SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Silk Road Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq: SILK), a company focused on reducing the risk of stroke and its devastating impact, today announced the appointment of William Hill as General Counsel. The veteran corporate executive joins the company to oversee all risk management and legal matters, reporting directly to President and Chief Executive Officer, Erica Rogers.

“As we continue to usher in a new era of transcarotid therapies, we look forward to benefitting from Bill’s knowledge on a broad range of legal matters in healthcare and the regulated environment in which we operate,” said Erica Rogers.

Prior to joining Silk Road Medical, Mr. Hill served as General Counsel for Natus Medical Incorporated for over 14 years. He was responsible for managing a broad range of global legal issues, including corporate-wide liability mitigation and international legal compliance strategies, mergers and acquisitions, general commercial law and litigation, and employment law.

​Read More: ​https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/04/15/2211238/0/en/Silk-Road-Medical-Appoints-William-Hill-as-General-Counsel.html

SAN FRANCISCO -- April 14, 2021 -- Today Omada Health announced the launch of Physician-Guided Care for diabetes and hypertension, creating the first virtual cardiometabolic clinic. Omada is adding virtual consultations with physicians for members who need more help controlling their conditions. Members will now have access to behavior change support, diabetes/hypertension management and education, devices and monitoring, and medical management of diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia all in one place. The multidisciplinary, virtual clinic care team will include physicians, health coaches, and diabetes educators, working together to improve members’ health. 
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For members, this level of care means their data and their care experiences are integrated and coordinated. Each care team member knows their health history, their latest CGM and other device readings, and has access to their lab data. The Member can access that same information, right on their smartphone. This data also flows back to the member’s primary care physician, when they have one. This all means the member doesn’t have to do the work of managing the bureaucracy of healthcare, and can instead focus on improving their health. 

“At Omada, we’re defining a new era of health – an era that is built on a belief that everyone with a chronic condition can improve their health,” said Carolyn Jasik, MD, Omada Health’s Chief Medical Officer. “Omada’s new, virtual-first care platform offers a way to supplement meaningful in-person care and create a surround sound experience for members battling complex conditions.” 

Read More: ​https://www.omadahealth.com/en/omada-resources/omada-health-launches-physician-guided-care-program-the-first-virtual-cardiometabolic-clinic

Omada Health, one of the U.S.’s original virtual healthcare providers, today announced the creation of the Omada Insights Lab.

“The Insights Lab is an approach to product development that leverages multidisciplinary teams to rapidly look at what does and does not work in a digital care setting and then scale those tools within the company,” Sean Duffy, co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.

Omada offers care management for diabetes, musculoskeletal issues, preventative health, hypertension and behavioral health. Its main differentiator from other virtual healthcare providers is the amount of handholding it offers to its patients, which in turn has shown to deliver better health outcomes. Through the Insights Lab, it plans to share insights to help improve care outcomes across the industry.

“A shared sense of commitment with an Omada care professional increases the likelihood of a better outcome by 250%,” 

​Read More: ​https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/08/omada-health-launches-the-omada-insights-lab-to-help-improve-healthcare-outcomes-across-the-board/

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 25, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Silk Road Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq: SILK), a company focused on reducing the risk of stroke and its devastating impact, today announced positive results from a comparative-effectiveness study have been published in JAMA Network Open.

The study found the availability of TCAR at a hospital was associated with a significant decrease in the likelihood of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE), a composite of in-hospital stroke, myocardial infarction, or death at 30 days after carotid revascularization, whether TCAR or carotid endarterectomy (CEA).

“Our results demonstrate that VQI centers who offer TCAR achieve lower rates of adverse events after carotid surgery when compared to centers who do not offer the new procedure,” said Jesse Columbo, MD MS, a vascular surgeon at Dartmouth and lead author of the study. “We believe this indicates that centers that offer TCAR are able to better align patients with the best procedure for their individual clinical and anatomic characteristics.”

Read More: ​https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/02/25/2182933/0/en/Study-Published-in-JAMA-Finds-Hospital-Availability-of-TCAR-Associated-with-an-Improvement-in-Overall-Outcomes-for-Carotid-Revascularization.html

​Centers adding transcarotid artery revascularization (TCAR) to their treatment options had improved perioperative outcomes for patients with carotid artery stenosis, according to the Vascular Quality Initiative (VQI) registry.

Major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE) rates -- counting in-hospital stroke, MI, and death at 30 days -- were similar between patients undergoing TCAR and those getting surgical carotid endarterectomy (CEA; 2.3% vs 2.4%, P=0.91), reported a group led by Jesse Columbo, MD, MS, of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

​Despite such similar results, VQI centers had 10% less MACE in their overall carotid revascularization programs in the year after adopting TCAR than if they had stuck with the surgical option alone (OR 0.90, 95% CI 0.81-0.99), according to a difference-in-difference analysis by Columbo's group, published online in JAMA Open Network.

"This finding suggests that this new technology may have allowed proceduralists to select patients for whom TCAR may be superior to CEA, while still performing CEA on patients for whom that procedure was appropriate," study authors said.

