MINNEAPOLIS, May 17, 2023 — BARR Center (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) announced $5 million for more Minnesota schools to implement the BARR system was included in the final House and Senate 2023 education finance bill and is headed to Minnesota Governor Walz’s desk for final sign-off.

Introduced in January 2023 as bipartisan legislation and authored by House E-12 Finance Committee Chair Rep. Cheryl Youakim (Hopkins) and Sen. Aric Putnam (St. Cloud), the funding will allow 18 geographically distributed (urban, suburban, and rural) Minnesota schools to implement the BARR system over three years. More than 40 Minnesota schools and 200 others nationally are currently using the BARR system to improve their schools’ cultures and students’ outcomes.

“I want you to picture how hard it is to be a teacher and to have a system come into place that can support you in accomplishing things that support and help the students – that’s what BARR is” shared Lake Elmo Elementary Instructional Coach Lisa Boland Blake during a February legislative hearing. She was one of more than 15 educators who testified during committee hearings in support of funding the BARR system for more Minnesota schools. Boland Blake went on to tell legislators “I’ve been in education for 38 years. BARR is here to stay.”

Now more than ever, in this challenging, post-pandemic period, educators need support addressing school climate and student mental health issues. Using existing resources, the BARR system focuses on building meaningful relationships – capitalizing on the strengths of every student – and leveraging student data to truly transform a school’s culture. In every school implemented it has proven to be a successful way to meet the social and emotional needs of all students while simultaneously increasing student achievement and teacher satisfaction and effectiveness.

“This is a really big thing that is going to allow for teacher retention in a time where many schools are searching to have more applicants for positions,” stated White Bear Lake High School Associate Principal Joseph Held during his legislative testimony. “I want to highlight that BARR has transformed our ability to address recurring behavior problems, and also our academics have improved. Our passing rates have gone up and our behavior rates have gone down. And, again, this has nothing to do with new content or new curriculum, it’s how we as adults are helping our students.”

The BARR system stands alone as the most consistently proven school improvement model in the country. Through rigorous studies conducted by the American Institute for Research (AIR), the BARR system has demonstrated statistically significant results in 20 areas, including increasing math and English achievement scores, improving student credit attainment, reducing course failure, closing the achievement gap, and reducing chronic absenteeism all while improving the school environment for both students and staff.

“I’ve been teaching for 31 years and for a lot of those years I felt like I was on an island when dealing with students who struggled. I tried to figure it out by myself, there was nothing set up for me to communicate with other teachers,” shared Detroit Lakes High School Social Studies Teacher Kalan Malchow during legislative testimony in February. “With the BARR meeting systems, teachers communicate and share strategies about how to meet the needs of these students. The data reaffirms the effectiveness of this crucial program.”

BARR Center will work with the Minnesota Department of Education on the application and school selection process. The schools will be geographically distributed (urban, suburban, and rural) and priority will be given to schools serving Black, Indigenous, and students of color, and those experiencing poverty. Educator training will be scheduled for this summer, and schools will begin implementing the BARR system during the 2023-24 school year. These schools will form a statewide network and also join the national network of BARR schools.

“BARR’s mission is to create equitable schools where every student, regardless of race, ethnicity, or economic status, has access to high quality education where adults know them, recognize their strengths, and help them succeed,” explains Angela Jerabek, founder and executive director of the BARR Center. “I am so grateful to the Minnesota legislature for allocating this funding so more educators and students can experience the BARR system, a true evidence-based school success system.”

About BARR Center
BARR Center (Building Assets, Reducing Risks) delivers the expertise and resources required for a school to implement the BARR system, an evidence-backed system designed to nurture a collaborative and strengths-based culture of support and success for every student through intentionally deepening relationships and improving use of data. For more information, visit, https://barrcenter.org/.

SOURCE BARR Center

Union Cloud enables any organization to operationalize complex AI with data ownership, governance and cost efficiency

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 17, 2023 — Union.ai, a company that extends companies’ ability to create next-generation AI and data products at scale, today announced general availability of Union Cloud for North American and European customers of AWS and GCP. Union Cloud empowers organizations to deliver highly reliable and impactful products that leverage the latest AI technologies at low cost, high quality and rapid velocity. The company also announced it has raised $19.1 million in Series A financing from NEA and Nava Ventures in order to fuel growth and its expanded offerings.

For the past few quarters, Union AI has been working with its Union Cloud customer partners to solve problems that impede delivering high-quality AI products. “During this period we learned about problems like observability, governance and infrastructure maintenance that impede realization of value from AI,” said Union AI CEO Ketan Umare.  “Our accelerated momentum reflects on the success of Flyte, the popular open-source workflow orchestration platform, and we are seeing an even broader range of customers expressing excitement about Union Cloud as a new managed solution that is powered by Flyte.”

