This Innovative Startup Is a Lifeline for Patients at Rural Hospitals
When Jenn Morson Frederick went into labor with her baby in Annapolis, Maryland, she remembers being hooked up intravenously to an infusion pump because she needed antibiotics. She readily admits that the last thing on her mind was what would happen to the pump after she was done with it.
"Ten minutes from where I live, in Oakland, there are children who can't afford care and there are smaller practices just getting eaten up on cost."
In fact, the pump might go on to assist the labor of another new mother at a rural hospital many miles away, thanks to an innovative online marketplace called Medinas Health. Founded last year by a 27-year-old entrepeneur, Medinas Health buys used medical supplies and sells them to under-resourced hospitals who are happy to get functioning equipment at discounted prices.
The startup is built on a machine learning algorithm that uses historical data for medical devices to predict how much longer they can be used and still be sold at optimum prices on the secondary market. This allows hospitals to squeeze the most use out of their supplies.
Such transactions are the lifeblood for rural or critical access hospitals, says Chloe Alpert, the founder and CEO of Medinas. She first came up with the idea when she noticed a glaring discrepancy in the healthcare marketplace: From 2010 to 2016, 79 hospitals had closed their doors and hundreds more were at risk. At the same time, according to the National Academy of Medicine, the United States wastes medical supplies to the tune of $765 billion every year. On a household level, many people are saddled with medical debt: One in six Americans has past due healthcare bills. The numbers shocked Alpert.
What's more, she found that many used medical supplies were being shipped off to developing countries, partly to minimize the hospitals' liability. "[The model was] fundamentally flawed," she says. "I live in San Francisco and ten minutes from where I live, in Oakland, there are children who can't afford care and there are smaller practices just getting eaten up on cost."
Now, through Medinas, hospitals can offload unwanted clinical assets, and other medical offices can buy them at discounted prices. Since its launch in August 2017, the startup has sold just over 100 items, ranging from infusion pumps to an MRI machine.
Typically, hospitals hold onto their medical supplies as long as possible. Proprietary data from Medinas place the life expectancy of something like an infusion pump at ten years.
"Hospitals' biomed departments are going to try to keep that unit going for as long as they can because you have to replace an entire fleet and that's a significant financial overlay," says Suzi Collins, Director of Materials Management at Mountain Vista Medical Center in Gilbert, Ariz.
"I wanted to do something that would actually make an impact. Imagine healthcare costs going down instead of up."
But after many rinse-and-repeat repairs, it might be time to spring for a new unit. Medinas conducts cost-benefit analyses to show whether it's worth the financial cost for a hospital to hold on to old, creaky equipment. In some cases, manufacturers introduce a new version of a pump and discontinue support for older models, forcing hospitals' hands.
That's when Medinas may step in to facilitate the sale of older medical devices to different hospitals, connecting the lives of urban moms like Frederick to rural moms like Kelly Burch, who recently delivered her baby at the Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital in rural Lebanon, New Hampshire.
At press time, Medinas had recently received more than 700 infusion pumps to sell from an Arizona medical center and was in negotiations with healthcare facilities who might be interested in buying them. For her work with Medinas, Alpert won $500,000 as part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 competition.
"It really blows my mind to see all these inefficiencies in healthcare, to know that Medinas is doing something tangible to address disparities in care," Alpert says. "I wanted to do something that would actually make an impact. Imagine healthcare costs going down instead of up. That is really neat."
When a patient is diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, having surgery to remove the tumor is considered the standard of care. But what happens when a patient can’t have surgery?
Whether it’s due to high blood pressure, advanced age, heart issues, or other reasons, some breast cancer patients don’t qualify for a lumpectomy—one of the most common treatment options for early-stage breast cancer. A lumpectomy surgically removes the tumor while keeping the patient’s breast intact, while a mastectomy removes the entire breast and nearby lymph nodes.
Fortunately, a new technique called cryoablation is now available for breast cancer patients who either aren’t candidates for surgery or don’t feel comfortable undergoing a surgical procedure. With cryoablation, doctors use an ultrasound or CT scan to locate any tumors inside the patient’s breast. They then insert small, needle-like probes into the patient's breast which create an “ice ball” that surrounds the tumor and kills the cancer cells.
Cryoablation has been used for decades to treat cancers of the kidneys and liver—but only in the past few years have doctors been able to use the procedure to treat breast cancer patients. And while clinical trials have shown that cryoablation works for tumors smaller than 1.5 centimeters, a recent clinical trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York has shown that it can work for larger tumors, too.
In this study, doctors performed cryoablation on patients whose tumors were, on average, 2.5 centimeters. The cryoablation procedure lasted for about 30 minutes, and patients were able to go home on the same day following treatment. Doctors then followed up with the patients after 16 months. In the follow-up, doctors found the recurrence rate for tumors after using cryoablation was only 10 percent.
For patients who don’t qualify for surgery, radiation and hormonal therapy is typically used to treat tumors. However, said Yolanda Brice, M.D., an interventional radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, “when treated with only radiation and hormonal therapy, the tumors will eventually return.” Cryotherapy, Brice said, could be a more effective way to treat cancer for patients who can’t have surgery.
“The fact that we only saw a 10 percent recurrence rate in our study is incredibly promising,” she said.
Few things are more painful than a urinary tract infection (UTI). Common in men and women, these infections account for more than 8 million trips to the doctor each year and can cause an array of uncomfortable symptoms, from a burning feeling during urination to fever, vomiting, and chills. For an unlucky few, UTIs can be chronic—meaning that, despite treatment, they just keep coming back.
But new research, presented at the European Association of Urology (EAU) Congress in Paris this week, brings some hope to people who suffer from UTIs.
Clinicians from the Royal Berkshire Hospital presented the results of a long-term, nine-year clinical trial where 89 men and women who suffered from recurrent UTIs were given an oral vaccine called MV140, designed to prevent the infections. Every day for three months, the participants were given two sprays of the vaccine (flavored to taste like pineapple) and then followed over the course of nine years. Clinicians analyzed medical records and asked the study participants about symptoms to check whether any experienced UTIs or had any adverse reactions from taking the vaccine.
The results showed that across nine years, 48 of the participants (about 54%) remained completely infection-free. On average, the study participants remained infection free for 54.7 months—four and a half years.
“While we need to be pragmatic, this vaccine is a potential breakthrough in preventing UTIs and could offer a safe and effective alternative to conventional treatments,” said Gernot Bonita, Professor of Urology at the Alta Bro Medical Centre for Urology in Switzerland, who is also the EAU Chairman of Guidelines on Urological Infections.
The news comes as a relief not only for people who suffer chronic UTIs, but also to doctors who have seen an uptick in antibiotic-resistant UTIs in the past several years. Because UTIs usually require antibiotics, patients run the risk of developing a resistance to the antibiotics, making infections more difficult to treat. A preventative vaccine could mean less infections, less antibiotics, and less drug resistance overall.
“Many of our participants told us that having the vaccine restored their quality of life,” said Dr. Bob Yang, Consultant Urologist at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust, who helped lead the research. “While we’re yet to look at the effect of this vaccine in different patient groups, this follow-up data suggests it could be a game-changer for UTI prevention if it’s offered widely, reducing the need for antibiotic treatments.”