TOOTRiS
Child Care On-Demand

Starting Oct. 28, National First Responders Day, and in commemoration of the more than 4.6 million first responders nationwide, TOOTRiS Child Care On-Demand is providing free access to millions of first responder parents. 

More than 25% of American families say finding Child Care is a nightmare, and for first responders (fire fighters, police, EMTs, nurses) who work long and varying hours, the challenge is even greater.

To ease the burden and provide help, TOOTRiS, the nation's largest network of Child Care providers, is launching its First Responder Honor Gift program. With the gift, first responders who sign up will get free access to TOOTRiS' Premium Child Care platform free of charge for a full year. This allows first responders to access over 180,000 licensed Child Care providers nationwide, 24x7, enabling them to search, vet, and enroll their children in real-time quality Child Care programs for full-time, drop-ins, emergencies, before and after school, during standard and non-standard hours, no matter where they live and work.

"Children and their families are at the core of what we do at TOOTRiS just as first responders are at the core of our communities," said Alessandra Lezama, TOOTRiS CEO and select member of the ReadyNation CEO Task Force on Early Childhood. "TOOTRiS is humbled to be able to give back to first responders in a way that makes life better for their entire family."

First Responders who'd like to receive the First Responder Honor Gift should visit Honor Gift for more information and eligibility. 

About TOOTRiS

TOOTRiS was founded in 2019 to transform Child Care so that every person, in every city, in every state has access to affordable Child Care options. TOOTRiS is the only technology platform that integrates the entire Child Care ecosystem (children, parents, providers, employers, and service organizations). This makes finding Child Care more convenient, affordable, and on-demand. 

Visit TOOTRiS.com for more information.

Media Contact 
Jeff McAdam
[email protected]
(720) 988-0984

HealthJoy
HealthJoy is a healthcare navigation platform that is simplifying the healthcare and benefits experience for every member.

HealthJoy, a healthcare navigation platform that drives benefits satisfaction, improves care outcomes, improves employee satisfaction and reduces HR burden, today announced it has raised $60M in Series D funding. Valspring Capital led the round with participation from new investors Endeavour Vision and CIBC Innovation Banking. Existing investors US Venture Partners, GoHealth co-founders Brandon Cruz and Clint Jones, Health Velocity Capital, Nueterra Capital and Epic also participated in this round. 

This new investment brings the total funding raised by HealthJoy to $108M, and will be used to accelerate growth while maintaining the best user experience in healthcare navigation. 

"This is a special moment in our journey to create an intuitive, connected experience that takes the confusion and complexity out of healthcare while reducing the ever-growing administrative burden faced by HR leaders," said Justin Holland, CEO and co-founder, HealthJoy. "As we enter 2023, employers will continue to be challenged to add new point solutions. Due to the hard work and dedication of our global team, we are in the strongest position we have ever been to support employers in this new era."

As the workforce moves from 'The Great Resignation' to 'The Great Realization' and employees reevaluate how to live happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives, the battle for talent is intensifying. Employers find themselves under immense pressure to deliver benefits that provide increased value, attract talent and satisfy existing employees while balancing rising costs and decreased resources. 

HealthJoy is powering HR leaders through this new era by enabling them to minimize healthcare costs, maximize benefits engagement, reduce administrative burden and improve employee well-being. The company provides in-depth healthcare benefits navigation to over 1000 U.S. employers, supporting the management and delivery of world-class healthcare benefits to nearly half a million employees and dependents. 

Aneesha Mehta, co-founder of Valspring Capital and former Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, said, "We're thrilled to invest in HealthJoy and accelerate their impressive platform growth. As users of healthcare technology ourselves, we genuinely identified with a core issue that HealthJoy fights: a serious lack of benefits awareness that leads to under-utilization by employees. Offering a solution that simplifies benefits is a key differentiator in the talent war the market currently finds itself in. We look forward to amplifying HealthJoy's solutions as we've seen the value they bring firsthand."  

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ABOUT VALSPRING CAPITAL

Established in 2022, Valspring is a Boston-based growth equity firm founded by the former healthcare investment team of Bain Capital Ventures. With deep sector expertise and a proven track record, we invest in growth-stage companies in the healthcare industry, focusing on the information technology, technology-enabled services and services sectors. Valspring is purpose-built to support scaling the best teams and solutions to achieve outsized impact and accelerate commercial adoption.