“Machine learning, and especially large language models, raise big issues around privacy and information security. Companies are becoming increasingly wary of using services where they lose control over what precisely happens with their data,” said Greg Papadopoulos, venture partner, NEA. “Combining the power of big models with rich company data has to be handled with care — that’s one of the reasons why we’re so excited about the progress made by the Union.AI team, first with Flyte and now with Union Cloud. This is exactly what people are demanding and a real differentiator: Let me exploit the power of large language models while maintaining control and ownership of my data.”

“The AI landscape is evolving quickly, and companies that do not have significant internal developer resources run the risk of falling behind. To be able to participate let alone compete in today’s rapidly changing AI powered product landscape, time to value is of the essence.” said Manish Patel, founder, Nava Ventures. “That’s why we are excited to invest in and work closely with Ketan Umare and the Union.AI team as they extend the power of Flyte even further through Union Cloud, allowing many more companies to quickly go from research to production.”

Organizations that have adopted Flyte include hundreds of well-known brands and startups, among them Spotify, Stripe, Gojek, Wolt, LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter. Users report Flyte dramatically increases productivity by automatically versioning data and AI pipelines, making them auditable, reliable, reproducible and infinitely scalable.

Mick Jermsurawong, a machine learning infrastructure engineer with Stripe, said Flyte’s efficiencies create measurable business outcomes for the payment platform. “Based on a single team, we see 10x more offline training jobs dispatched from Flyte, and that results in 5x more frequent model releases with sizable business gains,” Jermsurawong said. “I think the realization here is that ML productivity is not a nice to have but actually a business requirement.”

Katrina Palen, a staff ML platform engineer at Stash, describes Flyte’s impact on its ML workflows: “Our provision time is at least two times faster on average. Model execution is three times faster, and the cost — which we can actually probably further optimize with minimal configuration and optimization — is at least three times cheaper.”

Flyte is built for efficiency with features like automatic provisioning of data and ML systems, which helps reduce compute costs. “Rather than running expensive GPU clusters constantly, Flyte launches infrastructure when needed and tears it down when idle,” Umare said. “Additionally, its built-in caching and smart checkpointing architecture enables data and ML teams to use cheaper Spot instances reliably.”

Union Cloud: Machine Learning Engineered and Delivered Seamlessly

Union Cloud delivers all the power and capabilities of Flyte orchestration to companies that don’t want to invest in building and maintaining their own infrastructures.

• For an end-to-end view of even the most complex pipelines, Union Cloud provides engineering and production teams state-of-the-art task-level observability and gives group leaders the ability to measure ROI for individual projects.
• Data scientists, researchers and production engineers can run highly efficient workloads without installing or maintaining Kubernetes clusters for their AI and data pipelines.
• Union Cloud offers role-based access control (RBAC) and fine-grained authorization, guaranteeing security and flexibility.
• Union Cloud is secure. It’s deployed in your VPC, so you control access to your data.
• Union Cloud is SOC 2 Type II compliant.

Union Cloud significantly enhances the power available to data and AI teams of any size, Umare continued. “We have given any team the ability to compete without the infrastructure burden with data ownership and governance.”

Union Cloud is a transformative technology platform that empowers organizations to carry out a broad range of sophisticated tasks without the need for extensive infrastructure or dedicated Kubernetes teams. This allows organizations to focus on their core objectives, fostering innovation across various domains. These tasks include (but are not limited to) developing production pipelines for advanced perception and language modeling, enabling autonomous driving capabilities, facilitating breakthroughs in drug discovery, engineering novel molecules, and refining operational research strategies. The beauty of Union Cloud is that it provides a streamlined, user-friendly approach, reducing the complexity typically associated with such processes.  Most importantly, Union Cloud can lower overall compute costs dramatically while offering complete observability for data and AI workflows — even on a task level.

Union Cloud is immediately available for AWS and GCP and starts at $2,500 per month. Union offers free trials for qualified users. Learn more about Union Cloud at http://union.ai.

About Union: Union.ai is revolutionizing the way organizations approach machine learning and data orchestration with Union Cloud, a managed version of the innovative Flyte platform. This unique, Kubernetes-native solution simplifies the processes of data scientists and machine learning engineers, ensuring seamless and efficient workflow automation. With a proven track record of success among market-leading companies, Union.ai continues to be the driving force behind Flyte’s development and adoption.

About NEA: New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. Founded in 1977, NEA has over $25 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2022 and invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm’s long track record of investing includes more than 270 portfolio company IPOs and more than 450 mergers and acquisitions. For more information, please visit www.nea.com.

