Category: Health

05.18.21

Welcome to our developing dive into the disruptive depths of the health/wellness industrial complex as it moves onto the blockchain!

Today’z ANGLE: An Introduction to Health Wizz

Today we are starting our look into a company that aims to place all of our health and wellness data, that’s right, the data about our bodies, onto the blockchain.

Immediate Potential Pro: Control Over Data Distribution and Possible Ability to Take Back Value of Personal Data

A step in the right direction? We’ve all seen the news, received the letters about potential compromise in the mail. Simply put, is our personal data that is being put at risk and the current system is failing us.

Of that, there is no doubt. It’s clearly time for the Health Care Industry to step it up and perhaps, it’s time for the consumer, in this case, the patient to demand more. Perhaps there is a solution/system that can help. Health Wizz is proposing a just such an opportunity.

Three apparent steps for the consumer to simply gain a digital medical record full of data, secure it, and use it across patient-defined stakeholders. This is one of the first we’ve seen to truly work toward the integration of data from wearables in addition to the traditional doctor/hospital and lab reports. Moreover, it’s one of the first to simplify the whole ecosystem with the patient in mind.

In the second step above, HealthWizz takes that aggregate and locks it down. In the final step, however, we get to the gamification as we see that Health Wizz does have an angle. In addition to storing patient information on the blockchain (step two), they offer a point system built on their own token, the Ompoint, whereby the patient can game their health in a desire to share data to earn more rewards. The capitalist motive for integration… sure! But, we need to be more critical, is it worth it and does the benefit go beyond the cost for the patient? For the markets to decide…

Next week we’ll dive into the proposed benefits of this new Company’s product and learn a little more. See you next time on BCB Cyber.

Welcome to our announcement of a new series on health… a developing dive into the disruptive depths of health and wellness as it moves onto the blockchain!

While our focus is always on helping our community toward a tech-defined sense of self, we will delve into the startups and entrepreneurs defining the space. Over the course of the next several weeks sit back and dive in with us as we look to discover how blockchain is disrupting not only our financial lives but now also our health and wellness. We begin next week with a sneak peek into HealthWizz!

Thanks Health Wizz

See you next time.

05.04.2021

One of the world’s leading groups working toward bridging the gap between flesh and tech has just lost an influential leader. Neuralink, famous for being another innovative company founded by none other than the incredible Elon Musk, is working on a great many advancements in the interface between the mind and the brain. While this technology could ultimately provide incredible advancements in restorative therapies and extension of life opportunities, they’ve started small with gaming interfaces.

Thanks Neuralink

Still pretty impressive stuff! Sadly though bad news broke this week.

We just saw that its President, and Co-Founder, is stepping down.

Max Hodak, who recently dropped a few hints about the possibility of dinos in real life, or better yet, “super exotic novel species”, announced his departure from Neuralink. And from what we’ve found, hasn’t announced other intentions as of yet.

A sad day, but best wishes to Mr. Hodak, may humanity benefit in your new adventures.

As Neuralink is one of the companies we are most excited to follow we couldn’t help but share this out. Plus, you can bet you’ll be seeing a lot more about Neuralink in the future on BCB Cyber. See you next time.

Exploring Health Catalyst, Part 1 – An Introduction

As a rule, we follow the technological advancements of corporate giants in tech health to help inform those of us individuals choosing to define for ourselves who we are and what we want to be. That means knowing the world and those tracking us, good and bad.

Incredible advancements are made every day by health companies seeking to do good in the world, no doubt. However, we need to follow and examine them to enhance our own capabilities and positioning. We are not victims, we are active agents in our lives.

In this new topic within the theme, we are exploring a company ready to help make the healthcare industry efficient and reflective of market factors. I know, I know, we thought this day would never come. Well, it has come indeed, the real question is are we, the masses, ready for it?

