ViBo Health is proud to announce that we have been selected for the "Care in Space" challenge.
Gil's citation reads, "For contributions to the development of advanced accelerators, radiation production from charged particle beams, and for translating this research into applications in medical imaging and 3D tomosynthesis x-ray sources." This honor is awarded to no more than 0.5% of the members...
ViBo Health USA has now been accepted into the UCLA Magnify Incubator.
UCLA has been ranked #1 out of 225 universities in creating start-ups.
Our scanner will give consumers (patients) and experts (clinicians) a new tool which will make a daily test to track health status over time practical. It will scan metabolic processes rather than simple vital signs.
By combining next generation bench-top hardware based on Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) with advanced signal processing and machine learning, consumer health checks are a simple, needle and pain free, 10-second test involving placing a hand inside our scanner. Data is then compared, analyzed and shared automatically, and patient trends are presented with recommended follow-on studies and test within seconds.
Our goal is to transform personalized medicine by providing dynamic and actionable information based on direct and relevant metabolomic measurements. We do this through a combination of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS)-based scanner, existing metabolomic data (and databases), and predictive algorithms. (MRS is the technology for tissue characterization associated with the more familiar MRI used for diagnostic imaging.) Our scanner will be a table-top device intended for high-traffic locations such as pharmacies, gyms, university campuses, airports, workplaces, etc..
ViBo Health Scanners are designed to acquire causal health insights through metabolomics, including vitamins, cholesterols, and diabetes parameters, giving deep insights and trends into health, wellness and fitness.
Our tests can be used several times per week to offer a timeline (longitudinal) and predict healthcare status changes on an individual, and population bases. The tests provide data for the individual user to maintain and control a health status.
GPs, clinicians, and health workers can be provided diagnostic indicators of disease. The privacy of the customers is secured throughout, and all services are opt-in.
The customer benefits through cost savings for tests and the comfort of knowing “how they are doing” and what to expect at the next doctor visit. Clinicians benefit from longitudinal, dynamic and comparable data for each customer that is currently difficult or not practical to obtain.
The healthcare system and the entire society benefits from better informed public health efforts, cost savings, more actionable data, and improved outcomes.
The ViBo Health team are experienced medical device, business and finance entrepreneurs with strong physics and IP backgrounds. Dr. Gil Travish (CEO & Founder) has over 20 years’ experience in hard med-tech, physics, and has founded four companies including two in medical devices. Ron Stone (CFO) is a serial entrepreneur and former CFO and COO of Ronco Corporation. Michael Corrigan (Senior Advisor) is an executive with more than twenty-five years of experience in general management, strategic planning, finance and administration. He has significant international and multicultural experience with emphasis on technology and media, including Atari, Dr. Seuss Enterprises LLC, and Magic Leap Inc. Dr. Katariina Salonen(Clinical Lead) is an Emergency Room Doctor with training in Surgery and work experience internationally (Finland, US, Brazil). Peter John (Director of Finance) was previously CFO of two successful startups, and is an experienced financial modeler with a master’s degree in economics from Oxford University and a PwC-trained financial analyst.
Then, simply tracking our vitals - heart rate and even blood pressure - with our smart watch does not get to our underlying health states. We propose to solve this problem by directly and non-invasively measuring key blood and tissue biomarkers that in turn enable you to track your health with actionable guidance. Our table-top metabolite scanner will measure and then track your health score including cholesterol, obesity factors, glucose, fitness and recovery condition and even cardiac biomarkers. The scanners will be in high-traffic areas like the reception to your gym, but also in pharmacies, corner clinics, and even workplaces.
Standard invasive and noninvasive medical lab tests can help health care providers understand patients’ health and monitor multiple possible medical conditions. Cost, patient and lab time, and patient discomfort, mean that these tests are performed infrequently, and are limited to symptomatic suspected illnesses, usually as a snapshot at a single point in time. The invasive nature of most tests (requiring blood draws, urine samples, etc.) limits ethically what, and how frequently, measurements are made. If there existed a device that allowed all of us to make some of those lab tests without having to draw blood or any other fluid, which could be quick and nearly free to use, everyone could measure and know their health status dynamically. This knowledge would allow all of us to take actions to make us healthier, and better-informed healthcare consumers.
That’s what we call “Smart Health Tracking”. Our mission is to transform how and why our health is tracked, to increase awareness of our health states, and to provide actionable recommendations so everyone can lead healthier and more fulfilling lives.
Metabolites are small molecules that can be intermediate or end products in a chemical process. Metabolomics has been an “emerging field” for the past five decades and has come to the forefront in the past few years as a powerful set of tools for studying organisms. As one of the “omics”, it finds a natural connection with genomics, proteomics, and the other related disciplines. Metabolomics affords insight into the physiological status of an organism. In a similar vein, the metabolome refers to the set of these metabolites within a biological system.
Some metabolites are familiar to many people, and include amino acids, sugars, vitamins, fatty acids, etc. Metabolites also include external (exogenous) compounds such as medications, toxins, components of foods, etc. In considering why metabolomics is so relevant to health status, consider that current diagnostic techniques rely on population norms and therefore are not specific to individuals. In that sense, available diagnostics are not personalized medicine.
Metabolomics has identified, characterized, and cataloged thousands of compounds in humans that can be linked to specific metabolic processes. Many of these processes can be further linked to health and disease states. Currently these metabolites can be measured through in vitro (ex vivo) Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and Mass Spectrometry (MS).
Precise characterization and separation of the many compounds require expensive equipment with high resolution and highly repeatable sample preparation techniques. ViBo Health is working to change how, when and where we are able to track our metabolites.
In general, healthcare relies on population studies to set normal ranges for various diagnostics. The diagnosis of a disease (or lack of one) relies on observation, testing and imaging of a patient and then comparison of the results with population norms. Biological systems are complex and “normal” for a given organism can often be well outside of population norms. Medications, stress, and other factors can also drive particular test results well outside of normal without there necessarily being an underlying disease. Perhaps more importantly, when therapeutics are used, the response of individual can deviate substantially from “normal”. Genetic factors, for instance, can mean that a given therapeutic is useless for a particular person. Under conventional healthcare, diagnosis and treatment is based on norms and then further observation of a person’s response. Under personalized healthcare, diagnosis and treatment is tailored to the individual and is often based on genomic, proteomic, and other individual information.
The example of statins can help illustrate the power of personalised healthcare: currently, statins are recommended for anyone with a cholesterol problem. The medications lower “bad” cholesterol levels on blood tests. However, only an estimated 10% of the population benefits from these medications as only they have the appropriate genetic profiles (Torjesen Ingrid. BMJ 2018; 363:k5110). Under personalized healthcare, a patient would have been genetically screened prior to such a medication being prescribed.
Similarly, precision healthcare is often used interchangeably with personalized healthcare. However, it is generally accepted that precision healthcare refers to targeting treatments based on genomics and other data to groups best suited to those treatments.
Finally, predictive healthcare is simply the ability to predict when or if a person is likely to have a particular disease or other adverse health state. While some genetic tests can, for instance, suggest that an individual is much more likely to develop a particular condition, in general predictive healthcare requires trends which implies the need for a timeline of diagnostics.
ViBo Health LLC (USA)
℅ Magnify at CNSI—UCLA
570 Westwood Plaza
Bldg. 114. Room 5324. WS#8
Los Angeles CA 90095-7227
USA
ViBo Health (Europe)
℅ IPN-Incubadora
Rua Pedro Nunes
3030 - 199 Coimbra
Portugal