SOURCE Union.ai

The funding round follows 300% year-over-year growth and adoption from thousands of restaurants across the U.S. and Canada. 

BOSTON, May 17, 2023 — Incentivio, the all-in-one intelligent guest engagement platform for restaurants, has closed $10M in Series A Funding. Osage Venture Partners led the round with participation from Ardent Venture Capital and Grotech Ventures.

“The pandemic accelerated restaurants’ need to evolve with the times and adopt more of a digital presence. Now most restaurants are looking to take their digital guest experience to the next level while simplifying their tech stack” says Rajat Bhakhri, CEO and Co-Founder at Incentivio. “Most small to medium-sized restaurant groups simply do not have the resources to compete with the largest enterprise brands who have multi-million dollar budgets and large IT teams. That’s where we come in!”

Incentivio plans to invest in go-to-market initiatives to accelerate its growth and to invest in product, engineering, and innovation. “We are truly about the art of flavor meeting the science of data,” says Sash Dias, Co-Founder, and COO. “The largest enterprise brands have an unfair advantage in leveraging data to drive business results. We want to level the playing field so that all brands can thrive in this digital-first economy.”

Today, Incentivio helps restaurants consolidate their digital tech stack, gain a 360-degree picture of their guests, and leverage their guest data to gain real-time insights and enhance the digital guest experience. The next phase of Incentivio’s growth is to continue to innovate using AI & Machine Learning to help restaurants reduce manual intervention, cut costs, and increase revenue based on their own data.

“Osage Venture Partners is honored to partner with Incentivio to build the next-generation platform for digital customer engagement for all restaurants,” commented Sean Dowling, Managing Partner at Osage Venture Partners. “The company’s integrated, AI-driven solution that extracts intelligence from a restaurant’s data and drives automated action to elevate the guest journey can create a category leader in an increasingly critical part of the restaurant tech stack, and we are excited to support the exceptional team in realizing that vision.”

About Osage Ventures

Osage Venture Partners (OVP) is a leading venture capital firm located just outside Philadelphia, PA. For nearly two decades, OVP has partnered with exceptional entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading early-stage, B2B software companies. OVP applies a deep understanding of how to drive success in B2B software with a focus on companies innovating in the Future of Work the Future of Education.

For more information, visit OsageVenturePartners.com.

About Incentivio

Founded in 2016 by Rajat Bhakhri (CEO) and Sash Dias (COO), Incentivio is the industry leader in leveraging AI and Machine Learning to drive revenue and guest engagement for restaurants. Incentivio is passionate about helping its partners build stronger relationships with their guests, and that starts with the company’s consultative and customized approach to sales, implementation, customer success, and customer support.

Incentivio combines online ordering and white-label restaurant apps with loyalty, gift cards, machine learning upsells, CDP analytics, a data-driven marketing suite, and guest journey management to give restaurants a powerful system to build relationships with their guests and drive digital revenue. For more information visit www.incentivio.com. 

Contact: 
Samuel Kusinitz 
617-833-0110 
[email protected]

SOURCE Incentivio

Proprietary THC Testing Platform Offers Employers and Insurers Workplace Safety Solution

LIVERMORE, Calif., May 17, 2023 — Buzzkill Labs (“Buzzkill”), developer of the world’s first rapid saliva test for psychoactive THC, today announced the close of an oversubscribed Series A funding round co-led by Poseidon and existing investors. Buzzkill will use the proceeds from the financing to commercialize its technology, which fills employers’ critical need to maintain safe workplaces while respecting the dignity of employees who legally use cannabis outside of work.

Before now, the available tests for THC often utilized urine samples and outdated technologies that detect past use, cross-react with non-impairing compounds like CBD, and are prone to adulteration. Buzzkill’s proprietary technology performs on-site detection of psychoactive THC in saliva (oral fluid) samples in less than 15 minutes. The platform, initially deployed in workplace safety applications, enables employers with safety-sensitive roles to identify the use of cannabis during or immediately before work hours.

This month the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) published an update to their drug testing policy to include oral fluid testing. This action harmonizes the DOT policy with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) policy, guides DOT-regulated testing, and has a strong influence on non-regulated workplace drug testing programs.

“The world is moving steadily toward broad cannabis legalization, and the current cannabis testing technology is obsolete,” said Buzzkill’s CEO, Jeff Heimburger. “The Buzzkill platform gives employers a way to deter on-the-job use of THC for safety-sensitive roles – such as vehicle operators and hazardous materials handlers – in a way that is fair to employees who legally consume cannabis on their own time.”

George Farquar, Ph.D., Buzzkill’s CTO added, “Our platform separates and detects the psychoactive THC parent compound from more than 100 cannabinoids, with analysis that ensures the results will stand up under scrutiny. DOT authorization is significant validation and is likely to accelerate adoption of oral fluid as the preferred sample type even more than we have experienced to date.”