Big Brother is Now AI, at Least in Terms of Our Health

As we leap into the age of Artificial Intelligence there is no doubt that we, as the masses, need to recognize that massive business is being built on our data. We are used to that in social media perhaps, are we prepared for our health data to be treated the same way?

Making Healthcare Efficient, A New Ecosystem Model Built for Healthcare: Three Elements

For Health Catalyst, the new opportunitiy they provide as a company lies in the reformation of how healthcare is understood. By creating a model that is built on the entire ecosystem of data produced by the individual business agents (hospitals, clinics, etc.) of the healthcare system, and the clients they portend to serve, their claim is that management of those systems can be pushed forward in efficiency, creating scaled value through lower costs and higher profits.

Fair enough on the surface. Building a new OS that is tailored to the healthcare industry with intuitive design, new levels of diagnostics capability through machine learning and artificial intelligence, and the service metric offered by Health Catalyst seems a straightforward way to interpret, effectuate and mediate data diagnostics on an industry well known for its data issues. Now, Health Catalyst is asking the industry to accept a single point of contact to envision a health care universe built on a holistic data aggregate.

1. The New Healthcare OS (Operating System)

The initiation of this system is a conversion to a new operating system. This means the point of data collection and integration. Clean interfaces, more intuitive understanding and reliability to the system, speedy and efficient data models built on the cloud, and full-scale interoperability across data sets, purport to be the entry to this system.

Simplified data interaction, with the clean transfer, is apparently the goal, and the integrated machine learning to this OS proposes to make data integral and maximize its use within the interface whereby care itself goes from “reactive to predictive, proactive, and preventative.”

2. Modeling Data for Efficiency

As for the modeling, this is where Health Catalyst truly seems to shine. Their software offerings provide a single point of contact for the industry to aggregate data and draw large-scale, executable solutions from AI inference.

All of these newly modeled services, like refill management, all come with a cost that is not illustrated within the proposals above. While all good things that would certainly benefit the industry, and likely the consumer within the masses, the issue left out in the cold is data security.

It is assumed that data aggregation makes the solutions better, which I would certainly grant that presupposition, however, at what cost? Aggregated data in one location provides a hefty target for bad actors already working across this industry with ease. Again, please reference the noted recent issues.

Ultimately these services do offer a unique means of cleaning up the data mess that is healthcare. Are we trading one problem for a bigger, more singularized one? At the heart of this whole discussion is the data of the patient, from billing to health metrics, it is the data of the masses being acquired, stored, and utilized to make these systems run.

3. Service Advisor

As any good business should, Health Catalyst closes the model loop with a services component. Offering an agency to step in and assist the healthcare industry agents with implementation and operation is key toward seeing the full benefit.

After all, heavy proposed benefits, when combined with ease of use, is always a recipe for successful integration. But does that mean that it’s safe?

Only Just Begun…

While we’ve only just begun our investigation into Health Catalyst we are going to leave off here for today. Always better to let new info settle in.

And just for full disclosure, we are long on Health Catalyst and do maintain a position in our portfolio, for we see a tremendous opportunity in Wealth and benefit with a company like this. A flip from above we know, we choose to be critical but also recognize opportunity and a means to expand our individualized integration.

In any case, next week, we’ll continue our drive and break down the tech a little further. We’ll look further into the services offered by Health Catalyst and more importantly seek out the companies stance on security and their proposal to ensure data safety for the masses.

As always, make sure we are thinking for ourselves out there, doing our own homework, and cyberize our lives with the best in disruptive tech. We aren’t doctors or professional investors, we’re just the average guy out there in the free flow of the masses looking for understanding and wanting to share.

For those fueled by health tech make sure to explore our BCB Cyber Health Section in more detail! See you next time on BCB Cyber.

Announcing: Health Catalyst

As a rule, we follow the technological advancements of corporate giants in tech health to help inform those of us individuals choosing to define for ourselves who we are and what we want to be. That means knowing the world and those tracking us, good and bad. Incredible advancements are made every day by health companies seeking to do good in the world, no doubt. However, we need to follow and examine them to enhance our own capabilities and positioning.

