Osso VR, a validated virtual reality (VR) surgical training and assessment platform, today announces it has secured $27M in Series B funding, led by GSR Ventures, with participation from Signalfire, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, OCA Ventures, Scrum Ventures, Leslie Ventures and Anorak Ventures.
Osso VR’s surgical training technology provides on-demand, educational experiences that are effective, repeatable and measurable to help surgeons reach proficiency with emerging surgical techniques and technologies. Osso VR experienced rapid growth during 2020 to meet the increased demand in virtual training driven by the pandemic-fueled need for digital training models. Osso VR works with industry leaders like Johnson & Johnson, Stryker, and Smith & Nephew to ensure that patients have safe access to the highest-value procedures. As part of the recent growth, the company recently expanded into additional specialties, including orthopedics, endoscopy, interventional procedures and more. Osso VR is home to the world’s largest surgical training library, offering 120+ modules in 10+ specialties.
“Osso VR is positioned to transform how surgeons are trained on new devices and surgical procedures,” said Dr. Sunny Kumar, a partner at GSR Ventures. “The Osso platform’s level of immersion provides an experience that mirrors the operating room in a manner more efficient, more accessible, and more effective than any surgical training platform that’s come before.”
Osso VR‘s platform boasts an exceptional level of visual fidelity, ensuring every aspect of surgery, from anatomical detail to the OR environment, enhances the training experience. Osso VR employs the world’s largest medical illustration team and alums from Industrial Light & Magic, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and Apple. This lightning-in-a-bottle of a team is able to create cinema-quality educational experiences at scale, inspiring providers all around the world.
With nearly 30,000 training sessions completed on the platform, providing an average of 22,000 minutes of training a month, Osso VR’s platform is proven to significantly impact surgical performance. In two recent level 1 randomized peer-reviewed studies, surgeons training with Osso VR showed anywhere from a 230 percent to 306 percent improvement in overall surgical performance compared to traditional training. In addition, Osso VR enables healthcare professionals to train together in Osso from anywhere in the world through Remote Collaboration.
Recent platform milestones include:
Osso VR is widely deployed across 20+ countries
All five of the Top 5 orthopedic medical device companies choose Osso VR as their VR training partner
The platform is available in multiple languages including English, Japanese, Spanish, German and French
20+ global hospital residency programs, including Brown University, Hospital for Special Surgery, Johns Hopkins University, and Rush University, train on Osso VR
“Osso VR has been on an incredible journey. We have built a once-in-a-lifetime team, bringing together experts from healthcare, technology, movies and gaming to pursue our mission: improve patient outcomes, accelerate the adoption of more-effective surgical technologies and democratize access to education. After proving the clinical effectiveness of the platform and its unique ability to scale up to the millions of providers around the world, we are ready to accelerate,” said Justin Barad, MD, CEO and Co-Founder of Osso VR. “With this latest round, we plan to exponentially expand our library and platform so that every patient in the world can have the peace of mind knowing they are getting access to the safest, highest-value procedures.”
For more information about Osso VR, visit www.ossovr.com.
PatchRx, a medication management startup, improves prescription adherence and helps patients remember to take their medication through data-driven technology. Today, the company announced a $1.2M pre-seed round and moved its operations to Tulsa, Oklahoma, joining the growing number of startups that have relocated to the city over the past year. The company’s second capital raise was led by Atento Capital, followed by Cortado Ventures, and the Gaingels Network.
According to the World Health Organization, poor medication adherence can account for up to 25% of hospitalizations and approximately 125,000 deaths every year in the United States. PatchRx has developed and patented the first universal smart pill bottle device to ensure that patients regularly take the right doses and help pharmacies play an active role in encouraging medication adherence.
The company’s patient-facing services notify users when to take medications and operate as an all-encompassing health tracker – “a personal EMR for patients.” Patients can also request refills from any PatchRx-registered pharmacy and collect rewards through the mobile app. Clinicians are also notified when doses are missed, allowing for real-time, effective monitoring of daily adherence.
PatchRx was founded by two students at Trinity University in San Antonio, each with deeply personal connections to medication adherence.
