50 on Fire will bring together D.C.'s best and brightest to recognize the disruptors, luminaries and visionaries that are pushing our city forward. Buy your tickets now and join us on Dec. 10 at Howard Theatre for the celebration and winners reveal.
The Washington D.C. area hosts a thriving world of healthcare and medicine innovation. Whether it's biotech, new kinds of hospital equipment or applying advanced data technology to the complexities of the healthcare system, these finalists are all breaking new ground, and have drawn no small amount of excitement about D.C.'s health and medical world. Check out which companies and people our judges will be evaluating ahead of the main event Dec. 10.
Avizia
Avizia is a telemedicine startup, helping patients and doctors connect using communications technology. They've had a strong year, reaching over 50 employees and expanding into 35 of the top 100 U.S. hospital networks thanks in part to more and more states mandating that health insurance cover telemedicine just like any other doctor visit. The company has also gone global, with a presence in almost 40 countries.
BrainScope
Brainscope is the company behind a device that can detect concussions faster and with less effort than the usual methods by measuring electrical activity in the brain. Aimed at both sports and military injuries, the company has been heavily backed by Steve Case and his VC firm, Revolution and this year has scored a half-million dollar NFL endorsement and $27 million Department of Defense research contract.
Carolyn Yarina, Sisu Global Health
Yarina runs Sisu Global Health, a Baltimore-based healthtech startup. Sisu developed Hemafuse, which is capable of removing blood from a patient with internal bleeding and re-transfusing it safely into their veins in a hand-operated system aimed particularly at developing countries and places without access to advanced hospitals. Recently, Sisu won $100,000 in Steve Case's Rise of the Rest pitch competition, part of a $700,000 round the company is raising.
Clinovations
Health information tech startup Clinovations and its investors had a great 2015 with the startup getting acquired by The Advisory Board Company early this year. Clinovations joined Advisory Board Consulting and Management, a Tennessee-based division of ABC with a focus on healthcare organization, adding its electronic health records and other time and money-saving measures for healthcare clients.
DrFirst
This Rockville, Md.-based healthcare IT company had a very fruitful year, raising $25 million in equity funding from Goldman Sachs. Its platform, which helps manage patient records and history for doctors, is being rolled out to an expanding list of doctors, who use it to improve how well they can treat their patients but still keep the information secure.
Eric Major, K2 Medical
Eric Major runs Virginia medical device startup K2M Group Holdings, which went public last year with a $132 million IPO. This year, the FDA has approved the marketing of more of the company's minimally invasive spinal surgery technology, which bodes well for K2M's revenue for the year.
Evolent Health
Arlington, Va.-based Evolent Health offers cloud-based software to help healthcare providers and insurers keep track of electronic medical records and billed services, an increasingly important service. Wall Street certainly thinks so, and Evolent had a very successful $195 million IPO in June. It's popular with employees too, having been named at the end of last year as one of the best places to work by Glassdoor.
Exostar
Exostar develops cloud-based software for information sharing and collaboration in many industries, including pharmaceuticals and life sciences. The company's software is used by over 100,000 companies worldwide and has recently earned it $15 million in investment from the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund.
Juan Pablo Segura, BabyScripts/1EQ
Segura leads the Georgetown-based BabyScripts, which has developed a combination of devices and software for personalized health measurement for pregnant women in an app that has to be prescribed by a doctor. One of 1776's portfolio companies, BabyScripts closed a $1 million seed round earlier this year.
Kaléo Pharma
Richmond, Va.-based Kaléo is a pharmaceutical company that combines drug and medical device development. It's created Evzio, an auto-injection system for Naxolene, which can help people suffering from a heroin overdose. This year partnered with the Clinton Foundation to get its medicine into the hands of more people who need it.
Kit Check
Kit Check and its hospital pharmacy tracking software spent 2015 moving into over 200 U.S. and Canadian hospitals and securing several useful patents on the technology it provides. The $12.5 million funding round it closed early this year also helped it finish and start to roll out a new product called Anesthesia Check, doing for surgical anesthesia what it does for hospital pharmacists.
LiveHealthier
Bethesda-based health management software company LiveHealthier had a successful exit this year after getting acquired by healthcare enterprise firm Centene. LiveHealthier, which was founded in 2005, kept its 120 staff members in Bethesda as a subsidiary of the St. Louis-based Centane.
RightEye
Bethesda-based RightEye develops technology to leverage eye-tracking software. It's vision tests are useful in medical, military and the sports industries to track health and even improve performance in some tasks. This year, the company hired Barbara Barclay as CEO to help in further developing an marketing tests and training tools to correct issues like lazy eyes and convergence.
Telcare
Telcare has made glucose monitoring into an app. Its blood glucometer mobile app can be used by people with diabetes to help them stay healthy. This year, Telcare has made a big push for growth, hiring the former chief of marketing at CVS Health using some of the $32.5 million it raised in a funding round last year.