We are not victims, we are active agents in our lives. In this new topic within the theme of Health, we are exploring a new company primed to redefine what healthcare as a business looks and functions like. Therefore it will no doubt change the way the masses interact with it. Join us for this coming deep dive on Health Catalyst!

Thanks to Health Catalyst

What follows is an investigation of Exicure. A company whose technology allows humanity the ability “to target the underlying cause of the disease.” Sounds pretty ambitious right?

How, you may ask, does it plan to accomplish this lofty goal? Well, the company simply proposes a better mousetrap. Exicure has improved the means of transport within the body. Targeting the body’s cells with greater efficacy of transmission (moving a therapeutic, a drug, into the body’s cells and tissues), gives us more bang for our buck!

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves though, you may be asking how is this Cyberpunk? What does it offer a high-tech, low-life existence… Well, my friend, the sky is the limit!

Part I: Drugs are GOOD

Cyberpunk is Loaded

Perhaps there are few elements as common to the genre of cyberpunk as the expansive and ever-growing list of drug therapies used to enhance any number of human characteristics. Don’t believe us, just check out the Big Book of Drugs created for Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. And it’s not just about the feel-good variety, much of it is dedicated to advancing human health and ability. Pushing the body’s limits to perform in a super-human fashion. That is the essence of cyberpunk health mods.

Technologically Enhanced Therapies

For the real-life version in the 21st century, perhaps there is no better use of drugs than to try our hands at therapies built upon nucleic acids to push us past those limits.

What are nucleic acids??? You know the stuff at the center of DNA and RNA. After all, what better to help change the course of humanity in terms of health than to tinker with our DNA and RNA, right? Even Jurassic Park taught us this…

Those core elements of DNA and RNA, nucleic acids, offer us the ability to provide new coding into our cells and create a pathway for new health therapies across a number of human ailments and desires.

As far back as the year 2000, scientists published in the scientific journal Nature describing that the impact of such technology in the area of immunology and cancer research using nucleic acids vaccines would “undoubtedly be one of the most important advances in the history of vaccinology.” For the longest time, however, getting these therapies to uptake into the body’s cells and tissues was a difficult task.

Partnering to Produce

Fast forward twenty years and there are a number of publicly-traded companies that are working on exactly this problem and making dramatic breakthroughs.

The newcomers are quickly finding themselves a number of very willing and interested partners. More importantly, they are finding a quality stream of cash-flow to really push development.

Within this field of partnered-up biotechs, we also find the company we look at today, Exicure. Their own partnership being with $187.378B Abbvie Inc’s (as of 3/9/21 on Yahoo! Finance) subsidiary Allergan, the maker of Botox.

The Exicure Difference

What separates Exicure from the rest of those companies partnering with larger, more established biotechs, is that Exicure stands alone as the only to be platform agnostic. Big fancy tech words, I know, simply put – it works well across a number of platforms.

Not limited to a single design in nucleic acid therapy, Exicure works across a number of them making the applications far more widespread and scalable. Ultimately, this means to develop into a number of fields including neurology, immuno-oncology (getting the body’s own immune system to fight cancer), dermatology, ophthalmology, GI tract, lung, and liver therapies.

Part II: Diving in to the Deep Ends of the Business

Those little bits, the nucleic acids, come in a variety of shapes and sizes. When we re-code these strands to treat disease, it can be difficult to get the body to take them into the cells and tissues. So Exicure came up with a fix. It’s all about opportunity and that better mousetrap.

Exicure set out to maximize the uptake of a variety of drugs. So they went about redesigning the mode of transportation. Where linear models presented only a few options for uptake into a cell. Exicure’s SNA (Spherical Nucleic Acid) proprietary technology gives multiple chances.

