News

Charlottesville, VA – July 19, 2024 by info@heroscore.com Medical Predictive Science Corporation (MPSC), a company that specializes in the development of AI predictive analytics for the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), has been granted Breakthrough Device designation by the US FDA for its HeRO NOWS device in development. “Designation as a Breakthrough Device is a testament of our work to address unmet medical needs of the neonatal population,” said Will King, CEO of MPSC, “As the leader in AI neonatal predictive analytics, we take pride that our first of a kind HeRO platform has already saved many lives. We look forward to bringing HeRO NOWS to the market in order to continue aiding doctors and nurses to improve the lives of these most precious infants.” What is NOWS? Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (NOWS), also called neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), is a rising health concern affecting newborn infants exposed to opioids in utero. NOWS is a complex disorder with variable presentation and severity, yet can have lifelong consequences. Symptoms include extreme irritability, difficulty feeding, respiratory problems, and seizures. Assessment variability between clinicians and overlap with normal neonatal behavior has led to substantial ambiguity and variation in care. These challenges contribute to delays in treatment, hospital discharge, and care inequities. NOWS has seen a troubling surge in recent years, with its upward trajectory accelerated by the global pandemic. POWS for NOWS Building upon their expertise in vital sign analytics to detect abnormal patterns caused by neonatal sepsis, MPSC and the research team recognized similar patterns due to autonomic dysfunction in infants with NOWS and conducted preliminary studies with promising results. In Fall 2023, they were awarded $3.1 million from the National Institutes of Health. [...]

Do you want to help improve the lives of premature infants? Join our team. Visit our Careers page to learn about the open positions at MPSC. Are YOU ready to make a difference?

MPSC and Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago Announce Award of STTR Grant to Optimize Neonatal Growth and Nutrition Charlottesville, VA - September 10, 2022 – Medical Predictive Science Corporation (MPSC) and Gustave Falciglia, MD, of the Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute, have been awarded a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant to develop a clinical decision support system (CDSS) to optimize nutrition for neonatal growth in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). This NIH grant, awarded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), will support the research to develop a CDSS to positively impact the lives of critically ill infants throughout the world. “My goal is to improve clinical decision making with the support of CDSSs and ultimately improve healthcare delivery to critically ill infants,” said Dr. Gustave Falciglia. “This research strives to develop tools that enhance clinician’s awareness regarding the nutrition that an infant has received and should receive to optimize growth.” Dr. Falciglia practices at the Ann & Robert Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and is an Assistant Professor of Neonatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “MPSC is committed to providing artificial intelligence and predictive analytics solutions to the NICU in order to improve medical practice,” said Will King, CEO of MPSC. “Our HeRO products have proven to save lives and improve outcomes for infants in the NICU. We look forward to working with Dr. Falciglia to apply our efforts towards better meeting the nutritional needs of these precious infants.” About MPSC MPSC develops and markets clinical decision support systems for use in the NICU throughout much of the world. MPSC is committed to improving outcomes, saving lives, and [...]

HeRO is proud to be a part of the care plan at UAB Medicine, whose incredible team has been honored with the Guiness World Record for the survival of Curtis Means. It's a wonderful story of a strong premature infant born at 21 weeks and 1 day gestation. Curtis went home from the NICU after nearly a 10 month stay in the UAB NICU. Read more about the story here, https://www.uab.edu/news/health/item/12427-uab-hospital-delivers-record-breaking-premature-baby.

June 23, 2020 - MPSC announces the publication of another article about HeRO. In this peer reviewed article published in Neonatology Today, King discusses the use of predictive monitoring tools such as HeRO. Some fear that the use of tools such as HeRO may lead to higher rates of testing and antibiotic usage. In the article, the data regarding these concerns from multiple prior analyses are assessed in the context of improved outcomes.

June 22, 2020 - MPSC is proud to announce that the European Respiratory Journal has published "Predicting Extubation Outcomes Using Heart Rate Characteristics Index in Preterm Infants: A Cohort Study." In this paper, Chakraborty et. al. expand upon their earlier publication on the use of HeRO to assess extubation outcomes. With this publication, the authors also announce a free online tool that applies the models presented in the publication for the use by neonatologists everywhere.

June 22 - Today, MPSC announces the release of the next episode of our video series, The HeRO Whiteboard. In today's episode, we explore the physiological response to a developing infection and how the release of cytokines leads to changes in heart rate variability. HeRO assesses heart rate variability in its algorithm for determining the HeRO Score.

HeRO has been shown to improve outcomes in another publication in #JPeds, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022347619317457. This publication adds to the ever growing list of publications supporting the use of HeRO for infants in the NICU.

