With RESI Boston coming up soon, LSN’s scientific team is preparing to review the RESI Innovation Challenge applications from biotech, medtech and healthcare IT companies.  We’re excited to receive applications from companies at the cutting edge of biomedical science.  On September 13th, all RESI attendees will have the opportunity to vote on the 30 Innovation Challenge finalists.  See below for the past winners – a diverse group of startups from every area of the life sciences.

Every 90 days, RESI gathers hundreds of active early stage life science investors for a one-day partnering event. RESI Innovation Challenge finalists are provided with an all day showcase to attract the attention of those investors using their branding and messaging. It’s a unique opportunity to be a featured company in the life sciences industry. All applicants are vetted by LSN’s scientific review team, with a view to not just the quality of the company’s scientific work, but also the strength of the management team and how well-positioned the company is to receive investment.

What makes the RESI Innovation Challenge so valuable?  We’ve included a few words from previously successful participants below, but in short, being part of the Innovation Challenge provides startups with a new way to get attention and start dialogues with the investors who attend RESI.  Participants can share their message all day in the exhibit hall, with their Innovation Challenge display providing a starting point for a meaningful conversation about the opportunity.

Here is what our previous winners are saying about the RESI Innovation Challenge:

“I love the RESI Innovation Challenge because it is a great way to give our pitch to practice it and try to obtain a scarce resource from these investors. Practicing with these investors is a great way to build relationships and continue that on to the real investment conversations.”

– Niko Skievaski, Co-Founder, Redox

1st Place, RESI@TMCx, June 8, 2015

“The RESI Innovation Challenge is a really good opportunity to meet investors and other companies in the space.  It’s a good showcase to reach that audience.”

– Jessica Ching, CEO, Eve Medical

2nd Place, RESI San Francisco, January 12, 2016

“The RESI Innovation Challenge is a unique way to pitch, and provides a great opportunity to see what other companies are doing in the industry, while allowing you to meet with potential investors and strategic partners outside of the partnering meetings.”

– John Connolly, VP Corporate Development, Rna Diagnostics

1st Place, RESI Boston, September 16, 2015

“RESI offers small companies like GeneSegues a direct line to potential partners and potential investors in a small setting conducive to relationship building and conversation. The Innovation Challenge was a particularly great way to introduce our company to a broader audience than I could meet with personally which allowed us to leverage the showcasing of our technology more efficiently.”

-Laura M. Brod，Chief Executive Officer，GeneSegues Therapeutics

-1st Place, RESI @TMCx, April 11, 2016

RESI on MaRS June 23, 2016

1st Place

Paul Weber, President & CEO, Perimeter Medical Imaging

2nd Place

Geoff Fernie, CEO & CTO, Bresotec Inc

3rd Place (Tie)

Chancellor Crawford, Co-Founder & CEO, QoC Health Ilana Odess, CEO, Woven Orthopedic Technologies

RESI@TMCx April 11, 2016

Laura Brod, CEO, GeneSegues

Austin Dirks, CEO & CO-Founder, GreenLight Medical

Alexander Schüller, President, Adhesys

Shravanthi Reddy, COO, ClearSight

Jessica Ching, CEO, Eve Medical

Jonathan W. Gunn, JD, PhD, CEO & Co-founder

RESI Boston September 16, 2015

1st Place

Jonathan W. Gunn, JD, PhD, CEO & Co-founder, Rna Diagnostics

2nd Place

Matthew R. Gevaert, Ph.D. CEO & Co-founder

3rd Place

Kenneth J. Slepicka, CEO & Director

RESI@TMCx June 8, 2015

1st Place

Niko Skievaski, Co-founder, Redox

2nd Place

Wade Lange, CEO, NeuroFx

3rd Place

Laura Bosworth, CEO & co-founder, TeVido BioDevices

RESI San Francisco January 13, 2015

1st Place

Shawn Iadonato, Ph.D., CEO, Kineta

2nd Place

Eric Goslau, CEO, Transverse Medical

3rd Place

Robert Thompson, President & CEO, Amorphex Therapeutics

RESI Boston September 17, 2014

1st Place

Robin Smith, CEO, ORIG3N

2nd Place

Jeff Missling, CEO, SpineThera

3rd Place

Kurt Dieck, President & CEO, Biosortia

RESI Boston March 24, 2014

1st Place

Pam Randhawa, Founder & CEO, EMPIRIKO

2nd Place

Marcia Fournier, CEO, BIOARRAY

3rd Place (Tie)

Magdalena Leszczyniecka, President & CEO, STC Biologics Tasos Smeros, Founder & CEO, Multineurons

Apply today for the chance to join!