Due to the spherical structure, the likelihood is increased that receptors in the body’s cells will match-up with the introduced therapy and that the cell will take in the proposed therapeutic. More importantly, because of its unique properties, SNA (again, Exicure’s Proprietary Tech) can enter into the tissues of a variety of organs beyond the liver (the conventional uptake organ). Now direct treatment can be applied to the Brain, Eye, Gastrointestinal Tract, Lungs, and Skin; just to reiterate. That’s a lot of organ systems.

The best part is it apparently does this without the added toxicity, or harmful side effects, of other treatments currently on the market. So sayeth the video posted above anyway.

How is Exicure Tech Different

Bio-Med

What we are saying is that structure makes all the difference. Nucleic acid therapies are revolutionary in and of themselves but getting them applied can be difficult. Exicure seeks to change that. After all, all the great products of the world don’t have an impact unless someone can get them effectively from origin to our homes, and into our lives.

By providing a new means of delivery they say they can achieve three primary benefits: increased uptake, more stability (stays in the body longer), and can be applied to a number of different body tissues beyond just the liver.

Business Orientation

So that’s the Bio-med side. As for the business side of things, benefit three (that multitude of pesky different organs) is not only the most important health benefit but also likely to be the most profitable as we see it. Because it can be applied to a host of cells/tissues/organs, the technology can be licensed across a wide range of companies producing different therapeutics, the technology becomes ultimately scalable. Therefore… profitable.

The licensing potential of these opportunities is just beginning. With so many different tissue systems ripe for therapy the chance for scale increases dramatically. For instance, the neurological applications are just now being put into clinical trial…

The Results…

Well, as they say the proof is in the pudding, and from one colloidal mixture to another, the pudding is in on Exicure.

Exicure simply delivers better uptake. With 2x the level of health transfer, and 4x longer survival than its competitor, Exicure delivers a better mousetrap, hands down. Linear oligo therapeutics make way for Exicure, and SNA.

Exicure simply delivers more bang for the buck if you will excuse the parlance. Not only does their stuff get in better, but it also sticks around longer. Exicure provides drug endurance. And who doesn’t love a longer-lasting high, uh, I mean longer-lasting relief from my headaches? A better physical state of health?

So, what does this all ultimately mean? When you add up a number of health issues that have few therapies to treat them and add Exicure as a delivery model, you increase the odds of new drugs having an impact. Meaning – better, more effective treatment. This makes lives better and treatment means profit, a win-win!

And Exicure, is definitely placing itself in the right spot within the field. Their business model is robust and is apparently setup with the cash it needs into the next year (2022).

Oversimplified, Maybe

Have we oversimplified the matrix??? Perhaps, but we don’t think so. Exicure is straightforward providing the axes and shovels to the miners, or perhaps a better analogy is providing shipping, distribution and logistics to Amazon. Hard to get right, you bet ya’, but look at what Amazon spends to do just that?!?!?

Ok, so all is well and good. Great tech, well-positioned business. So what is the broader community saying you ask? Don’t worry, we got ya’ covered there too.

Part 3: Community Buzz

Getting the buzz is exactly that… diving into the headlines and news beats on Exicure so we can get a read on the pulse of the company in the broader community. We go beyond the tech.

Getting the Right Guidance

For Exicure development on their tech isn’t the only thing they are focused on. By continuing to build with quality people in their representative fields, Exicure is better positioning the company to navigate the high-flying world of biopharma. Two of its latest additions help to illustrate exactly this: Elizabeth (Betsy) Garofalo, M.D. and Mr. Andrew Sassine to its Board of Director.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Garofalo, M.D. represents “25 years of experience in global clinical development and regulatory affairs,” and a significant culmination as the “Head of the Neuroscience Therapy Area at Astellas, Ann Arbor Site Head of Worldwide Regulatory Affairs at Pfizer, and Ann Arbor Site Head of Neuroscience at Pfizer.” So it would be safe to say it seems like she knows what she is doing.