Medical Predictive Science Corporation, MPSC, has completed the move of its headquarters to a new location. "Our relocation will continue to allow for further growth of the company and the additional headcount needed to support it," said Will King, CEO. Please take note of our new address, effective immediately: Medical Predictive Science Corp. 1233 Cedars Ct, Ste 201 Charlottesville, VA 22901

Charlottesville, VA– June 7th, 2019 MPSC announced today that it has signed an exclusive relationship with Tomorrow Medical to represent the HeRO products in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. Tomorrow Medical “Tomorrow Medical is delighted to offer HeRO as a part of its mission to extend and improve life and health by early treatment of health risks,” says its founder, Rob de Vroet. “We strive to provide the highest quality service to our customers and patients.” Now available in 26 countries, HeRO is becoming the standard of care in providing actionable information to improve the care for neonatal intensive care patients. In the NICU, sepsis is the leading cause of death after the first three days of life.   It is goal of MPSC to aid doctors to identify and treat earlier, when those treatments are most effective.  MPSC’s HeRO product applies the concept of “Big Data” to generate meaningful clinical decision support solutions. Medical Predictive Science Corporation is engaged in the development of computational diagnostic and bio-informatic technologies for the healthcare industry.  MPSC is committed to saving lives and reducing healthcare expenditures through the development of effective clinical diagnostic and decision support tools.  These products use computational diagnostic methods to make the early diagnosis of clinical illness through continuous, non-invasive patient monitoring, and to provide diagnostic information as well as decision support to the physician.  HeRO is a trademark of Medical Predictive Science Corporation.

May 20, 2019 - MPSC welcomes CEMSA to our partners representing HeRO in the many and growing number of countries where HeRO is available.   We are delighted to have CEMSA as our representative for Mexico. CEMSA is working hard to obtain the necessary clearances for the sale of HeRO into Mexico and hopes to be able to launch HeRO soon.

May 18th, 2018, Charlottesville, Virginia – HeRO solo and HeRO duet now offer data export. In an update to the HeRO solo/duet platform, MPSC is proud to announce the availability of data export from the system. "This is in direct response to the voice of our customers," says Dr. Geoffrey Alms, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at MPSC, "All feedback from our customers is evaluated in trying to improve upon our product portfolio." The new option, called "USB Data Export," will be offered as an optional upgrade available immediately on new production units of HeRO solo and HeRO duet. With the option, customers can export the data from the HeRO monitor onto a user supplied USB stick as a text file. This solution was developed in order to allow clinicians, who are interested in doing research incorporating HeRO, a mechanism for collecting the digital data generated by HeRO. Please contact your local representative about the availability of all the HeRO Products.

May 14th, 2018, Charlottesville, Virginia – the Journal Pediatrics has just published two articles about HeRO monitoring. In the first, “Predicting Extubation Outcomes-A Model Incorporating Heart Rate Characteristics Index”, authors Goel, Chakraborty, Watkins, and Banerjee examined HRC as a predictor of extubation outcome in neonatal patients. They found that patients that failed extubations had both higher baseline HeRO Scores as well as higher post-extubation changes in HRC Scores than infants that succeeded extubation. In the second, “Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Length of Stay Reduction by Heart Rate Characteristics Monitoring”, Swanson and co-authors examined length of stay differences between the two arms of the HeRO randomized controlled trial in light of the competing outcome of a mortality benefit. They found HeRO monitored patients to be discharged alive and before the 120th day of life at a higher rate than controls (83.6% versus 80.1%, p=0.01). They also found that among surviving patients with a positive blood culture, HeRO monitored patients were discharged at a 3.2 day lower PMA than controls (p=0.03). “Clinicians face a real challenge in choosing when to extubate a ventilated patient,” commented Dr. Geoffrey Alms, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at MPSC. “Leaving the patient ventilate increases the risk of pneumonia, but pulling the tube out before the patient is ready, resulting in re-intubation, results in its own set of morbidities. Any role that HeRO can play in helping the clinicians choose the right time to extubate will greatly benefit patients.” Turning to the length of stay publication, Alms commented, “Length of stay in the NICU is a surrogate for cost. So, reducing length of stay is not only good for patients and families, but good for hospitals as well.” He added, [...]

MPSC is proud to have played a part in the care of the Waldrop sextuplets in Huntsville, Alabama.   "When we heard that Huntsville Hospital was about to have sextuplets join them, we knew we had to help," says Geoff Alms, Executive Vice President.  "Within a week of learning about the pending arrival, we were able to deliver 6 new HeRO Solos ready for use." The family has a Facebook page dedicated to their nine beautiful children and TLC will be hosting a documentary airing Fall 2018.