Buzzkill also announced the appointment of Patrick Rea, Managing Director of Poseidon Garden Ventures, to its Board of Directors. “We are delighted to welcome Patrick to the board and are encouraged by the strong signal Poseidon’s investment in Buzzkill sends to the market,” said Joshua Silber of Tuscan Management, an investor and member of the board.

“We are proud to partner with Buzzkill Labs as they address an urgent market need to ensure safe workplaces that are fair for employees,” stated Rea. “Employers in states with legal cannabis are desperate for a solution to help them comply with legislation that prevents discrimination against employees who enjoy cannabis products when they are not at work. We are excited that Buzzkill is introducing the first product that truly helps solve this growing problem.”

About Buzzkill Labs

Founded in 2018, Buzzkill Labs (Buzzkill) has developed patented technologies for rapid, cost-effective detection of organic compounds. Buzzkill’s proprietary oral fluid collection device combined with gold-standard chromatography-based analysis delivers the highest specificity and sensitivity on the market. Headquartered in Livermore, CA, Buzzkill capitalizes on the rich talent pool and startup-friendly environment of the Tri-Valley and San Francisco Bay Area.

Contacts
Jeff Heimburger, CEO
Buzzkill Labs, Inc.
[email protected]
408-480-3090

SOURCE Buzzkill Labs

New investor including MetLife and Khazanah Nasional alongside existing and new shareholders, join Series B funding round led by Tokio Marine

SINGAPORE, May 17, 2023 — bolttech today announced it raised US$196 million in connection with its Series B with an up-round valuation of US$1.6 billion. The round was led by Tokio Marine – Japan’s first insurance company with a 140-year history. Other key investors include global life insurance giant MetLife through its subsidiary MetLife Next Gen Ventures, Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional, as well as new and existing shareholders.

International insurtech bolttech is defying the current capital markets backdrop – mega-round funding (US$100 million and above) for the global insurtech sector is at its lowest level since Q1 2020, according to a Gallagher Re report^[1]. bolttech’s Series B fundraise is the largest straight equity Series B for an insurtech in the last year, and follows the company achieving the largest ever Series A round for an insurtech in 2021.

bolttech will use the proceeds of the Series B to further fuel its organic growth, including investments in proprietary technology, digital capabilities for business partners and end consumers as well as talent across bolttech’s 30+ markets. In addition, the funds will be used to explore inorganic opportunities to accelerate international growth.

Rob Schimek, bolttech’s Group Chief Executive Officer, said, “Having just celebrated our third anniversary since our launch in 2020, we are incredibly proud of what we have achieved so far on our mission to build the world’s leading, technology-enabled insurance ecosystem. We are now one of the fastest growing insurtechs in the world, enabling our partners to find new revenue streams, accelerate their digital transformation, and deepen their customer relationships. We thank all our Series B investors for their support, and we are excited to welcome our new investors, reputable leaders in their respective spaces, and look forward to strong partnerships that will fuel bolttech’s continued growth on our path to profitability in 2024.”

The support of such esteemed investors is a resounding validation of bolttech’s leadership, innovative business model, and unique value proposition in shaping the future of insurance. bolttech has maintained a strong financial foundation with a clear path to profitability while driving its rapid growth and scale to build the most comprehensive international presence for an insurtech.

bolttech’s global operations

bolttech, one of the world’s leading embedded insurance providers, is a global B2B2C insurtech that connects insurers with distributors and their customers. With licenses to operate throughout Asia, Europe and all 50 U.S. states, bolttech provides businesses with everything they need to offer insurance products that meet their customers’ evolving insurance and protection needs in the digital age.

bolttech now quotes approximately US$55 billion worth of annualized premiums. Globally, bolttech’s ecosystem connects 700 distribution partners with more than 230 insurance providers and offers in excess of 6,000 product variations.

Sources:

^[1] – Gallagher Re, 4 May 2023, Gallagher Re Global InsurTech Report for Q1 2023

SOURCE bolttech

Company to Ramp Up Production to Meet Booming Demand for High-Throughput, Fully Dense Aluminum Parts for EVs, Industrial and Heavy Equipment

BURLINGTON, Mass., May 17, 2023 — Alloy Enterprises, the world’s first Digital Aluminum Fab, announces the completion of a $26 million oversubscribed Series A round led by Piva Capital and joined by new investors Unless, Flybridge Capital, MassMutual Catalyst Fund, Robert Downey Jr.’s Footprint Coalition, and existing investors Congruent Ventures and Riot Ventures. The funding brings the total raised to $37 million.

