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AHN and Innovation Works unveil a state-of-the-art research facility to support startup accelerator, AlphaLab Health.
In February 2022, Allegheny Health Network (AHN) and Innovation Works unveiled a state-of-the-art research facility to support startup accelerator, AlphaLab Health. This innovation hub, which kicked off in 2020, supports health care and life science startups with clinical resources, early-stage funding and mentorship opportunities from industry experts. The collaboration is also supported by Pittsburgh-area universities, corporations, and foundations. Based at the former Allegheny General Hospital (AGH) Suburban Campus in Bellevue, AlphLab Health’s new home is a 10,000-square-foot open-concept space fully equipped with wet and dry labs.
“While AHN has long been a leader in clinical research and innovation, AlphaLab Health is a transformative partnership that takes our commitment to an entirely new level and further elevates the Pittsburgh region’s profile as a wellspring of pioneering, game-changing ideas and solutions in health care,” said Jeff Cohen, MD, AHN’s Chief Physician Executive for Community Health and Innovation in a press release.
AlphaLab Health is in a unique position to advance health innovation, leveraging expertise from AHN, as well as insights from Innovation Works, one of the most active seed-stage investors in the country.
The second cohort of AlphaLab Health entrepreneurs is focusing on solutions in a variety of verticals, including diagnostics, therapeutics, health care IT, medical devices, and packaging.
Telling.ai answers the question “how are your lungs doing” by giving users a detailed lung performance report by simply speaking into a smartphone. The company’s vision is to turn every smartphone in the world into a powerful remote respiratory monitoring device through a simple app to help improve wellness and prevent unneeded hospitalizations and ED visits. The advanced machine learning algorithms behind the company’s novel approach were spun out of research at Carnegie Mellon University.
“We are the only company in the world that provides patients and providers with easy-to-use voice-tests that measure gold standard lung functions metrics through our unique AI/ML audio processing infrastructure,” shares Satya Venneti, co-founder and chief technology officer.
The year ahead is a big one for Telling.ai. The team is aiming to launch a direct-to-consumer app for monitoring lung fitness, collaborating with a health care provider on a pilot program, and developing a white label app with a value-based care provider. Telling.ai wants to use their technology for pre-screening patients for respiratory diseases, like COPD, and is collaborating with a pharmaceutical company to bring this to market.
“The pandemic has really kicked off virtual health and remote monitoring and we feel we are well positioned to leverage this new approach to health care,” says Venneti.
MindTrace is developing technology that allows neurosurgeons to remove brain tumors and seizure-generating tissue, while ensuring each patient leaves the hospital the same person they were when they arrived, preserving personality and skills.
“AlphaLab Health helped de-risk key aspects of our business plan so that we could take this surgical planning technology from the bench to bedside at scale,” says Max Sims, MBA, co-founder and CEO. “The introductions to clinicians, business administrators, and members of Pittsburgh’s life science investor community successfully prepared us for the next round of funding and navigating the regulatory process.”
Since coming out of AlphaLab Health, MindTrace has met with the FDA, received independent institutional review board approval, solidified fundraising plans, and identified four neurosurgical departments to pilot early versions of the software platform.
Naima Health is an interdisciplinary team developing the MyHealthyPregnancy (MHP) app, which uses decision science, machine learning, and maternal-fetal health expertise to help pregnant women minimize their risk of adverse outcomes — including preterm birth. The foundational research that fuels Naima Health was spun out of work done at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
There are significant disparities in adverse pregnancy outcomes among populations that have been historically denied equitable access to resources and high-quality health care, requiring that any tool addressing pregnancy risks is mindful of the needs of moms of color. MHP has worked closely with moms of color to help inform the conceptualization, design, and interventions available through the tool.
“MHP has rolled out to over 7,000 patients with great results: intervention for high-risk, untreated conditions identified through the app, significantly higher engagement among patients with historical risk factors, and greater behavioral health referrals for patients reporting their depression risk in the app,” says Tamar Krishnamurti, PhD, Founder. “Through enhanced risk identification, predictive screening, better communication and custom resources contextually served, Naima Health is positioned to be a market leader in predictive screening. With more data and commercial partners, Naima Health plans to expand to other health conditions and advance from predictive screening to predictive diagnostics.”
AlphaLab Health is a health care accelerator offering funding, wet lab and office space, collaboration with top researchers at AHN, and connections to industry leaders, early customers, potential investors, and mentors.
Parcel Health creates innovative and sustainable medication packaging. More than four billion plastic prescription bottles are used annually in the U.S., most ending up in landfills. Parcel Health provides eco-friendly medication packaging that is designed to be child-resistant and elderly-friendly, all while improving pharmacy workflows and reducing medication errors. Parcel Health began putting their prescription packaging alternative to the test in a nationwide pilot with 10 independent pharmacies.
“One of the biggest takeaways from the AlphaLab Health program was the soft skills we gained. From negotiation techniques to managing manufacturer relations, Parcel Health has become a stronger and more holistic company from the leadership skills gained in this program,” says Melinda Lee, PharmD.
Spoken helps people with aphasia or other language disorders speak again by predicting likely words and phrases. The company has taken the same type of machine learning algorithms that power a phone’s autocomplete function and applied them to much bigger data, giving suggestions that fit the context and improve with time. It’s a radically different approach to treating disabilities that aims to serve a growing global market.
According to founder and CEO, Michael Bond, Spoken grew 10x in 2021. Each week, the app helps over a thousand people with aphasia, nonverbal autism, and other language disorders speak again.
“We're looking to continue to grow those numbers, by better reaching potential customers in the U.S. and expanding to underserved markets and languages globally,” shares Bond.
Hale Therapeutics is on a mission to end one of the leading causes of preventable death: smoking. Through a consumer-facing device, they’ve combined smoking cessation science with an elegant full-stack solution to wean people off of nicotine. Hale’s connected medical vaporizer automatically and gradually reduces nicotine intake over time, helping people quit smoking better than current nicotine replacement therapies.
“The upcoming milestones for our company include raising our seed funding round and conducting the necessary preclinical tests and clinical trials. This safety and efficacy data will be used to seek approval in the U.K. and an investigational new drug submission in the U.S.,” says Josh Israel, co-founder and CEO.
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