As for Mr. Andrew Sassine, no slouch himself currently serves as CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and Board Member of Arcturus Therapeutics and is a former Fidelity Fund Manager.

Quality additions, both. By the way, if you didn’t check it out above, the named links above aren’t just the news story, they are the links to their Linked In Profiles… worth checking out, as it gives a deeper look into how they represent themselves in the community.

Broader Buzz on Tech

“I am excited to join the Exicure team and its distinguished Board of Directors… I believe their technology has the ability to change the face of medicine by expanding and facilitating the delivery of DNA and RNA medicines to new and more challenging diseases.”

– Andrew Sassine, Chief Financial Officer
and member of the board of directors of Arcturus Therapeutics.
He also serves on the board of directors of ICAD, Inc.

For Exicure, it is certainly about that game-changing tech and the quality people needed to bring it to life. As we see in the quote above, Exicure is attracting a great assortment of talent to its business as the tech presented by the company has such great potential. That potential is what we see developing in the community at large.

The headlines over the last year really speak for themselves and support this thesis…

1.

2.

The results of the study can be found here.

3.

New collaborations and a set of new positive developments from the results of investigative uses of the therapeutics offered by Exicure certainly point to a bright future.

Analysts and More Say Buy, Buy, Buy…

Insider sentiment, according to you Yahoo! Finance (above) remains strong. More importantly, despite heavy increases in value to the insider holdings, they have not been selling over the last year, demonstrating the belief that they are just getting started.

As of March 5, 2021, Directorstalkinterviews.com reported that Exicure had now received the considerations of 5 analysts “with a consensus rating is ‘Buy’. The range between the high target price and low target price is between 18 and 6.” That same article said the price at that day/time was 2.27 and would have a potential upside of 340.5%! Pretty darn impressive.

For others in the investment and finance community, they see incredible value in comparison to other stocks in their price range. Investors Observer stipulated exactly this when they promoted a “strong overall score (for Exicure) of 90 meaning the stock holds a better value than 90% of stocks at its current price.” Better yet, the headlines on their site (see above) indicate the market is taking notice and going Buy, Buy, Buy.

Part 4: Conclusions

So what does all this mean? While some CP gear gets us enhancing our mental states from the outside, others do it on the inside.

The 20th century brought us many technologies. Tech the likes of which can play with our basic human coding. Getting the tools inside to make sure that tech has the desired impact, however, has been challenging. A company like Exicure could change all that.

What it means more specifically, is that when scientists create new code that can heal our bodies, or dare we say designer code that can enhance our health beyond the normal (ok, we are still hoping for coded superhuman abilities), we need a better mousetrap. The ones that we’d been using are minimally effective and don’t ensure that the desired effects take hold. Exicure is changing that.

To say that Exicure is tracking our bodies may be an overstatement, but their ability to move around our bodies and dive deep to provide the health benefits of the 21st century may be just beginning. A better mousetrap indeed!

As always, make sure we are thinking for ourselves out there, doing our own homework, and cyberizing our lives with the best in disruptive tech. We aren’t doctors or professional investors, we’re just the average guy out there in the free flow of the masses looking for understanding and wanting to share. For those fueled by health-tech make sure to explore our BCB Cyber Health Section in more detail! See you next time on BCB Cyber.

Exploring Exicure, Part 3 – Community Buzz

As a rule, we follow the technological advancements of corporate giants in tech health to help inform those of us individuals choosing to define for ourselves who we are and what we want to be. That means knowing the world and those tracking us, good and bad.

Incredible advancements are made every day by health companies seeking to do good in the world, no doubt. However, we need to follow and examine them to enhance our own capabilities and positioning. We are not victims, we are active agents in our lives. In this new topic within the theme of Health, we are exploring a company primed to give us the safe/effective delivery of next-gen nucleic acid therapies right into our cells and tissues that we’ve been waiting for since the dawn of the 21st century.

