PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- StartX, a non-profit startup community of more than 1500 Stanford faculty and alumni founders, announces the launch of its StartX Med COVID-19 Task Force and the mobilization of its breakthrough medical companies providing solutions for the prevention, diagnostics and treatment of the novel coronavirus. The group of leading scientists, physicians and professor entrepreneurs will collaborate on outreach to government agencies, regulatory bodies and healthcare systems in the interest of public health.

Among the many leading-edge biotech, medical device and digital health companies solving critical needs during the COVID-19 pandemic are physicians working with positive cases, companies with FDA cleared solutions and those that are on the fast-track with the CDC. The following are a few ways the StartX Med COVID-19 Task Force is working to provide hope, flatten the curve, and combat the novel coronavirus:

• Rapid tests suitable for drive through testing, nursing homes, and ER rooms with results in 10 minutes
• Applications and hardware to assess respiratory issues
• Rapid solutions to fight developing sepsis and correlating antibiotic resistance resulting from COVID-19 severe complications
• COVID-19 related applications for remotely monitoring quarantined patients and healthcare workers who have been exposed
• Rapid RNA testing technologies
• Testing that provides information on the presence, type and severity of infections
• Solutions for optimizing hospital operations and supply chain tracking
• Solutions for automated quarantine management and remote virtual triage
• A centrifuge system which is readily deployable for remote sample collection and prep
• A handheld device measuring temperature, lung sounds, airway pressure, pulmonary function, ECG, and SPO2
• Remote monitoring for respiratory diseases, and other StartX Med technologies already deployed in Wuhan, China
• Free access to the Bioz research platform for biopharma companies
• Free virtual COVID-19 evaluation, screening and escalation tool for any hospital in the U.S. to help preserve clinical resources for patients who warrant in-person care
• StartX Med therapeutics companies with new antiviral drugs to treat COVID-19 and the most common lung disease caused by it, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), are accelerating their efforts to take their treatments into clinical settings.

“One of our first goals would be for existing StartX genetics companies to be able to ramp-up their current solutions for molecular testing of COVID-19 diagnostics and work with local and state officials and government agencies on deployment,” stated Dr. Michael Niaki, StartX Med COVID-19 Task Force Lead for the Diagnostics Subgroup.

Current StartX Med COVID-19 Task Force Participants include:

Prevention: DawnLight Technologies - Luma Health - Mon Ami - Theranova - Tueo - Qventus

Diagnostics: Avails Medical - Eko - Enable Biosciences - Inflammatix - Lucira Health - Magnetic Insight Mendo - Nirmidas Biotech, Inc. - ProbiusDx - Sandstone Diagnostics - Sensio Air - Sentinel Healthcare - Spire Health - Subtle Medical - Quantumcyte

Treatment: Augmedix - Bioz - Bright.md - Chimera Bio - GEn1E - Globavir BioSciences - Guided Clarity - InfiniGene - KangarooHealth - OMNY - Orcabio - Parzival - Potrero - Qventus - Spot Biosystems - Line Up Health - Wellsheet

“As the number of positive cases continue to soar in the outbreak of COVID-19, there is an imminent need for reducing barriers companies are experiencing with therapeutic medical breakthroughs needing to be deployed,” stated Joseph Huang, CEO of StartX. “We’ve always said that our community of industry leaders can achieve more as a group than as individuals and this is a prime example of how quickly StartX companies and the Stanford entrepreneurship ecosystem can mobilize and come together in times of crisis.”

In addition to partnering in outreach to government agencies and public health offices for immediate deployment of life-saving medical solutions, the coalition will offer investors a special COVID-19 Task Force version of StartX’s Online Investor Demo Day viewings to coordinate introductions between StartX Med companies tackling COVID-19 and VCs specifically interested in investing in this space. Both StartX’s General Investor Demo Day and COVID-19 specific viewings are slated to begin March 19, 2019.

Media Note: Leading Physician and Scientist Expert Sources Available for Comment

About StartX

StartX is a nonprofit organization advancing the development of Stanford’s top entrepreneurs through experiential education, access to thousands of VCs and investors, and a Who’s Who of industry leaders and serial entrepreneurs providing mentorship. The founder community consists of a diverse mix of 1500+ well-funded Growth-Stage Founders, tenured Stanford Professor Founders, and highly-successful Stanford Alumni Founders. Collectively, StartX companies have raised $8 billion in funding with a combined valuation of more than $25 billion to date. StartX’s Corporate Innovation program helps global corporations quickly test market-ready technology from Stanford alumni founders through structured co-creation and pilot programs. Ranked as a number one accelerator nationally by MIT’s Seed Accelerator Rankings Project, StartX venture funded companies have a 92% survival and acquisition rate in a wide range of industries from consumer Internet and retail products to enterprise software, biotechnology and medical devices.

StartX and StartX Med, the medical entrepreneurial vertical of StartX, includes accomplished founders ranging from undergraduates and masters students to post docs, professors and Stanford alumni being mentored by top Silicon Valley industry leaders. For medical tech founders homegrown at Stanford’s School of Medicine, having intimate access to domain experts and care environments has been fundamental to their success. StartX Med entrepreneurial scientists are changing the world with medical breakthroughs and successful life-saving research trials, including an average of more than six FDA approvals per year. Clinical partners of StartX Med companies encompass more than 250 hospitals, 30,000 care centers, 50,000 physicians and 65 million annual patient visits. StartX Med founders also have the opportunity to utilize 2,000 square feet of shared wet lab space at the StartX facility, located down the street from Stanford University. StartX continues to be a unique startup community compared to accelerators and incubators and does not take equity in companies for admittance into its programs. For information on the StartX Med COVID-19 Task Force or how you can help, please send inquiries to: COVID19TF@startx.com

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