Author: Spot On

The reports from theCDCare eye-opening. More than 75% of adults with Hepatitis are baby boomers. Baby boomers are people born from 1945 through 1965. Most of them don’t even know they are infected. It’s not even completely understood why boomers have such high rates of Hepatitis but the reality is that they could be living with an infection that occurred many years ago. May 19 is National Hepatitis Testing Day

So, why should baby boomers get tested for Hepatitis? TheCDClists the following reasons:

• Baby boomers are five times more likely to be infected with Hepatitis C.Liver disease, liver cancer, and deaths from Hepatitis C are on the rise.
• As baby boomers age, there is a greater chance that they will develop serious, life-threatening liver disease from Hepatitis C.
• Testing people in this generation will help them learn if they are infected and get them into lifesaving care and treatment.
• Early diagnosis and treatment can help prevent liver damage, cirrhosis, and even liver cancer.

TheHepatitis B Foundationcalls it a silent epidemic and has launched a mission to improve screening and testing rates to reduce the burden of illness and death from these diseases. For that reason, May 19 has been designated as National Hepatitis Testing Day. In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended screening everyone born between 1945 and 1965, as two-thirds of people with HCV infection were born during these years.

Accurate tests are available that use a drop ofdried bloodto determine if a person is infected with the Hepatitis B or C virus. Once detected, anti-viral medications are now available that are highly effective against the disease.

Spot On Sciences’ blood sampling device,HemaSpot, is being tested now as a diagnostic tool for this important screening. We look forward to being an integral part of the effort to check rising rates of infection.

Please talk to your health care provider or visit the links below to learn more.

http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/HepAwarenessMonth.htm

http://hepbunited.org/

http://www.cdcnpin.org/HTD/HTD.aspx

If you would like to read the Austin iLab Transcript click here – April 2013

Veterans may soon have a blue box to go along with theBlue Button. A Texas entrepreneur is working on a product that erases the need to visit the doctor’s office to give a blood sample and to keep it cold once it is taken.

HemaSpotis a plastic, blue, matchbook-size box. Inside is a flower with eight petals made of the same absorbent paper used to collect blood from a newborn’s heel. A person pricks a finger with a lancet and drops the blood in the center of the kit. The flower is set in a ring of desiccant, which dries out the sample. The person the drops the sample in the mail to a lab. Each petal can be removed and analyzed separately.

“The filter paper form allows the blood to spread out evenly and the blue box keeps it dark,” founder Dr. Jeannette Hill said. “There is no chance of contamination.”

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Three West Coast investors picked three East Coast healthcare startups to move on to the final round of theSxSW health acceleratorin Austin on Monday.

NeuroTrack,DocphinandCareport Healthbeat out five other healthcare startups. It was a standing room only crowd as the entrepreneurs pitched to three judges from the Bay Area. Stacy Feld of Physic Ventures, Nina Kjellson of Interwest and Lisa Suennen of Psilos asked about working with payers, getting reimbursed, and expansion opportunities.

Careport Healthmodernizes the process of finding care for patients leaving the hospital.
“Hospitals have paper lists of providers and they have to call and see if the facilities can take new patients,” CEO and co-founder Lissy Hu said. “All of this back and forth can take up to 20 hours.”

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Spot On Sciences, Inc., a medical device company, has been selected to participate in the fifth annual SXSW Interactive Accelerator to be held March 11-12, 2013 in Austin, Texas. The company’s initial products enable remote and self-collection of blood samples offering solutions for multiple markets including clinical trials, biobanking, home-based diagnostics, military field medicine and population studies. The SXSW Interactive features competitively selected emerging technologies in six distinct areas including Health Technologies. This focus has earned the festival a reputation as a breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies.

“The Spot On Sciences team, led by Dr. Jeanette Hill, deserves this recognition” said Terry Chase Hazell, Chair Texas Emerging Technology Fund Advisory. “ I’ve watched the company grow from the idea stage to receiving grants to a solidly bootstrapped biotech firm with amazing prospects” Hazell continued.

Jeanette Hill, CEO of Spot On Sciences, commented that, “We are one of only two companies from Austin that were selected for this showcase out of a pool of 500 applicants from around the world. It’s great to be singled out in this way.”

About Spot On Sciences

Spot On Sciences, Inc., located in Austin, Texas, is a medical device company that develops and markets innovative methods for collecting and storing biological samples. The company’s premier product, HemaSpot™, enables remote blood sample collection for diagnostic dried blood spot (DBS) testing. The moisture-tight device reduces sample contamination and ensures robust and stable sample collection, shipment and storage at ambient temperature. The single-use HemaSpot™ device uses a finger stick to collect and dry two drops of blood within a protective cartridge. Once dried, the sample is stable at room temperature and can be safely and easily shipped to a diagnostic test site for analysis. Traditional DBS involves a multi-step process that is subject to errors from moisture, contamination, and sample loss. HemaSpot’s™ innovative design addresses these problems, streamlining the entire process. Common disease markers can be measured including proteins, nucleic acids and small molecules.

More than 20 billion blood tests are performed annually worldwide with in vitro diagnostics showing sales of an estimated US$28.6 billion worldwide. Spot On Sciences aspires to change existing paradigms in this mature market with technologies that simplify processes, save time and reduce costs.

In 2012, Spot On Sciences was awarded a two-year, $1 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to further develop a device that would allow anyone to take a blood sample in any location and ship or store the samples at room temperature.

The firm was selected in 2011 as a finalist for the prestigious Cartier Women’s Initiative Award.

Both the number of applicants and local participants in this year’s South By Southwest Interactive business model competition declined.

Clay.io and Spot On Sciences Inc. are the only two Austin companies listed to compete in the SXSW Accelerator event. In 2012, six local startups were finalists in the competition. Also, the competition received 500 applications compared with670 last year, organizers said.

Clay.io develops a platform for HTML5 games, including an application store to discover games that work on phones, tablets and personal computers. It also developed a programing interface for developers to integrate features into games.

Spot On Sciences develops medical devices for clinical diagnostic testing and medical research. Its initial products are designed to enable remote and self-collection of blood samples.

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Connect with Spot On Sciences at the 2012 HIV Diagnostics Conference to be held in Atlanta, GA during December 12-14, 2012.

Sponsors of this key event include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC), and the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). The conference provides an opportunity for clinicians, clinical and public health laboratorians, HIV/AIDS program managers and directors, and industry representatives to review developments in HIV diagnostics, share data and research findings, and establish collaborations.

Spot On Sciences’ CEO and founder, Dr. Jeanette Hill, has been invited to present at the inaugural 100 Year Starship symposium in Houston, Texas. The 100 Year Starship, aka100YSS, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the pursuit of human travel beyond our solar system within the next century.

Besides getting the opportunity to meet with space luminaries (astronauts, physicists, astronomers, etc.) Dr. Hill will be participating on a distinguished panel addressing the topic of “Life: In Vivo and In Vitro” during the Saturday session. Spot On Sciences’ blood sampling device, the HemaSpot, will be presented as a simple and cost-effective solution to collect blood samples in space for health monitoring and research. To learn more about the HemaSpot visit Spot On Sciences at /news/https://www.spotonsciences.com/hemaspot-hf