Entrepreneurs are invited to the 487th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, May 28, 2020, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur,...
___
Sramana Mitra: What geography do you cover? Garrett Goldberg: North America. We’re in San Francisco but we’re generally agnostic. We’re certainly agnostic but it’s important for us to be here. This...
___
I took an off the grid vacation last week. I needed it as I was pretty fried feeling on May 15th when I checked out.
Amy and I went ⦠nowhere. We stayed at home. I slept late each day. I exercised. I read. I napped. We finished watching Breaking Bad. I played with my Glowforge and made a bunch of Ear Savers. I wrote a little, but not too much, on my next book (The Entrepreneurâs Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors.)
I read two great memoirs, both by women I respect a lot.
Madeline and Arlan are each incredible leaders, brave people, and women that I have learned a lot from. Iâve been fortunate to spend time with both of them and be involved in things that they created (in Madelineâs case, The Albright Institute; in Arlanâs case, Backstage Capital). I loved reading these books and recommend them for everyone, especially if you are interested in leadership.
I also read two books that are pertinent to this moment in time.
They were also each excellent and gave me useful perspective on our current reality, along with how our government responded during two other major crises (one health, one economic.)
Itâs a beautiful day in Boulder today. Iâm glad to be back from what was a much needed vacation.
Data science and analytics platform provider Alteryx (NYSE: AYX) early this month reported a strong quarter with revenue growth of 43%, but it swung to a loss and missed analyst earnings...
___
Sramana Mitra: You were doing service contracts basically? Andrew Plato: Yes. I did technical writing. I did a little bit of software development and website design. In 1999, I switched my company...
___
Bolt, a rival to Uber and others providing on-demand ridesharing, scooters and other transportation services across some 150 cities in Europe and Africa, is today announcing another capital raise as it weathers a difficult market climate where, because of COVID-19, many are staying in place and avoiding modes of transport that put them into contact with others.
The Estonia-based company is today announcing that it has picked up an additional €100 million ($109 million) in a convertible note. Bolt also confirmed that is now valued at €1.7 billion (or nearly $1.9 billion at today’s rates).
The money is coming from a single investor, Naya Capital Management, which was also a major backer of the company in its last round, a $67 million Series C in July 2019.
The funding is one more example of how investors are continuing to support their most promising, and/or most capitalised, portfolio companies as they face drastic losses of business during the COVID-19 pandemic, which can only be more complicated for a startup built on a business model that — even in the best of times — is very capital-intensive.
Before this round, in April we were hearing that Bolt was running out of runway and that they were in discussion also with the Estonian government — a big supporter of the country’s tech industry — to underwrite debt in the company.
Bolt has confirmed that this whole funding is in the form of a convertible note (that is, debt), with no additional equity at this point. “We have no plans that we can discuss at the moment,” a spokesperson said, so it sounds like a further equity round is something it’s working on regardless, given these take more time to close.
Bolt — which says it has 30 million users in over 35 countries globally — says that the worst of the lull in business was two months ago and that it’s been slowly recovering since. A spokesperson said that the company was closing in on breakeven at the end of last year, and it was preparing an equity round “mostly for food delivery and micromobility.”
Now, the picture is somewhat different, with ride-hailing and recovery measures putting more financial need into the business model.
Altogether, however, the company is still on the relatively smaller side when it comes to capital raise for its on-demand transportation model. Bolt has now raised over €300 million including debt and equity, with other investors including Nordic Ninja — a new fund out of Helsinki backed by a number of Japanese LPs to invest in Northern European startups (Bolt is based out of Tallinn) — Creandum, G Squared, Invenfin (a fund out of South Africa backed by investment holding company Remgro) and Superangel, a fund out of Estonia that has been backing the startup since its earliest days, as well as Didi (and, by association, SoftBank and Uber), Daimler, Korelya Capital and Spring Capital.
Formerly known as Taxify, Bolt rebranded last year as it expanded beyond private car rides into other areas like electric scooters and food delivery — and the plan will be to use this funding to expand all three business areas in the coming months, along with newer product categories like Business Delivery in-city same-day courier services and Bolt Protect for people to continue to use its ride-hailing services by kitting out cars with plastic sheeting between driver and passenger seats.
