At the INVEST PhamaTech conference last month, five startups shared their vision for how they are seeking to reinvent clinical trials as part of the Pitch Perfect contest. As a reminder, here’s a look at the companies who took part.

BeCareLink

Presenter: Dr. Charisse Litchman, Chief Medical Officer

The startup’s platform is aimed at quantifying progression in chronic neurologic disorders employing a gamified mobile app for AI-enabled neurologic assessment. ​Delayed detection of subtle changes in neurologic function can negatively affect patient outcomes. The BeCareLink platform delivers a remote quantitative assessment of neurologic function with Al analysis. This analysis uses data from a gamified mobile app and other digital biomarkers, such as a novel pulmonary device. It also provides HCPs and investigators with a more sensitive, comprehensive neurological assessment earlier, faster, more reliably and conveniently than a standard clinical assessment. The solution has demonstrated convergent validity with traditional neurological exams in studies at Yale and Weill-Cornell.

Climb

Presenter: Jay Holley, Founder & CEO

The platform puts trial operations on rails so study teams can succeed without needing a massive ops team to do so. Climb’s task-oriented dashboards keep the study unblocked and their partner ecosystem supercharges clinics large and small. Partnering with Climb helps companies bring novel treatments to market faster by making it easy to run clinical trials in more markets than ever before.

EpHealth

Presenter: Pedro Marton Pereira, CEO

The business offers a platform for decentralized clinical trials that can unlock patient recruitment in primary healthcare.

HumanFirst

Presenter: Nathan Coss, Research Analyst

The business empowers biopharma companies to unlock better research for all humans, sooner. HumanFirst is propelling the industry forward by enabling the planning, integration, and analysis of wearables and sensors into clinical trials. HumanFirst has helped 22 of the 25 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world identify the right clinical measures, cross referencing proposed digital measures against thousands of past studies. It also helps companies hone in on the right wearables through a searchable database that is updated daily with evidence regarding 1500+ digital sensors and nearly 10,000 different measures.

Vistim Labs Inc.

Presenter: James Hamet, CEO

The company’s high resolution cognition monitoring helps pharmaceutical companies develop treatments for neurological disorders. The lack of sensitive, objective methods to measure cognitive function in patients with neurological disorders makes clinical trials and drug development lengthy, costly, and often yield low-quality data. Vistim Labs solves this problem with CASBA — a high resolution cognition monitoring product which is used to identify and include early disease participants, and to meaningfully power clinical trials. The CASBA artificial intelligence biomarker system uses stimulated brain activity to directly and objectively measure real-time cognitive changes that were previously imperceivable. The system is ready for use in research and validation studies.

The Pitch Perfect judges include:

• Cris De Luca, Partner, Digital, Sanofi Ventures
• Jessica Federer, Partner, Boston Millennia Partners
• Joel Krikston, Managing Director Venture Investments & Head of Strategic Innovation Alliances, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund
• Maxim Owen, Venture Partner, Wavemaker Three-Sixty Health

And the winner is: BeCareLink

Here’s why the judges chose BeCareLink:

“Re-imagining the MS health experience from the ground up – while making an engaging product – with a focus on clinical validation, is fundamental to improving outcomes and quality of life for patients living with this chronic illness,” the judges explained in an email. “Taking a platform approach by connecting the patient-provider care-continuum across a variety of new additional therapeutic areas, will certainly support your continued growth. Congrats to BeCareLink!”

BeCareLink will be featured in an upcoming profile in MedCity News.

Our next Pitch Perfect contest will be at the INVEST Digital Health conference in Dallas on September 28. The window for applications has been extended. To view the criteria and apply, click here.

Picture: Getty Images, Oat_Phawat