Novel Manufacturing Process to Fill The Void

A gap exists between the demand for complex aluminum components and the supply. Demand for aluminum has been escalating, driven by lightweighting for e-mobility across the transportation sector and the need for more sustainable materials. Aluminum is infinitely recyclable; it has twice the strength-to-weight ratio of steel and is an incredible material for lightweighting. Aluminum components will be part of the electrification journey of everything that moves.

However, the United States has lost a third of its foundries. Traditional manufacturing processes, such as casting, are not keeping pace with the speed of innovation. U.S. manufacturers need on-demand capacity, at scale, at home.

Alloy Enterprises is filling the void with a fast, cost-effective manufacturing method that streamlines the production of aluminum parts at scale here in the U.S. Alloy supplies complex aluminum components to its customers. Its’ unique solution is the first process specially designed for aluminum that does not use aluminum powder. Using a combination of laser cutting and diffusion bonding, the team can produce production volumes through its machines cost-effectively while maintaining the advantages of 3D printing, such as reducing lead times, iterating designs quickly, avoiding expensive tooling, and digitizing inventory.

“The Alloy team has proven out a highly efficient process for delivering aluminum components quickly and at scale,” said Maria Buitron, Principal at Piva Capital. “This is a breakthrough for the industry that addresses the need for reasonable lead times, major cost reductions, and on-demand manufacturing, delivering direct benefits to EV, industrial and heavy equipment. We have been so impressed with the Alloy team and look forward to partnering with them to help them scale as the need for their solution ramps up.”

“Alloy is poised to transform key industries at a critical time for companies concerned with building more resilient supply chains and reducing their carbon footprint,” said Liz Reynolds, Partner at Unless and Former Special Assistant to the President for Manufacturing at the National Economic Council. “We are at the beginning of an industrial transformation in which the country is reindustrializing. Alloy’s unique technology will help companies accelerate through this transformation.”

Additive Manufacturing System Specifically for Aluminum

Increasingly, manufacturers want the advantages of 3D printing, including complex geometries, the ability to iterate designs, and freedom from expensive tooling. But aluminum, especially alloys such as 6061, can be difficult and expensive to print using powder bed processes. The company developed its selective diffusion bonding process specifically for aluminum, with scale production in mind. Its novel feedstock is already scaled and is produced in 10-ton runs. This summer, Alloy Enterprises will start delivering production volume parts. The company is actively evaluating and qualifying new customer applications and has the capacity for volume production.

“We have an incredible team with the ability to continuously solve hard R&D challenges while staying focused on the customers’ needs,” said Ali Forsyth, CEO Alloy Enterprises. “We went from invention to commercial sales in less than two years. With this sizeable fundraise, we’ve added great partners to the table to help us take Alloy to the next level.” 

Forsyth continued, “We’ve made rapid progress and have garnered Fortune 100 manufacturing customers in three major market verticals: automotive, industrial, and heavy equipment. We’ve proven our manufacturing process and are already qualifying customer production parts. We will use this funding to ramp production capacity, further develop our software suite, and apply next-gen automation. We’re open for business and scaling rapidly, including hiring across the board in sales, marketing, applications, software, operations, and manufacturing.”

About Alloy Enterprises

Within a year of invention, Alloy Enterprises makes parts using its novel additive manufacturing system that provides high throughput of fully-dense aluminum parts, enabling manufacturers to scale from prototyping to production. To learn more about Alloy Enterprises, visit https://www.alloyenterprises.co/

Media Contact:
Mary Magnani
CodePR
[email protected]

SOURCE Alloy Enterprises

The investment, led by Asclepius Growth Capital and leading health system partners, will enable care teams to empower patients with a more personalized remote-care experience.

MIAMI, May 17, 2023 — HealthSnap, a Miami-based virtual care management platform for chronic disease management, today announced a new round of financing totaling $9 million. The round was led by Asclepius Growth Capital, an SPV founded by David Jahns, a managing director of Galen Partners, and Steve Cashman, CEO of Caption Health and former CCO of InTouch Health, as well as new strategic investments from current business partners UnityPoint Health andTampa General Hospital. Existing stockholders Florida Funders and MacDonald Ventures also participated in this financing. The company also announced that David Jahns has joined HealthSnap’s board of directors.

“Over the last several years, we have seen many companies try to crack the RPM and CCM code, and HealthSnap has done just that. HealthSnap’s patient-centered approach to virtual care management and its interoperable platform has enabled the company to set itself apart as a market leader. We are proud to lead this latest funding round,” Jahns said. Cashman added, “My career in healthcare has been a continued effort to make effective care more efficient and accessible and HealthSnap is making meaningful strides toward this goal.”