“When Gavin and I first met, his grandfather had recently passed away due to a medication non-adherence issue. And not long after, I was diagnosed with cancer and learned firsthand how overwhelming it could be to manage multiple prescriptions,” said Andrew Aertker, co-founder of PatchRx. “From that point on, we were focused on easing the burden that patients and families feel from managing medications. After several successful early launches of our smart pill bottle caps and software platform, we’re thrilled to be taking our company to the next level in Tulsa.”
New technology is set to have a significant impact on the classroom of the future for nursing education, as indicated by the results of a new survey of nurse educators published today by Wolters Kluwer, Health. “Forecast for the Future: Technology Trends in Nursing Education” identified respondents’ plans for technology usage, adoption, and investment during the next five years and shed light on the barriers and opportunities related to those initiatives.
This is the second survey of nursing school administrators, faculty, and deans conducted by Wolters Kluwer in collaboration with the National League for Nursing.
Post-COVID tech adoption
“Technology adoption was well underway in nursing education before the COVID-19 pandemic, but in transitioning to remote instruction, faculty quickly learned how diverse technologies can work together to give students an optimized, hybrid learning experience that they crave as digital learners,” said Julie Stegman, vice president, nursing segment of health learning, research and practice at Wolters Kluwer. “Educators are now seeing how technology investment can help address several of the longstanding challenges they face including clinical limitations, assessing students’ cumulative performance as they learn, and developing practice-ready nurses. That is a powerful shift.”
The survey found that 73% of institutions went fully online at the start of the pandemic and that technologies that aid in remote learning all had significant increases in adoption. Nearly 40% of respondents said they plan to offer more online courses in the future, and many forecast a continuation of the investment in technology seen during the pandemic.
Based on the survey data, the report predicts the classroom of the future will be a hybrid learning environment that is in-person and leverages existing and next-generation technologies including the emergence of virtual reality and augmented reality (VR and AR).
Plenty of jobs take place in a healthcare environment. Because of the need to help patients and work with vulnerable people, these roles are anything but easy, which is why it takes a special kind of person to thrive there.
Whether you want to become a counselor, nurse, or dentist, here are nineteen essential skills you will need to work in a medical setting.
1: Quick Learning
While you might have learned all that you could during your healthcare degree, you must also pick up lots of new information along the way. To do this, you must be a quick learner. This will mean that if a new kind of technology or piece of equipment is introduced, you will have no problem learning its methods.
Quick learning is also helpful during your studying years. If you are doing a human services degree, you will have a better time understanding psychological disorders and social discrimination if your brain absorbs information quickly.
2: Confidence
Working in a medical setting means having bounds of confidence, even if you do not know everything. After all, a patient will not feel comfortable in your hands if you seem shy or unsure of your abilities. Confidence is not about being loud, though – it is about having meaning in all of your actions.
If you decide to pursue a certain medical method, and your knowledge and experience tell you it is the right decision, do not start overthinking it. Remember that you are where you are for a reason, so have confidence in that, and if you ever feel you need a second opinion, do not hesitate to seek it out.
3: Flexibility
One of the benefits of working in a healthcare setting is getting flexible hours. After all, healthcare is needed at all hours of the day! For this, though, you need to be flexible yourself. That means if you have a rigid schedule for the day, you can shift things around in order to accommodate a change in your obligations. You never know what is going to come up in a medical setting, which means never having set expectations about your day.
The rising out-of-pocket costs from health insurance is one of the most common barriers to health care for patients. According to a recent study, 46 million people cannot afford needed care. With significant increases in job loss due to COVID-19, many people have become uninsured and are deferring care, which consequently places financial burdens on healthcare systems.
Further, many patients who are uninsured or underinsured don’t know there are financial resources available that could help lower their out-of-pocket costs. Providers are in the unique position to adopt strategies to help remove barriers to treatment using technology, particularly for those struggling to afford care. These can lead to better financial outcomes for both the patient and provider.