ABOUT ENDEAVOUR VISION

Endeavour Vision is a venture capital and growth equity firm founded in 2000, which invests in growth-stage digital health, medical device, and diagnostics companies in the U.S. and Europe. Its investments are focused on transformative healthcare technologies that bring superior clinical benefits for patients and significant efficiencies to healthcare systems. The firm partners with companies in the early stages of commercializing game-changing technologies and actively supports them beyond capital with strategic and operational expertise. To learn more, visit www.endeavourvision.com. 

ABOUT HEALTHJOY

HealthJoy is a healthcare navigation platform that is simplifying the healthcare and benefits experience for every member. HealthJoy provides a connected healthcare experience that takes the confusion and complexity out of healthcare by connecting members with the right benefits at the right moment in their care journey. Their mobile-first platform and human concierge team bring benefits together to surface the best providers, virtual care, and savings. To learn more, visit healthjoy.com. 

Immuware
Immuware

Immuware, a Chicago-based software company that provides innovative immunization and illness tracking systems, is excited to announce the launch of a new referral program for clients. The recently developed program will reward clients for referrals by providing referring organizations with a credit of $2,500 toward their next invoice for any referrals that sign a contract of three years or more.

The new referral program is intended to thank Immuware's existing clients for recommending the company's software products to other users. And because the program is ongoing, organizations can continue to refer Immuware as many times as they'd like, receiving a $2,500 credit each time a client signs on for a three-plus-year contract term.

Immuware's quick-to-deploy software solutions are essential for organizations that require tracking illness and injuries among employees. Through key system features like real-time dashboards, automated end-to-end compliance workflows, HIPAA-secure cloud hosting, and a permission-based online employee portal, Immuware makes it easy to maintain accurate data on employee immunization, illness, and injury status, regardless of the size or scope of a workforce.

Clients enjoy flexible and scalable features for employee and occupational health monitoring, with comprehensive solutions that raise the bar for what organizations can expect out of their health tracking software. And through the referral program, Immuware hopes to help even more clients save time and money and reduce the errors that can come with manual reporting.

Immuware clients have been shown to reach compliance at least 40% faster than non-users, and have a dedicated partner in tracking all of the data that matters to the health of their workforce and facilities. This means that not only are organizations able to easily meet mandatory regulatory requirements, but they are also able to better protect the employees who are crucial to their day to day operations.

Current Immuware clients are encouraged to participate in the new referral program and take advantage of big savings on one or more future invoices. As previously mentioned, clients will be credited $2,500 for every organization they refer that signs on for a three or more year contract with Immuware, and can gain this credit every time they make an eligible referral.

To learn more, please visit the Immuware homepage for additional information on Immuware software features and benefits, or contact Immuware directly today.  

About Immuware

Immuware is a software company and consulting firm that provides businesses in the healthcare, energy, education, and government sectors with secure and easy-to-use health tracking solutions. Immuware applications include innovative vaccination management and illness tracking software, plus streamlined compliance status dashboards that increase accountability and take the guesswork out of identifying compliance gaps.

Visit www.immuware.com for more information.

Contact:
Immuware
(312) 505-1443
[email protected]

Gb Sciences

Dr. Andrea Small-Howard, President and Chief Science Officer of Gb Sciences (GBLX-OTC), a leading plant-inspired, biopharmaceutical research and drug development company, is demonstrating their AI-enabled drug discovery engines' ability to identify novel plant-inspired pharmaceuticals today at the 10th Annual Drug Discovery Strategic Summit in San Francisco, California. In her session entitled "The Use of an AI-enabled Drug Discovery Engine to Identify Plant-Inspired Pharmaceuticals," Dr. Small-Howard will introduce PhAROS™, Gb Sciences' proprietary AI-enabled drug discovery platform. Dr. Small-Howard will also present case studies establishing how the company has utilized PhAROS™ to combine information from plant-based medical systems with modern in silico drug discovery tools that identify novel plant-inspired therapies for treating critical medical needs. 

