more deaths in the U.S. than the next three most common cancers combined; however, studies have shown that the associated mortality rate can significantly improve when detected early.
This specific award was the second phase of a grant submitted as part of NSF's efforts to foster smart health technologies. According to Dr. Jesus Soriano, Program Director of SBIR/STTR at NSF, "These categorical proposals must demonstrate an ability to transform healthcare from reactive, hospital-centered, and indemnity-based to proactive, person-centered, preventive, and cost-efficient."
"It is exciting for all of us that the researchers and reviewers at NSF share our assessment of the potential impact that our technology can have on improving patient care", Dr. Chylla concluded.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) is an approximately $160 million program that catalyzes the commercialization of high-risk technological innovations via research and development grants to small businesses and startups. NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $7 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.