Uber, Bolt’s publicly traded business rival, has laid bare just how painful the pandemic has been for business. The company, which had raised billions of dollars as a privately-backed startup, has laid off nearly 7,000 employees in recent weeks, and while we currently have little visibility of the impact this has had on the contractors Uber engages to move people, food and other items in its network, its next quarterly earnings (which will cover the full brunt of the pandemic) should more clearly spell out the drop-off in overall business.
Bolt notes that so far, it hasn’t had to let people to as Uber and others have, and while it doesn’t go into financial details, it does acknowledge that business is not business as usual.
“Even though the crisis has temporarily changed how we move, the long-term trends that drive on-demand mobility such as declining personal car ownership or the shift towards greener transportation continue to grow,” said Markus Villig, CEO and co-founder, in a statement.
“We are happy to be backed by investors that look past the typical Silicon Valley hype and support our long term view. I am more confident than ever that our efficiency and localisation are a fundamental advantage in the on-demand industry. These enable us to continue offering affordable transportation to millions of customers and the best earnings for our partners in the post-COVID world.”
A lot of people have talked about how fundraising has become more complicated in the current climate. Not only are founders and investors not able to meet in person and get more embedded in evaluating an opportunity, but many are unable to see what the future will hold in terms of market demand and the overall economy, making the bets all the more laden with risk.
That’s left a lot of the activity spread between startups that are seeing business lift precisely because of present circumstances; startups that have businesses that are continuing to enjoy a lot of trade despite present circumstances; and startups that are strong enough (or already so highly capitalised) that investors want to support them to make sure they don’t go under. More typically, startups that are securing funding are falling into more than one of the above categories, as is the case with Bolt.
“We are delighted to have the opportunity to invest in Bolt at this stage in the company’s growth story,” Masroor Siddiqui, managing partner, CIO and founder of Naya Capital Management, said in a statement. “Under Markus’ leadership, Bolt has established itself as one of the most competitive and innovative players in global mobility. We believe that Bolt is helping drive a fundamental change in how consumers interact with the transport infrastructure of their cities and look forward to the company’s continued execution on its strategic vision.”
Update: Bolt confirmed after we published that this is actually all in the form of a convertible note, so this is not a Series D. Also updated with more information about the state of the business.
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Tuesday.
The UK will review the role of China's Huawei in its 5G networks. Huawei had been given a limited role in providing equipment for the superfast mobile network, but that could now change.Australia's Covidsafe app has faded into insignificance just one month after launch. The contact tracing app reportedly only helped identify one person with Covid-19 and has diminished in importance as the country's economy re-opens, according to The Guardian. More than 40% of Republicans in a new poll say they think Bill Gates wants to use COVID-19 vaccines to implant location-tracking microchips in recipients. Gates, who has donated $300 million to coronavirus vaccine efforts, has become the target of online conspiracy theorists and conservative pundits over his coronavirus vaccination efforts.Elon Musk's Boring Company has finished the tunneling for its Tesla-powered people mover in Las Vegas. The Boring Company completed the second of two tunnels underneath Las Vegas' convention center. Chinese tech company Qihoo 360 slammed the US government for 'politicizing business' after it imposed export sanctions on 33 more Chinese companies and government institutions. Anti-virus software company Qihoo 360 said it opposed the action.Doctors in UK hospitals are using headsets from Microsoft to reduce the amount of staff coming into contact with COVID-19 patients. The HoloLens headsets allow doctors to share their point of view with colleagues remotely, while also showing holographic projections to the doctor wearing the headset.A robot barista that takes orders, makes coffee, and delivers drinks to customers is being used in South Korea to help with social distancing. The new robot can take orders, make 60 different types of coffee, and serve drinks to customers at their seats.Drones will help to supply protective equipment to a hospital on a remote Scottish island. The 10-mile journey between mainland Oban and the Isle of Mull usually involves a road trip and a 45-minute ferry, should take only 15 minutes.A 5G mast in Derbyshire, England was set on fire just days after it was erected. Attacks on 5G masts have been fuelled by a conspiracy theory wrongly linking 5G and coronavirus.A Canadian e-commerce startup raised $2 million entirely over Zoom to offer try-before-you-buy fashion during coronavirus. The try-before-you-buy fashion startup has fast-tracked its launch process with Covid-19 closing physical clothes stores across North America.Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings.
You can also subscribe to this newsletter here â just tick "10 Things in Tech You Need to Know."
E-commerce platform Blackcart is set to launch later this month having raised $2 million in venture funding, solely over Zoom, during the coronavirus pandemic.