Here are four ways technology is helping providers remove financial barriers to care:
Predictive analytics. Healthcare organizations can leverage predictive analytics to proactively identify patients at risk of not affording treatment – and mitigate the financial and personal stress that comes with receiving a costly medical bill post treatment. Providers can analyze patient data including income, propensity to pay, health insurance out-of-pocket cost, and treatment plan to assess financial risk. It can also help prioritize which patients have the highest probability of not affording high-cost care. This level of visibility can help providers identify more patients upstream needing financial care and take the next steps toward reducing the financial burden.
The Cures Act Final Rule’s technical requirements call for radical changes in electronic Patient Health Information Exchange (ePHI). Care providers must adhere to the CoP requirements for patient event notifications (ADT Notifications) and the real-time exchange of ePHI through APIs in 2021. In addition, payer organizations must facilitate the electronic exchange of ePHI between other payers and healthcare providers through a patient access API. They must also provide patients with a list of care providers to choose from for medical services by compiling the provider directory API.
These technical requirements are driven by the CMS’s pursuit of seamless semantic interoperability of healthcare systems and the ONC’s specifications for 2015 requirements of Certified Electronic Health Record Technology. While they affect care providers and payers, health IT developers (HIT vendors) are the catalyst to facilitate the patient centric care.
HIT vendors must swing into action to adhere to their regulatory requirements and enable providers and payers to do so in the process. The stifling competition that is already upon them only lifts the normal for innovation and reflex time. HIT software development requires specialized skill sets and exhaustive processes that escalate costs. In a bid to rein in these costs and adhere to regulatory requirements, HIT developers tend to dilute their competitive edge.
Hospitals rely on data loggers for a variety of reasons; here’s a look at four of the critical ways in which they use data loggers:
1 – Protect Sensitive Assets
The most common use of digital data logging in a hospital is to monitor temperature levels in fridges and freezers that are used to store sensitive assets such as vaccines, tissue samples, blood, and organs for transplant. Because these items require storage at a cold temperature to ensure they are safe for use, a data recorder can monitor the conditions to ensure they stay within acceptable ranges. Before digital data loggers, these storage areas had to be monitored manually by humans. Not only were the temperature instruments not very accurate, but it was also unknown if the storage temperatures had remained within the required zone between readings. Data loggers provide continuous readings and alert personnel when the temperature gets too warm or too cold.
2 – Regulate Sensitive Environments
Hospitals contain sensitive environments where conditions must remain at strictly regulated levels. This includes such places as operating theatres and cold rooms. A digital data logger tracks temperatures and humidity in an operating room to ensure that both the patient and operating staff are comfortable during a procedure. In cold rooms that are used to store medical supplies, a digital data logger can be used to alert staff after hours or on weekends if a door does not close properly or is left open, potentially threatening the integrity of the stored items. Also, if a system failure occurs, the data logger can send an alert to inform maintenance staff to correct the problem.
The increasing number of online pharmacy retailers emphasize growing consumer inquiry for address delivery. More and more polls show that the cost of such delivery is the greatest concern for both consumers and suppliers.
Such trends have resulted in an expansion of mobile apps usage for prescription drugs. The chronic conditions patients like diabetes, heart, kidney or liver diseases, or HIV infections rely on pharmacy services that provide continuous prescriptions renewals and deliver to patients’ homes.
Market Overview of Pharmacy Delivery Apps
In 2023, we expect the pharmacy delivery market to reach 6.4% CAGR for the forecast period up to 1,694.7 billion dollars. Besides the growth of chronic diseases patients that require ongoing medicine supply, there are such major factors as technological progress and new products release.
Especially since the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic boosted medicine delivery needs to reach an unprecedented level. Implementing such an opportunity into your online drugs retailer may force the business growth. Furthermore, the pharmacy delivery applications must provide the right information about the medicine and accurately distinguish drugs.
Osso VR, a validated virtual reality (VR) surgical training and assessment platform, today announces it has secured $27M in Series B funding, led by GSR Ventures, with participation from Signalfire, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, OCA Ventures, Scrum Ventures, Leslie Ventures and Anorak Ventures.
PatchRx
New technology is set to have a significant impact on the classroom of the future for nursing education, as indicated by the results of a new survey of nurse educators published today by 