Charlottesville, VA. As MPSC continues to improve the HeRO product portfolio, we are proud to announce that MPSC has received a substantially equivalent notification regarding its most recent 510k submission, the summary of which is available at https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf18/K180242.pdf.

Charlottesville, VA– June 20th, 2017 MPSC announced today that it signed the Patient Safety Movement’s Open Data Pledge, a public pledge to share its data to promote patient safety. The Open Data Pledge is designed to foster a marketplace of data analytics to encourage entrepreneurs to develop novel uses of health data that will improve patient safety and reduce preventable deaths. If enough medical technology companies share the data their products generate, it allows engineers and researchers to develop predictive algorithms that notify clinicians and patients of dangerous trends, such as MPSC’s HeRO product. The pledge does not ask any company to share protected or proprietary data or not follow all the privacy laws. To date, 80 companies have made the pledge: http://patientsafetymovement.org/commitments/medical-technology-company-pledges. “Our HeRO Product line proves that the idea of sharing data among device makers and entrepreneurs results in saved lives,” said Will King, CEO. “We look forward to working closely with the Patient Safety Movement Foundation to further the goal of eliminating preventable patient deaths.” More than 3,000,000 people worldwide, and 200,000+ people in the United States die every year in hospitals in ways that could have been prevented. It is the 3rd leading cause of death in the US and the cost is close to $1.44 Trillion. If every Very Low Birth Weight baby in the US were monitored by HeRO, 1,200 additional lives could be saved while simultaneously reducing costs and length of stay.  The Patient Safety Movement Foundation is a non-profit that is working with all stakeholders, including patients, healthcare providers, medical technology companies, government, employers, and private payers. Their mission and public commitment is to eliminate preventable patient deaths by the year 2020. Their annual World Patient Safety, [...]

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Dr. Keith Barrington has a great blog about neonatal research at Neonatal Research. A recent post talks about the importance of how you present long term outcomes statistics to parents on this post.

Welcome to HeRO.  Please enjoy this video overview of the HeRO product.

NICU Technology at Timpanogos Regional Hospital

In honor of September 13 being World Sepsis Day, we want to share some important information about this life threatening condition which affects all too many people. Improving the treatment of sepsis has two facets. First, prevention is key. Frequent handwashing has been proven to reduce the rate of sepsis in the healthcare environment. Second, early identification has a significant impact upon survival and decreases long term morbidities associated with surviving sepsis. The World Sepsis Foundation has lots of very useful information about how you can make a difference. Especially on World Sepsis Day, please take a look at their website and consider a donation. The CDC has recently started their Vital Signs campaign, #vitalsigns, to remind us of the practices that healthcare workers can implement to reduce the impact of this life threatening complication. They have prepared a useful booklet that summarizes what you should do.

Increase your knowledge about this life threatening condition. World Sepsis Day is September 13, 2016. For more information, read up at World-Sepsis-Day.org. From their website, "The best centres, mainly in industrialized countries, have doubled patients’ chances of survival, simply by recognising the condition and responding rapidly."

Methodist Women's Hospital of Omaha, NE, has garnered the attention of the media with their adoption of the HeRO System. Click to see the television news report.

MPSC is proud to announce that the University of California San Diego has added the HeRO Symphony System to their NICU.

Methodist Women's Hospital of Omaha, Nebraska, has chosen to deploy the HeRO System as a part of their update and expansion to the NICU. Read a news article about the expansion here.

MPSC is pleased to announce that Wishaw General Hospital in Scotland has outfitted their entire NICU with the HeRO Monitoring System. Purchased through a donation by Garreth Wood and his wife, former Miss Scotland Nicola Wood, the hospital is the first in Scotland to fully outfit the NICU with HeRO. The BBC has produced a report on the project at: Donation of HeRO on the BBC "MPSC's HeRO System continues to gain new customers across the world," says Will King, CEO of MPSC, "We are delighted that neonatologists choose to place their confidence in our products, adopting them at an increasing rate." About HeRO HeRO® is a pioneering monitoring system for premature infants that detects early signs of distress, commonly caused by infection and other potentially life-threatening illnesses. HeRO generates an hourly numeric score that quantifies the prevalence of abnormal patterns in each patient's heart rate and provides a new tool for clinical assessment so that standard diagnostic and therapeutic decisions are better founded. In a long-running randomized study of over 3,000 preterm infants, those whose care included the HeRO monitor, experienced greater than 20 percent reduced mortality, effectively saving one infant’s life for every 48 who were monitored. About MPSC MPSC is an entrepreneurial medical device company that translates ICU research discoveries to the patient’s bedside. The company develops predictive technology that detects imminent, catastrophic illness. MPSC’s HeRO monitor is the first of a line of products to monitor in-hospital patients.