The second annual Stanford Emergency Medicine Innovation Symposium (STEMI X) was held in May 2022. Almost 400 emergency physicians and other health care stakeholders gathered virtually for keynote talks and roundtable discussions focused on how emerging technology could improve emergency care. Topics included digital health, artificial intelligence/machine-learning (AI/ML) algorithms, medical devices, and precision-based care for patients.

STEMI X also featured “Pitch ‘EM,” a pioneering pitch competition. Like ‘Shark Tank’, health care entrepreneurs had 10 minutes to pitch their idea to improve care in the emergency department. The winning team received $5,000 and mentoring with Stanford’s Emergency Medicine Partnership Program.

Nearly 30 companies competed to be one of the six finalists who pitched their innovation to the live STEMI X audience. The six finalists presented innovations featuring medical devices, AI, teletriage, and remote patient monitoring. The contest was judged by six venture capitalists representing firms that invest in health care innovation; five of these judges were physicians.

The Finalists

CPR Therapeutics

Dr. Norman A. Paradis, MD, is an emergency physician, CEO, and founder of CPR Therapeutics (CPR-T), creators of an innovative compression-providing vest for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), the mainstay treatment for out of hospital cardiac arrests. Their CPR-T solution allows providers to save a patient’s life with high quality compressions delivered via a circumferential patient vest. This smart device avoids rib trauma and is able to provide electrical defibrillation. Dr. Paradis’s group is developing their CPR-T Radiolucent Cath Lab Vest which will allow patients to obtain active compressions and life-saving resuscitative measures while undergoing critical re-vascularization procedures in the cardiac catheterization lab.

Hero Medical Technologies

Hero Medical Technologies seeks to improve and streamline patient care for individuals with head injuries from early injury through hospitalization. They offer a unique bandage, which doubles as a wound dressing and monitoring system. Hero Medical seeks to eliminate potential gaps in vital sign monitoring as well as hemorrhage control for the 1.4 million patients with traumatic head injuries seen in the hospital yearly, who account for $25.2B in hospital admissions and $76.5B in overall healthcare related costs for the head injury market nationwide. They’ve received funding from Johnson & Johnson Innovation Labs and an FDA grant. They’ve piloted their device with both the Baylor College of Medicine and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Well

Alex Prokhorov co-founded Well, a startup focused on remote patient monitoring (RPM) paired with white-label devices and an electronic health record, creating a seamless Hospital at Home model with trackable health care data and reportable billing. With over 300 integrated devices, the Well platform accommodates multiple avenues for RPM via smartscales, smartwatches, blood pressure cuffs, glucometers, and oximeters. Their patient-centered dashboard offers alerts, tracks trends, and allows patients to share their health data with their physician, ensuring that their physician is aware of both changes in their health and when the patient needs follow-up visits. Well’s physician suite includes convenient tools to manage billing codes, patient evaluation reminders, and data exportation.

Clearstep

CEO and Co-Founder Adeel Malik’s Natural Language Processing-based chatbot allows Clearstep Virtual Triage to create a future where pre-hospital journeys are supplemented with clear, concise, and clinically-relevant triage notes—utilizing technology to facilitate more efficient use of clinician time. Using an AI-based chatbot, patients may view treatment options, compare prices, and book care online for their ailments. Their case study using COVID-19 symptom screening was deployed at a large multi-hospital health system with over 25,000 employees, with virtual triage diverting over 1,000 calls over a 2 month period of time to the self-service resource, saving an estimated 25 hours of triage time. Partnered with CVS Health and HCA Healthcare, their team is well on their way to improving communication between patient and physician for timely patient care.

Monovo

Monovo was founded by Jonathan Muńoz and Robert Johnson, DNP, to address home monitoring needs for specific patient populations. Their remote patient monitoring tools continuously check patient oxygen, blood pressure, and cardiac rhythm and pair this data with artificial intelligence to predict and prevent untoward events. For example, their tools can be used for continuous blood pressure monitoring for pre-eclampsia patients, rhythm monitoring for cardiac patients, and oxygen saturation for COVID-19 patients. Monovo also includes a platform that can be used by patients and physicians to track symptoms, address changing care needs, and facilitate billing. They have pilots with both primary and specialty care offices and insurance carriers and they are interested in working with emergency department-directed hospital at home programs.

And the Winner Is…

David Mui and Akshat Patel’s company EM Guide brought together telemedicine and EMS teletriage to focus on directing care to appropriate locations and creating financial incentives to change current protocols. Currently, 40 percent of the 37 million estimated 9-1-1 calls EMS responds to each year are determined to be low-acuity or non-emergent. EM Guide empowers first responders to redefine the patient journey. The EM Guide platform allows EMS to provide point-of-care telemedicine and teletriage services, diverting non-acute calls from the ED and offering instant financial incentive for each diversion achieved by EMS agencies to nudge and change EMS behavior, with a conservatively estimated $2.46B potential savings for insurers diverting low acuity issues away from the ED.

The judges were impressed with the EM Guide group’s clear vision and unique idea—awarding them the top prize. EM Guide’s ability to save unnecessary medical bills and reserve hospital beds in overcrowded hospitals would have the most impact on the companies that pitched their ideas.

STEMI X and Pitch ‘EM was well received. One of the Pitch EM judges, Dr. James Eadie—an emergency physician and Managing Director for Sante Ventures—and remarked that, “There are not many groups doing innovation in ER and yet the need is huge.”

STEMI X is partnering with ACEP to host HackED, a hackathon at ACEP22 in San Francisco. This event will be free for attendees and address how emergency physicians should include health care data from wearables and home monitoring equipment in their patient management. This multi-day event will take place in the Exhibit Hall and feature team formation, coaching and discussions, and available workstations. HackED will culminate with teams presenting their ideas and innovations in a pitch competition at 1 p.m. on Oct. 3.

Dr. Kabeer is a PGY-4 and Chief Resident at Stanford’s Department of Emergency Medicine. In addition to his role as co-chair of the Stanford Airway Review Committee, he is a member of the Emergency Care Health Services Research Data Coordinating Center (HSR-DCC), researching the integration of machine-learning into emergency cardiovascular care. You can find him on Twitter (@RanaSays).

Dr. Dayton is the first Medical Innovation Fellow with Stanford’s Department of Emergency Medicine. He co-leads their innovation partnership program (STEPP), serves as a Board Member for AngelMD, works as a physician consultant for Zus Health, and writes about healthcare innovation.