The try-before-you-buy fashion startup has fast-tracked its launch process with Covid-19 closing physical clothes stores across North America. The Vancouver-based fashion tech company received funding from Struck Capital, who led the round, with participation from 500 Startups, Revel Partners, M3 Ventures.Â
"We were going to keep the platform in beta for a few more months, but then Covid came along," Blackcart founder and CEO Donny Ouyang told Business Insider in an interview. "We messaged all potential investors to fast-track the fundraising process to launch, it was five weeks of back and forth, 100s of emails and five or six meetings every day."Â
Ouyang admitted that the process of fundraising and onboarding new staff remotely was "strange," Blackcart is actively hiring ahead of fully launching its platform in the coming days.
The issue is simple, in order to help shoppers find the right item most retailers make returns free so that customers can find the right item. However, the process of mass returns is inefficient and hits the margins of retailers, particularly smaller merchants. Try-before-you-buy is one solution to that issue, but security is paramount.
To that end, Ouyang hired a scammer to attack the company's fraud detection systems to look for weaknesses or potential issues. As a result, Blackcart will "have the best card protection model on the market," according to Ouyang.Â
"There is a trend away from bricks and mortar retailers because of the inefficiencies and the cost of rent for shops, Blackcart is part of this macro trend," Adam Struck, partner at Struck Capital. "It's hard to do a completely remote fundraising process with our superpower of picking up in-person cues removed, so we did an incredible amount of Zoom calls to work on this opportunity."
BlackCart's plugin will be available to all merchants including Shopify stores later this month. The company has powered tens of thousands of transactions while in beta â dramatically increasing retailers' online sales, according to Ouyang. Currently Blackcart has 40 merchants signed up and wants 50 by the time of launch.Â
"Covid is changing try before you buy because everyone is online now whereas previously it was only 30% of sales," Ouyang said. "Our overall vision is that in the future people will only do try-before-you-buy and Covid will accelerate that."
SpaceX is on the cusp of making spaceflight history for both itself and NASA â that is, if the weather cooperates.
The private rocket company, founded by Elon Musk in 2002, is hoping to launch its first-ever passengers into space from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The test flight is called Demo-2, and it's the culmination of roughly $3.1 billion in funding from NASA through the agency's Commercial Crew Program, which is an effort to resurrect the human spaceflight capability that NASA lost in July 2011 when it retired its fleet of space shuttles.
"We are going to launch American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," Jim Bridenstine, NASA's administrator, said during a televised briefing on May 1. "We're going to do it here in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, and I'm going to tell you that this is a high-priority mission to the United States of America."
Demo-2 will have NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley climb aboard SpaceX's new Crew Dragon spaceship, launch into orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket, and later dock with the International Space Station (ISS), where they could live for up to 110 days before returning to Earth.
Before the mission can lift off, though, SpaceX had to clear a handful of final hurdles. On Friday, the company passed a critical safety review of the mission, test-fired its rocket, and on Saturday, performed a launch dress rehearsal. On Monday, SpaceX passed an ultimate launch readiness review with NASA, which gave the Demo-2 mission a "go" for launch at 4:33 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
"Now the only thing we need to do is figure out how to do is control the weather," Kathy Lueders, who has managed NASA's Commercial Crew Program since 2013, said during a telephone press briefing on Monday.
During Monday's briefing, Mike McAleenan, the launch weather officer for the US Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron, jokingly assured Lueders that his division is "in the weather sales business, not production."
Storms have battered Cape Canaveral for days, dropping more than two inches of rain in the area on Friday. "We're very happy we're not launching today," McAleenan said.
He said the weather forecast on Monday morning looked poor, with a 60% chance of violating the safety conditions required to launch Demo-2 â things like lightning, strong high-altitude winds, and even high seas in the Atlantic Ocean, where emergency recovery boats will be stationed in case Behnken and Hurley have to abort to safety after launch.
But McAleenan said the forecast seemed to improve throughout the day, with what he estimated will be as of Tuesday morning a 40% chance of not launching the mission on Wednesday. If SpaceX can't lift off the mission then, their next chances to do so will be at 3:22 p.m. ET on Saturday or 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, Emre Kelly of Florida Today tweeted on Monday.
Weather is a concern elsewhere, too. The Crew Dragon will be rocketed eastward across the Atlantic Ocean, so clusters of planned emergency landing sites must be clear enough to recover the astronauts after they parachute back to Earth and splash into the water.