By Shaoyu Chang, MD, MPH, Senior Research Manager & Asia Business Development Liaison, LSN

Asia-based drugs, devices, diagnostics and healthcare IT companies all have a cross-border strategy. These entities have demonstrated impressive growth in recent years in terms of talent, research capacity and capital. Now on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, investors and entrepreneurs have set out to find opportunities and form new partnerships. At the Boston-Cambridge biotech hub, the tenth RESI Conference is poised to become the go-to platform for US-Asia early stage life science investments.

Life Science Nation has teamed up with a committee of highly experienced investors and organizations to implement the new Asia Track at RESI Boston. Interested attendees will have the opportunity to learn about the Asia-North America investment landscape and meet face-to-face with potential partners in biopharmaceuticals, medtech, and diagnostics.

The steering committee is composed of representatives from Wuxi Apptec, Simcere Pharmaceutical, Lyfe Capital, MP Healthcare Venture Management, Korea-Seoul Life Science Fund, Chinese-American Biomedical Association (CABA), and Sino-American Pharmaceutical Professionals Association (SAPA). The committee brings together diverse backgrounds and deep experience in early stage life science investments.

The LSN team has traveled to innovation hubs such as San Francisco, Houston, Toronto, and Boston. Everywhere we went, we were greeted by a growing number of Asia-based investors, fund managers, pharmaceutical corporations, and big corporations that are looking outside their local region for investable life science technologies. However, geographic and cultural barriers often limit their ability in deal-sourcing, evaluation, negotiation, and post-investment management.

On the other hand, many US and Canadian entrepreneurs are looking at the other side of the Pacific for capital, strategic partners, and business growth and expansion. They are faced with a different set of challenges: ignorance of risks and benefits in these new marketplaces, inability to identify a good fit from a wide array of advisors and consultants, and difficulty in establishing and maintaining long-term cooperative relationships.

The Asia Track at RESI Boston aims to address all of the above issues. Past RESI events have stressed the globalization of early stage life science investments. This time, the Asia Track will bring to you seasoned investors who understand your sector and can pinpoint emerging opportunities in China, Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries. Next Phase will announce these Asia investors panels in the coming weeks.

By Caitlin Kramer, Research Analyst, LSN

As Life Science Nation’s 10^th RESI Conference approaches, we are proud to offer a glimpse into the topic of a new panel which will debut in Boston on September 13^th: Big Data in Healthcare. This panel will feature the insight of five investors actively seeking companies that are advancing big data solutions to problems in healthcare and medicine.

The paradigm of digital information is still relatively new, and techniques for dealing with massive quantities of it – Big Data – are still in their early stages. LSN asked investors for their thoughts on the space, and their responses are below.

What is exciting about big data? What role do you see it playing in the future of healthcare?

One of the areas I continue to see active investor interest in is companies working with patient data. There’s a lot of excitement about innovative solutions that help patients and practitioners securely manage and share medical records and data while still maintaining regulatory compliance. This extends into the insurance industry as well.

I’ve also found the application of big data-native concepts like computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing to the medical field incredibly interesting. Examples include technologies that help doctors diagnose diseases earlier based on a programmatic analysis of medical imagery, or a cross-correlation of 200 million patient records looking for subtle trends, or a mental health patient conversing with a digital psychologist AI to help set some context before scheduling a meeting with a licensed doctor.

Another investor said:

I believe that within my lifetime, it will be considered malpractice for doctors to diagnose without using computational aid. Systems biology is too complex to be held in the brain, and AI will become a routine, standard part of medicine.

With so much excitement about the potential big data has to transform healthcare, the space is prone to hype. Entrepreneurs should keep in mind the unique challenges of working in the space, especially when speaking with investors. This led us to ask:

What are the biggest hurdles you see to using big data in healthcare?

An investor we spoke with countered with another observant question:

Why hasn’t there been a big medical breakthrough or discovery yet, despite billions of dollars already invested in big data AI and machine learning?

He continued on to discuss why:

Most big data projects indiscriminately mine data without considering uncertainty. These can be uncertainties in measurement, biological variability, or patient comorbidity. When I ask CEOs of big data companies simple questions about how they plan to deal with mismatches in ontology, or error propagation, I am often met with a blank stare. Medical science, done well, requires setting up an experiment, making measurements, accounting for uncertainty in measurement, and propagating that uncertainty. To effectively do that at this stage, we need to first focus on developing algorithms that work on small data with constraints, and a scope confined to the clinical question.

Another core component to developing big data algorithms for use in healthcare is recognizing that the needs of the algorithms differ from those applied in other fields. A failure to correctly classify or categorize a piece of information used in a marketing or financial setting can be corrected later, while the failure to distinguish between a benign and malignant tumor image can cost a life when applied in medicine. The mentality of software development needs to understand the consequences of error.

Important insights and opinions such as these will ultimately shape how big data manifests a presence in healthcare in the coming years. We look forward to announcing the panelists for Big Data in Healthcare in the coming weeks, and to hearing more investors speak about their experiences investing in this new and exciting future for medical care at RESI 10.