"Overall, while observational in nature, these data imply that both TCAR and CEA may be reasonable treatment choices for patients undergoing carotid revascularization and providers may be able to choose the modality they feel best aligns with the patient's clinical presentation and anatomy," they concluded.

Read More: ​https://www.medpagetoday.com/cardiology/pci/91312

New technology to combat strokes is being used right here in the Central Valley. One local doctor performed a new type of carotid artery procedure to help his patient reduce the risk of surgical complications.

It’s been more than six months since David Wolrath went under to remove plaque from one of his carotid arteries.

Vascular and Endovascular Surgeon, Dr. Kamell Eckroth-Bernard explains, carotid arteries are major blood vessels that allow blood flow to the brain. He said, “You have two one on each side for each hemisphere of your brain. As it comes up here to the mid portion of your neck, about we call it a biforcation, it’s basically a split. That’s where the carotid arteries splits into the external carotid artery which goes to your face.”
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According to Silk Road Medical, the Bay Area engineers of TCAR, the minimally-invasive procedure is designed to give the surgeon more options when treating carotid artery disease.

“The system that they have set up for TCAR is a flow reversal system which is really an open surgical principle and by causing flow reversal in the brain on that side for a short period of time it’s usually very well tolerated by patients. And this allows us to balloon very aggressively in the areas that are narrow and also place our stent all while allowing flow reversal to happen and protecting the brain at the same time,” commented Dr. Bernard.

Read More: htts://www.yourcentralvalley.com/med-watch-today/medwatch-today-learn-about-tcar-procedure-helping-to-prevent-strokes/

SOMERSET, N.J. - A headboard is just the latest do-it-yourself project for Tracey Amadi. Right now, she's happy to stay at home, since she's higher risk for COVID-19 complications. The mother of three lost her husband more than a decade ago, and immediately after, she learned she had life-threatening kidney disease.

"I knew that my kidneys were going bad, but I didn't know it got to that point," Amadi expressed.
Amadi needed dialysis to do the work her kidneys could not.

"I never saw a machine," she said. "I never knew what to expect, so as they were wheeling me into the room to do my first treatment, I just cried like a baby."

In 2013, Amadi's oldest son donated a kidney as part of a transplant chain, and Amadi received a new kidney, but two years ago, that organ began to fail. This time, Amadi had a new option. She is the first in the United States to use a new portable home-dialysis system called the Tablo. Patients are trained to use the machine, hooking themselves up through a connection in an arm vein called a fistula.

"The patient will then insert two needles into that fistula to get the blood to the machine so that it can remove excess water and clean the blood," explained Dr. Sunit Kabaria, a nephrologist at RWJBarnabas Health's Kidney and Hypertension Center in Somerset, New Jersey.

For Amadi, it eliminates several trips a week to the dialysis center. She called the Tablo her lifeline.
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Read More: ​https://www.wfmz.com/health/health-beat/health-beat-tablo-home-kidney-dialysis/article_52ec0b2a-55f3-11eb-b3f0-2fb5b5ae075e.html

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Silk Road Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq: SILK), a company focused on reducing the risk of stroke and its devastating impact, today announced the company will be participating in the upcoming 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

Silk Road Medical’s management is scheduled to present on Tuesday, January 12, 2021 at 11:40 a.m. Eastern Time. Interested parties may access a live and archived webcast of the presentation on the “Investors” section of the company’s website at: https://investors.silkroadmed.com/

Read More: ​​https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/12/17/2147400/0/en/Silk-Road-Medical-to-Present-at-the-39th-Annual-J-P-Morgan-Healthcare-Conference.html

Digital health company Omada Health presented encouraging research results on Tuesday suggesting its diabetes prevention platform — which virtually connects prediabetic patients with health coaches and clinicians — could help curb the symptoms of the disease as well as an equivalent program delivered in person.

The research is in some ways the biggest test yet of a digitally rendered diabetes treatment program ever performed. The study — a randomized controlled trial of nearly 600 people with prediabetes — is larger, longer, and more rigorous than previous studies of similar programs. Omada shared its findings in a presentation during ObesityWeek, a virtual medical conference organized by the Obesity Society; they have yet to be published in a scientific journal.

​Read More: ​https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/03/omada-health-prediabetes-predict-study/

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Silk Road Medical, Inc. (Nasdaq: SILK), a company focused on reducing the risk of stroke and its devastating impact, today announced the appointment of Kevin Ballinger to the company’s Board of Directors. Simultaneously, the company also announced the resignation of current board member, Ruoxi Chen. Both of these changes are effective immediately.

Ballinger, the recently appointed Chief Executive Officer of Aldevron, brings decades of experience in the medical device industry. Prior to joining Aldevron, he spent 25 years at Boston Scientific, a company focused on a variety of interventional medical specialties. During his last nine years at Boston Scientific, he served as Executive Vice President and Global President of the Interventional Cardiology division. Under his leadership, Ballinger grew the division to a $3 billion global business. Ballinger earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University, and his MBA from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

​Read More: ​https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/12/03/2139512/0/en/Silk-Road-Medical-Announces-Changes-to-Board-of-Directors.html