This latest round of financing, which was oversubscribed, brings HealthSnap’s total funding to $17.1 million to date. It will be used by HealthSnap to support a national expansion of its care management services team to support rapid health system adoption and invest in novel clinical use cases. In the last year, to further the company’s vision to be the operating system for virtual chronic disease management, HealthSnap successfully expanded its hallmark Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) program to include a new and complimentary Chronic Care Management (CCM) solution as well.

“Health systems have reached a turning point in their care delivery and population health strategy,” said Matthew Warrens, managing director of Innovation at UnityPoint Health. “If we want to continue to provide world-class personalized care at scale, when and where patients want to receive it, we need to continuously invest in novel technology and partnerships that meet patients in their homes. We look forward to collaborating with the HealthSnap team as we scale their remote care delivery models across our health system.”

As virtual care management programs like RPM and CCM have increasingly become a top priority for premier health systems and physicians groups across the country, HealthSnap has grown its revenues by over 320% in the last year, more than tripled its number of active patient programs and demonstrated meaningful clinical outcomes across various chronic conditions such as hypertension, heart failure, obesity, and Type II diabetes.

“Implementing technology to monitor our patients from the comfort of their own home can be a highly effective way to avoid costly and unnecessary return visits to the hospital, while vastly improving our patients’ satisfaction and ability to manage their care remotely,” said Rachel Feinman, vice president of Innovation, Tampa General Hospital and managing director of TGH Innoventures, which provides a coordinated mechanism for the academic medical center to develop innovative solutions to improve quality and access to care. “Tampa General is dedicated to driving innovation to deliver world-class care to patients in the Tampa Bay region and beyond. Our partnership with HealthSnap to manage patients’ care more effectively from home is an important part of that effort.”

TGH Innoventures also serves as a platform for Tampa General to invest resources and funds into emerging companies that share the academic medical center’s vision and can help develop immediate solutions for healthcare access, quality, and delivery.

“HealthSnap’s proven virtual care management programs have already flipped the care delivery paradigm for tens of thousands of patients from reactive, episodic care delivered in the clinic to a model that is proactive, ongoing, and delivered in the home — leading to significantly improved outcomes and experiences for patients and providers,” said HealthSnap CEO Samson Magid. “Our mission from day one has always been to empower patients living with chronic conditions anytime, anywhere, and this new financing will accelerate our ability to execute that mission for patients across the country.”

HealthSnap is hiring for nurse care navigator positions, clinical operations managers, and patient enrollment specialists. For a complete list of open positions, please visit www.healthsnap.io/careers.

ABOUT UNITYPOINT HEALTH VENTURES

Founded in 2019 and based in Des Moines, IA, UnityPoint Health Ventures makes direct investments in ideas and partners that provide an easier, more personal experience for patients and providers. As the venture capital arm of UnityPoint Health – one of the nation’s most integrated health systems – the firm invests in opportunities that improve patient outcomes and reduce the cost of health care. In addition to strategic investing, UnityPoint Health Ventures provides dedicated resources to accelerate portfolio company traction within UnityPoint Health and beyond.

ABOUT TAMPA GENERAL HOSPITAL

Tampa General Hospital, a 1,040-bed, not-for-profit, academic medical center, is one of the largest hospitals in America and delivers world-class care as the region’s only center for Level l trauma and comprehensive burn care. Tampa General Hospital is the highest-ranked hospital in the market in U.S. News & World Report’s 2022-23 Best Hospitals, and is tied as the third highest-ranked hospital in Florida, with seven specialties ranking among the best programs in the United States. Tampa General Hospital has been designated as a model of excellence by the 2022 Fortune/Merative 100 Top Hospitals list. The academic medical center’s commitment to growing and developing its team members is recognized by two prestigious Forbes magazine rankings – first nationally in the 2022 America’s Best Employers for Women and sixth out of 100 Florida companies in the 2022 America’s Best Employers by State. Tampa General is the safety net hospital for the region, caring for everyone regardless of their ability to pay, and in fiscal year 2021, provided a net community benefit worth more than $224.5 million in the form of health care for underinsured patients, community education, and financial support to community health organizations in Tampa Bay. It is one of the nation’s busiest adult solid organ transplant centers and is the primary teaching hospital for the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine. With six medical helicopters, Tampa General Hospital transports critically injured or ill patients from 23 surrounding counties to receive the advanced care they need. Tampa General houses a nationally accredited comprehensive stroke center, and its 32-bed Neuroscience, Intensive Care Unit is the largest on the West Coast of Florida. It also is home to the Jennifer Leigh Muma 82-bed neonatal intensive care unit, and a nationally accredited rehabilitation center. Tampa General Hospital’s footprint includes 17 Tampa General Medical Group Primary Care offices, TGH Family Care Center Kennedy, TGH Brandon Healthplex, TGH Virtual Health, and 21 TGH Imaging powered by Tower outpatient radiology centers throughout Hillsborough, Pasco, Pinellas and Palm Beach counties. Tampa Bay area residents also receive world-class care from the TGH Urgent Care powered by Fast Track network of clinics. To see a medical care professional live anytime, anywhere on a smartphone, tablet or computer, visit Virtual Health | Tampa General Hospital (tgh.org). As one of the largest hospitals in the country, Tampa General Hospital is the first in Florida to partner with GE Healthcare and open a clinical command center that provides real-time situational awareness to improve and better coordinate patient care at a lower cost. For more information, go to www.tgh.org.