"In case something happens, you want to make sure that Dragon capsule can land," Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of mission assurance, said during Monday's briefing. "So the waves should be not too rough, the wind should not be too fast."
Demo-2 is also SpaceX's most important mission to date, since human lives are on the line.
SpaceX has cut down risk by flying its Falcon 9 rocket dozens of times beforehand. It also based the design of its new Crew Dragon vehicle â also called Dragon 2 â on its older Cargo Dragon ship called Dragon 1, which has successfully reached the ISS 20 times. Still, Crew Dragon has only flown to orbit once on a mission called Demo-1 in March 2019 and performed a high-stress abort test in January 2020.
Musk told Irene Klotz of Aviation Week that while the threat is low, his "biggest concern" about the new spaceship is the capsule's asymmetric design, which is driven by its emergency escape system. While screaming back to Earth at 25 times the speed of sound, the capsule's heat shield will deflect and absorb the energy of superheated plasma â but the forces of atmospheric reentry have a slim chance of causing potentially catastrophic issues, Musk said.
"If you rotate too much, then you could potentially catch the plasma in the super Draco escape thruster pods," Musk said, adding this could overheat parts of the ship or cause it to lose control (by wobbling). "We've looked at this six ways to Sunday, so it's not that I think this will fail. It's just that I worry a bit that it is asymmetric on the backshell."
But Koenigsmann ultimately indicated he's satisfied with the years of work that have gone into making Crew Dragon safe to fly.
"I'm at the point right now where I'm actually worried about the weather, and that's a good sign," he told Business Insider.
Lueders said on Monday that she was moved by Saturday's dress rehearsal, during which the astronauts put on their spacesuits, drove a Tesla electric car to the launchpad, and climbed aboard the spaceship.
"I can't tell you how moving it was for me to see Bob and Doug get into vehicles, and ride out to the pad, and realize that the next time was going to be when we were getting ready to launch," Lueders said.
After postponing its long-awaited rocket launch by a day, Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket had a successful release from a jumbo jet.
However, an unidentified problem forced Richard Branson's orbital launch company to terminate the mission shortly after the jet, called the Cosmic Girl, dropped the rocket into the air.Â
Virgin said in a series of tweets that Cosmic Girl and its flight crew had safely returned to their base in Mojave, California. The company also said that an unspecified "anomaly" occurred shortly after the rocket's engines ignited.
"After being released from the carrier aircraft, the LauncherOne rocket successfully lighted its booster engine on cue â the first time the company had attempted an in-air ignition. An anomaly then occurred early in first stage flight, and the mission safely terminated," the company said in a press release shared with Business Insider. "The carrier aircraft Cosmic Girl and all of its crew landed safely at Mojave Air and Space Port, concluding the mission."Â
According to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who closely follows spaceflight activity, the drop of the rocket occurred at a spot above the North Pacific Ocean. "First launches are tough," McDowell said in a tweet.Â
A Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) system located in Los Angeles reportedly captured what appeared to be the breakup of the rocket, according to footage shared on Twitter.Â
Â
Elon Musk sent his condolences to Virgin for the failed launch attempt.
"Sorry to hear that. Orbit is hard. Took us four attempts with Falcon 1," the SpaceX CEO said in a tweet, referring to the aerospace company's first launch system that rocketed a payload into orbit around Earth.
"We appreciate that, Elon. We're excited about the data we were able to get today," the company responded on Twitter.
The launch was originally scheduled for Sunday, but Virgin Orbit postponed it to Monday morning out of an "abundance of caution" because a sensor had been "acting up," the company said on social media. Ahead of Monday's launch, Virgin Orbit said on Twitter that it felt "more ready than ever" to launch the rocket.
Despite the disappointing failure, Virgin Orbit noted its test flight wasn't entirely awash.
"The company successfully completed all of its pre-launch procedures, the captive carry flight out to the drop site, clean telemetry lock from multiple dishes, a smooth pass through the racetrack, terminal count, and a clean release," the press release said. In a tweet, Virgin added that the "goals today were to work through the process of conducting a launch, learn as much as we could, and achieve ignition. We hoped we could have done more, but we accomplished those key objectives today."
The company also indicated that it's ready to try again, sharing a photo of its next fully built rocket in a hangar.
In the press release, Virgin said its next rocket was in "final stages of integration" at a manufacturing facility in Long Beach, Calif.