Getting the buzz is exactly that… diving into the headlines and news beats on Exicure so we can get a read on the pulse of the company in the broader community.

Getting the Right Guidance

For Exicure development on their tech isn’t the only thing they are focused on. By continuing to build with quality people in their representative fields, Exicure is better positioning the company to navigate the high-flying world of biopharma. Two of its latest additions help to illustrate exactly this: Elizabeth (Betsy) Garofalo, M.D. and Mr. Andrew Sassine to its Board of Director.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Garofalo, M.D. represents “25 years of experience in global clinical development and regulatory affairs,” and a significant culmination as the “Head of the Neuroscience Therapy Area at Astellas, Ann Arbor Site Head of Worldwide Regulatory Affairs at Pfizer, and Ann Arbor Site Head of Neuroscience at Pfizer.” So it would be safe to say it seems like she knows what she is doing.

As for Mr. Andrew Sassine, no slouch himself currently serves as CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and Board Member of Arcturus Therapeutics and is a former Fidelity Fund Manager.

Quality additions, both. By the way, if you didn’t check it out above, the named links above aren’t just the news story, they are the links to their Linked In Profiles… worth checking out, as it gives a deeper look into how they represent themselves in the community.

Broader Buzz on Tech

“I am excited to join the Exicure team and its distinguished Board of Directors… I believe their technology has the ability to change the face of medicine by expanding and facilitating the delivery of DNA and RNA medicines to new and more challenging diseases.”

– Andrew Sassine, Chief Financial Officer
and member of the board of directors of Arcturus Therapeutics.
He also serves on the board of directors of ICAD, Inc.

For Exicure, it is certainly about that game-changing tech and the quality people needed to bring it to life. As we see in the quote above, Exicure is attracting a great assortment of talent to its business as the tech presented by the company has such great potential. That potential is what we see developing in the community at large.

The headlines over the last year really speak for themselves and support this thesis…

1.

2.

The results of the study can be found here.

3.

New collaborations and a set of new positive developments from the results of investigative uses of the therapeutics offered by Exicure certainly point to a bright future.

Analysts and More Say Buy, Buy, Buy…

Insider sentiment, according to you Yahoo! Finance (above) remains strong. More importantly, despite heavy increases in value to the insider holdings, they have not been selling over the last year, demonstrating the belief that they are just getting started.

As of March 5, 2021, Directorstalkinterviews.com reported that Exicure had now received the considerations of 5 analysts “with a consensus rating is ‘Buy’. The range between the high target price and low target price is between 18 and 6.” That same article said the price at that day/time was 2.27 and would have a potential upside of 340.5%! Pretty darn impressive.

For others in the investment and finance community, they see incredible value in comparison to other stocks in their price range. Investors Observer stipulated exactly this when they promoted a “strong overall score (for Exicure) of 90 meaning the stock holds a better value than 90% of stocks at its current price.” Better yet, the headlines on their site (see above) indicate the market is taking notice and going Buy, Buy, Buy.

Closing Up, for Now

From new folks joining the team to headlines promoting promising results, and market makers moving toward Exicure, the future definitely seems brighter than ever for this young BioTech! At least, that’s what the buzz seems to be indicating.

That’s it on the buzz, but make sure to come back next week as we wrap up our Health exploration of Exicure. We’ll be pulling the whole series back together and offering our unique BCB Cyber conclusion on this technologically enhanced company for the 21st century and beyond. So make sure to check out that and all kinds of other incredible cyber-fuel for your cyberized needs in our daily blog.

As always, make sure we are thinking for ourselves out there, doing our own homework, and cyberizing our lives with the best in disruptive tech. We aren’t doctors or professional investors, we’re just the average guy out there in the free flow of the masses looking for understanding and wanting to share. For those fueled by health-tech make sure to explore our BCB Cyber Health Section in more detail! See you next time on BCB Cyber.