ABOUT HEALTHSNAP

HealthSnap is an integrated virtual care management platform that helps healthcare organizations improve patient outcomes, reduce utilization, and diversify revenue streams. From chronic disease-agnostic Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and Chronic Care Management (CCM) to AI-guided care coordination, virtual care delivery, patented billing tools, population analytics – and so much more, HealthSnap is the simplest way to manage chronic conditions remotely.

Visit www.healthsnap.io or follow us on LinkedIn for more information.

HealthSnap Media Contact:
Sunny Ghia
[email protected]
(888) 780-1872 Ext. 701

SOURCE HealthSnap

Web-Based Digital whiteboard makes construction planning and project management fast, easy, and collaborative

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 17, 2023 — Planera, a visual scheduling and planning solution that helps construction companies build, analyze, and optimize schedules to increase profitability, today announced it has raised $5.4 million in seed funding from Sorenson Ventures, Firebolt Ventures, and several prominent construction executives and the company’s public launch.

Developed by successful startup founder Nitin Bhandari, who most recently served as Life360’s Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Planera provides a more accessible alternative to the industry’s legacy systems and overly complex Gantt-chart-based scheduling tools. Planera’s project scheduling software eliminates the guesswork in the construction planning and estimation process.

Planera’s construction scheduling software combines the sophisticated capabilities of legacy solutions, such as critical path, float management, project filtering, and resource usage graphs, with a simple-to-use online “whiteboard” interface that promotes collaboration and easy access across the entire project team. “Poor-quality schedules, especially during the pre-construction phase, can cost builders contractors millions of dollars. Too often, construction companies fail to develop detailed project schedules because legacy scheduling tools take too much time and effort,” said Saif Lodhi, a Planera co-founder with 30+ years of construction industry experience.

“The people with the most construction experience and expertise often don’t know how to use complicated, legacy scheduling software. This results in project delays, estimation errors, and client frustration. Planera is so simple that anyone with job knowledge can create a resource-loaded schedule in hours instead of weeks. With multi-user collaboration similar to Google Docs, we give scheduling superpowers to everyone in the construction industry,” said Nitin Bhandari, CEO and founder of Planera. “We combine the power of industry-leading scheduling tools with the simplicity of traditional whiteboards and spreadsheets.”

Founded in November 2021, Planera was developed in collaboration with construction industry professionals to be an accessible and adaptable technology for the construction, engineering, architecture/design, and general contractor sectors. By simplifying the scheduling process for both infrastructure and commercial projects, Planera serves as a multifaceted tool that organizations can use to plan, create timelines, and collaborate with all key project stakeholders.

“For construction companies, developing an accurate bid and schedule for a project is critical for success. If our proposals lack precision, we risk decreased project profitability or losing the bid altogether,” said Joseph Henry, Estimation Manager of Shimmick Construction, a Planera customer. “Planera helps us quickly create comprehensive and accurate project schedules. We decided to adopt Planera because it reduces the type of inaccuracies that led to lost bids or cost risks for the most valuable projects, which are often large and complex in nature.” 

“Planera allows our entire team to easily create and update project schedules and collaborate in real-time,” said Gordon Gangitano, Vice President of Webcor, a Planera customer. “In our work, collaboration is key, and the ability for everyone to be able to easily and efficiently contribute to the schedule ensures accuracy and stakeholder alignment.” 

As contractors navigate complexities related to high borrowing costs, interest rate fluctuations, and rising and unpredictable cost of materials, planning, forecasting, and bidding on projects while maintaining margins and timelines can be difficult. “Historically, construction scheduling and project management solutions have been overly complicated and non-intuitive,” said Planera lead investor Ken Elefant of Sorenson Ventures. “Planera is powerful, easy to use, and collaborative. By democratizing construction scheduling, Planera has the opportunity to become an indispensable tool throughout the entire project lifecycle.”