"Our next rocket is waiting. We will learn, adjust, and begin preparing for our next test, which is coming up soon," CEO Dan Hart said in the press release.Â
Fintech startup Brex has advice for other startups struggling through the economic crisis: It may be difficult to sell your wares to new customers right now, but there are things you can do to get more from the customers you already have.
Brex, which provides credit cards to startups, analyzed data from its own customers and worked with HR company Zendesk to produce a set of customer service and support guidelines. The idea of the project, which the companies presented this month in one Brex's ongoing series of webinars, is to provide insight and actionable tips that can help young businesses jolted by the coronavirus pandemic.Â
According to Brex and Zendesk, customer service is a vital skill that more startups would do well to focus on.
"We really have to change our mindset in this moment away from selling and towards retention by trying to find growth, if possible, through that existing customer base that we have," Zendesk vice president of startups Kristen Durham said.
That's important because sales prospects are bleak for a lot of startups, especially those that cater to sectors hard hit by the virus.
"One of the things that really has been striking for us is some of this data around the fact that businesses are no longer selling," Durham said. "Sales teams are sending about 50 percent more emails to prospects than they were pre-COVID but the responses just keep dropping."
The drop in raw sales numbers is a scary situation for startups that have been advised by their investors to cut costs and extend their runways. Without much guidance on how exactly to make that happen, startup founders are walking something of a tightrope â if revenue drops off, they might have to resort to executive salary cuts or layoffs just to stay upright.
Keeping customers happy is as important as keeping employees happy, Brex chief customer officer Roli Saxena said, and requires founders to employ similar tactics to sales, such transparent communication. Overall, startups need to have a standardized plan in place to make it through the rough waters ahead, and out the other side, Saxena said.
Password management and online checkout have always been pain points for online shoppers. Fast, a one-click login and checkout startup, is looking to solve that problem. And it just raised a $20 million Series A led by the $36 billion fintech giant Stripe.Â
"The issue that we're actually solving is that there's basically a missing layer of the internet, which is the identity layer," Domm Holland, co-founder and CEO of Fast, told Business Insider.Â
Fast integrates with online merchants to offer customers the ability to log in and checkout with one click.
The first time a consumer sees the Fast checkout button, they can sign up for free. After that, they can check out with one click everywhere they see the Fast button. So to grow its user base, Fast will look to integrate with as many online merchants as possible, from e-commerce retailers to online media companies.
While Fast's one-click password product is already live, with this latest fundraise, it will now roll out one-click payments and checkout features.
"Much of our growth over the next 12 months is basically putting the button on as many websites as possible," said Holland.
Part of that growth will come through its partnership with Stripe, as starting next month, all of Stripe's merchants will be able to integrate Fast into their checkouts. Long-term, the startup will look to build more online shopping products for consumers, like order tracking and returns management across different online stores, Holland said.
To be sure, Fast isn't the only one looking to solve this problem. PayPal, for one, offers a one-click checkout product, and credit card issuers like Visa and Mastercard have partnered up on a one-click checkout, too.Â
But Holland says that a key differentiator for Fast is its platform-agnostic approach. Apple Pay, which also integrates into merchant check-out windows, is Fast's biggest competitor, Holland said. But its checkout product can only be used by iPhone users and when shopping online, only on Apple's Safari browser.
Fast's Series A, which closed at the end of March, comes at a time where venture investors are shying away from early-stage companies, focusing much of their capital on existing investments.
But founders could take this opportunity to meet with as many people as possible, albeit virtually, realizing that relationships may take longer to build, Holland said.
For founders looking to raise, keeping potential investors in the loop is also key.
"You want to be lines, not dots, and you want to show traction," said Holland. "The first thing I always say to anyone who's going to be fundraising is start putting out investor updates and send them to everyone who you would want to have in the round."
And while it's easy to try and answer all possible questions in a pitch deck, Holland instead advises to keep it light on text.
"You should be structuring a pitch deck in a way that you actually know what question they're going to ask you because it's missing a bit of information that you expect that they will want," Holland said.
Not only will this keep investors engaged, it will also demonstrate the founders' ability to articulate the pitch and answer questions live, Holland added.
Stripe's funding comes just months after Fast's November seed round, which was led by Index Ventures with participation from Global Founders Capital and Kleiner Perkins.
Here's the 15-slide pitch deck it used to raise its Series A.
I didn't used to think I was much of a wheel person. But in the six years I've been reviewing cars for Business Insider, I've come to appreciate what various automakers are offering consumers.
The choice is impressive. You can get a range of large and compelling designs standard, but you can also drop some extra cash on fancier wheels.
These days, my eye almost naturally looks to a vehicle's wheels when I first check it out. It's like studying a person's shoes, which as we all know, totally pull an outfit together.
Here's a run down of some of my favorites wheels â and the cars that wore them:
Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Garrett Goldberg was recorded in April 2020....
___
It's not unusual for Apple to release more than one version of its latest iPhone. But this year's rumored iPhone 12 is expected to come in a whopping four different variants, compared to previous years when Apple would launch two or three versions of its newest smartphone.
Two of those models are expected to be successors to the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max. If the reports and rumors so far are to be believed, Apple's next "Pro" iPhone will have a triple-lens camera like last year's models, a Lidar scanner like the new iPad Pro, and a refreshed design among other changes.Â
All of Apple's new iPhones, including the non-Pro models, are expected to come with support for 5G networks and OLED screens instead of LCD displays.
OLED screens are typically only found on Apple's more expensive iPhones and generally offer deeper blacks and better contrast.
Apple's next-generation mobile processor, expected to be called the A14 Bionic, will also likely be present across the lineup. Apple is expected to debut its new smartphones in the fall, although there's a chance that some models could debut later than usual because of the coronavirus' economic fallout.
Here's a look at what we know about the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max so far based on the latest rumors and reports.Â
Two German designers, Claudio Rimmele and Martin Binder, have invented a design for a playground that is safe for children during the coronavirus pandemic.Â
They combined their last names to create what they call Rimbin, a playground where children can maintain social distancing while still playing with each other. The name is also a combination of the words rim, meaning edge, and bin, meaning container, a reference to the isolated pieces of the playground. They combined their separate experience in design and psychology to figure out this method for children to be able to play and keep social connections.Â
"This virus really likes people being indoors in an enclosed space for prolonged periods of close face-to-face contact," William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, told Business Insider. So far, studies have found transmission outdoors to be rare, though not impossible.Â
Rimbin is outdoors, and keeps children at a safe distance apart, making it a potential option for children stuck at home. Here's what it looks like.
We’re big fans of unfair advantage derived out of deep domain knowledge. Read how Andrew played his. Sramana Mitra: Let’s go to the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born,...
___
The world's biggest pharmaceutical companies blocked a 2017 EU proposal that could allow vaccines against viruses like the novel coronavirus to be developed before an outbreak begins, The Guardian reported.
Representatives of the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, who sat on a body dedicated to improving the bloc's pharmaceutical research put forward the proposal that could help fast-track vaccines, but the major drugmakers on the body rejected it.
The Guardian reported that the commission's argument had been that the research could "facilitate the development and regulatory approval of vaccines against priority pathogens, to the extent possible before an actual outbreak occurs."
The governing board of the body, the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), includes representatives of a group that includes GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson as members.
The proposal would have involved improving computer simulations and testing analysis that would give more information and allow more confidence in approving vaccines, according to The Guardian.
But a new report from Brussels-based research and campaign group the Corporate Observatory Europe, which contains the revelation about the 2017 proposal, claims the IMI has been overly focused on the market and has not adequately addressed diseases like coronaviruses as a result.Â
The IMI receives funding from the EU as well as contributions from private bodies, giving it a budget of â¬5 billion ($54.4 billion).
The Guardian reported that the IMI also decided to not help funding projects that wanted to fight coronaviruses like MERS and SARS.
An IMI spokeswoman told The Guardian that vaccines and such diseases are a priority for the group, and pointed to a â¬20 million bioprepardness project launched after the 2015 pandemic, as well as new funding for vaccines released in January.
She said that the CEO report falsely "seems to suggest the IMI has failed in its mission to protect the European citizen by letting pass an opportunity to prepare society for the current Covid pandemic."
"This is misleading in two ways: the research proposed by the EC in the biopreparedness topic was small in scope, and focused on revisiting animal models and developing in silico models to better define/anticipate the type and level of immune response elicited in animals and humans in order to increase regulators' confidence in the evidence base for alternative licensing procedures," she said.
She said the IMI has helped prepare for this pandemic through previous funding for infectious diseases.
She also added that the 2017 proposal was competing with other research at the time, like research into tuberculosis and auto-immune diseases.