Prior to creating Planera, Bhandari was the founder of Zenlabs, which was a company that used screentime monitoring and wellness tools to promote online mindfulness and combat the digital attention crisis. Zenlabs was acquired by Life360 in 2019, and Bhandari joined Life360 as their Vice President of Strategic Initiatives. Previously, Bhandari was the founder and CEO of Skyfire, which was acquired by Opera Software.

About Planera

Planers is a collaborative digital whiteboard that can create resource-loaded CPM schedules for the construction industry. Planera combines the sophisticated capabilities of traditional scheduling tools with the simplicity of a digital whiteboard, democratizing scheduling in a construction company. With Planera, users can generate comprehensive schedules in hours instead of weeks, identifying opportunities to reduce risk and improve project profitability. Real-time collaboration and ease of use mean all stakeholders can contribute to the schedule, saving time and improving the overall quality of the schedule. For more information, visit www.planera.io/.

Media Contacts
Christian Morley/Michael Gallo
Lumina Communications
[email protected] 

SOURCE Planera

REDMOND, Wash., May 17, 2023 — Cadence Neuroscience announced today that it has secured $26 million in Series B financing. The round was led by Angelini Lumira Biosciences Fund (co-managed by Lumira Ventures and Angelini Ventures) and included other new investors F-Prime Capital, LivaNova USA, Angelini Ventures, Spectrum Financial Services, and Mayo Clinic, as well as the company’s Series A lead investor JAZZ Venture Partners. Gerry Brunk of Lumira Ventures and Kevin Chu of F-Prime Capital have joined the company’s board of directors.

Cadence is a clinical-stage company developing a novel neuromodulation therapy for treating pediatric and adult patients with focal drug resistant epilepsy based on research by a Mayo Clinic Neurology and Neurosurgery team, led by Gregory Worrell M.D., Ph.D., lead investigator and Mayo Clinic epileptologist. The therapy utilizes chronic subthreshold cortical stimulation to modulate EEG biomarkers associated with epilepsy to reduce or eliminate seizures. The company will use the Series B funds to complete pivotal clinical studies and pursue FDA clearance.

“The Cadence team has extensive domain expertise in developing active neural implants and conducting human clinical studies in the field,” said Kent Leyde, Cadence’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “During the last three years, we have been closely collaborating with Mayo Clinic in the design, manufacture, and engineering tests of our therapy system. These efforts are nearing completion and will enable us to begin clinical testing.”

“As an active investor in both medical devices and pharmaceutical therapies for epilepsy, we believe Cadence is well-positioned to drive important advances in the field of neuromodulation, with the potential to revolutionize the treatment of drug refractory epilepsy, a disease which affects millions of people across the world,” said Gerry Brunk, Managing Director at Lumira Ventures. “We believe Cadence’s platform solution has the potential to become an important standard of care in drug-resistant epilepsy as well as other difficult-to-treat brain disorders,” said Paolo Di Giorgio, CEO of Angelini Ventures. 

“We think the precise, patient-specific stimulation method being developed by Cadence is unique and exciting,” said Kevin Chu, healthcare team Principal at F-Prime Capital. “We are thrilled to join the team on its important mission to bring life-changing therapies to this debilitating and difficult-to-treat disease.”

About Cadence Neuroscience
Cadence Neuroscience is a medical device company developing new therapies for the treatment of epilepsy and other neurological disorders. The company’s core technology was developed at Mayo Clinic and is under clinical evaluation. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, Cadence is led by seasoned executives with extensive backgrounds in neural implant product development and clinical studies.

About Angelini Lumira Biosciences Fund
Lumira Ventures and Angelini Ventures partnered to create the Angelini Lumira Biosciences Fund in 2021 to invest in early-stage companies in North America developing innovative therapies for disorders of the central nervous system. Founded in 2007, Lumira Ventures is a multi-sector healthcare venture capital firm with offices in Toronto, Boston, Montreal and Vancouver. Angelini Ventures is the corporate venture capital arm of Angelini Industries, an Italian multi-sector group that operates in 21 countries in the health, industrial technology and consumer goods sectors, with 5,800 employees and revenues of €2 billion. With €300M in investment capital, Angelini Ventures creates and invests in companies developing innovative solutions in the fields of biotechnology, life sciences and digital healthcare.

Related Links
https://www.cadenceneuro.com/  
https://www.lumiraventures.com/ 
https://fprimecapital.com/
https://www.jazzvp.com/ 
https://www.livanova.com/ 
https://www.angeliniventures.com/ 
https://businessdevelopment.mayoclinic.org/ 

Mayo Clinic and Dr. Worrell have a financial interest in the technology referenced in this news release. Mayo Clinic will use any revenue it receives to support its not-for-profit mission in patient care, education and research.

Media Contact:
Kent Leyde
425-298-3184
[email protected] 

SOURCE Cadence Neuroscience