But the CEO report questioned the group's focus on treatments for diseases like cancer and diabetes, given the huge focus already being given to those treatments by governments and pharmaceutical countries around the world.
Companies around the world are rushing to try and create an effective vaccine for the coronavirus, but there is no guarantee of success. Even the fastest vaccine rolllout in history would still mean nothing would be approved for months.
Doctors in London hospitals are using mixed-reality headsets from Microsoft to reduce the amount of staff coming into contact with COVID-19 patients. The headsets look like a visor that encircles the head, and are equipped with sensors and a camera around the headband. Inside the visor is a little screen where holographic images are projected for the wearer to see.
Dr. James Kinross, a surgeon and lecturer who has been using the HoloLens for three years, told Business Insider what it's like to work with the headset as a doctor.
"One of the things that you can do is that you can take, for example, a scan or an image taken from an x-ray. You can reconstruct it into three dimensions and you can project that as a holograph into the operating field," he said. Doctors can move and manipulate images in the lens using their hands by pinching the images.
The technology has been used in the past to help doctors when reconstructing limbs after surgery by identifying blood vessels, and for treating patients with pelvic cancer. At the onset of the coronavirus, however, doctors saw a new way the technology could be useful.
"We started using the HoloLens during COVID because healthcare workers were coming to harm because they weren't adequately protected," Kinross said. The UK has struggled to provide staff in its National Health Service (NHS) with adequate amounts of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to protect them during the pandemic.
HoloLens comes with a piece of software called Remote Assist that works via Microsoft Teams to allow doctors to reduce the number of staff going out onto wards by essentially carrying a holographic image of their colleagues with them when they go on their rounds, rather than multiple doctors having to be on the same ward at once.
"Instead of you seeing my face, you would see my first-person view, and you would pop up as a holographic image and I would see you projected into the clinical space. So I could have a heads-up conversation with you whilst I'm performing a surgical task," Kinross said.
"We thought that was quite useful because what we were able to do quite quickly is instead of sending six or seven doctors in a team onto a COVID positive ward, we could send one lucky volunteer, and the remaining doctors could be kept safe," he added.
Junior doctors are kept in a COVID-isolated room and are able to see what a consultant is doing, communicate with them, and pull up relevant images and scans to project into their helmet. This method is also being used to teach medical students who are no longer allowed on the wards.
Kinross and his colleagues ran a four-week test and found that they were reducing the number of doctors coming into COVID contact by about 80%.
"There is significant momentum with HoloLens across many NHS trusts, including University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, University College London Hospitals, The Leeds Teaching Hospital, and Alder Hey Children's NHS Trust," a Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider. "Together with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, these trusts are working collectively to advance the use of HoloLens to protect medical professionals in their fight against Covid-19."
The tech has also come in handy because it enables hands-free viewing of information while wearing PPE.
"Once you're scrubbed up and you're sterile, you can't go and touch a computer to find out any further information that you need or you may want," Kinross pointed out. With the HoloLens however, that information can be pulled up and manipulated in virtual space.
The HoloLens needed some physical adaptations to fit with PPE face shields. "We had to do a bit of 'Blue Peter' stuff where we were sort of cutting holes and face shields. You have this super expensive holographic computer, you know, and you've got sticky tape and scissors," said Kinross.
Another side-effect of reducing the number of doctors on the ward was also a reduced usage of PPE overall. "We were saving around 700 articles of PPE clothing per week per ward," Kinross said.
As the pandemic abates, Kinross also thinks new communication technologies will be vital to doctors as they return to normal practice. "What you're going to see in healthcare is that we are going to have distributed networks of care," he said, pointing out that his own cancer surgery has had to move out of his usual hospital.
"I've got to be able to communicate. And if my colleagues are not with me in the building, I need to be able to share information quite quickly," he said.
The coronavirus has brought with it strange and unnerving stories about hospital robots into the press, but Kinross says patient response to the headsets has been largely positive. "They generally are interested in it and like it, and they don't really mind doctors looking after them wearing a silly headset," he said.
Kinross, who specialises in robotic surgery, believes robots have an important role to play in the future of medicine, but the advantage of the HoloLens is it doesn't replace human interaction.
"With these technologies you can still hold someone's hand and you could still look them in the eye and when you're really sick â sometimes you just want someone to hold your hand," he said.
Copyright © 2020 iStart Valley.