"Gb Sciences is combining knowledge from plant-based traditional medical systems with modern in silico drug discovery tools. We are leveraging our AI-enabled platform with its unique database of known traditional medical plant species to uncover novel minimum essential mixtures of ingredients with therapeutic benefits and reduced side effect profiles. Our AI-enabled drug discovery platform also reduces the time and money needed to get results," said Dr. Andrea Small-Howard. "With current drug discovery efforts failing to deliver on some critical medical needs, such as non-opioid treatments for chronic pain or novel options for patients suffering with anxiety and depression, we are establishing the value in exploring plants associated with traditional medicines to discover new drug molecules and simplified mixtures."

Dr. Andrea Small-Howard of Gb Sciences was recently featured on MarketScale's "IDC with Kevin Stevenson" podcast in an episode entitled "Bringing Medicines to Market Faster Through Analytics and Machine Learning" where she discussed the need for digital transformation in the biopharma industry and the fact that Gb Sciences is ahead of the majority of the industry through the development and use of their PhAROS™ platform for drug discovery. 

To learn more about Gb Sciences, visit www.gbsciences.com.

About Gb Sciences and GbS Global Biopharma

Gb Sciences, Inc. is a plant-inspired, biopharmaceutical research and development company creating patented, disease-targeted formulations of cannabis- and other plant-inspired therapeutic mixtures for the prescription drug market through its Canadian subsidiary, GbS Global Biopharma, Inc. The 'plant-inspired' active ingredients in its therapeutic mixtures are synthetic homologues identical to the original plant compounds but produced under current Good Manufacturing Practices. Gb Sciences' intellectual property portfolio contains six issued U.S. and three issued foreign patents, as well as 17 U.S. and 51 foreign patent-pending applications. In its drug development pipeline, Gb Sciences has five preclinical phase product development programs. Gb Sciences' lead program for Parkinson's disease is being prepared for a first-in-human clinical trial. Gb Sciences' formulations for chronic pain, anxiety, and depression are currently in preclinical animal studies with researchers at the National Research Council of Canada. The company also received positive preclinical proof-of-concept data supporting its complex mixtures for the treatment of Cytokine Release Syndrome, and its lead candidates will be optimized based on late-stage preclinical studies at Michigan State University. Gb Sciences' productive research and development network includes distinguished universities, hospitals, and Contract Research Organizations. To learn more, visit www.gbsciences.com.

 This contract follows Senzo's recent announcements about the receipt of ISO 13485:2016 certification, and completing a $2 million Pre-Series A financing led by BioAdvance, to apply the ALF technology to other targets such as Flu A/B, Tuberculosis, HIV, C. diff, Sexual Health, and Hepatitis C.

Senzo's core innovation is its Amplified Lateral Flow (ALF) technology which significantly increases the sensitivity of traditional-format lateral flow tests while maintaining specificity. The end result is a fast, low-cost, easy-to-use lateral flow test with the same accuracy as a PCR test, the industry's gold standard test. The ability to incorporate amplification into a lateral flow test has long been a goal for diagnostics test makers but one which has proven difficult to achieve due to the tendency for amplified tests to return false positives. Senzo recently announced results from a blinded, third-party R&D study demonstrating that its Amplified Lateral Flow (ALF) COVID-19 antigen test was 100% accurate in concordance with PCR testing, even in cases with very low viral levels, which could allow for substantially better and earlier detection of virus compared to current lateral flow tests.

"The faster we can accurately diagnose, the sooner we can take action, begin treatment, and the better the patient outcome. Creating a low-cost, user-friendly diagnostic test which delivers PCR accuracy at the point of care, without the need to send a sample to a laboratory, will improve healthcare— it's that simple. BARDA's support of our ALF technology will be instrumental in helping us advance our ultimate goal of bringing ALF tests to market," said Jeremy Stackawitz, CEO of Senzo.

This project has been supported in whole or in part with federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services; Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), under contract number 75A50122C00041.

About Senzo:

Senzo is an in vitro diagnostics company developing innovative, accurate, and accessible testing products. Senzo was founded with the vision of utilizing novel technologies focussed on enhanced sensitivity, to create mobile, point-of-care, self-testing products and devices with the ability to accurately, quickly, and cost-effectively conduct testing where healthcare professionals and patients need it most. Senzo is creating game-changing products to bring testing to the patient, eliminating the need for the current slow, expensive central-lab testing paradigms. With insights generated at the point of care, patients can make better decisions faster, and healthcare professionals can identify life-threatening diseases at an earlier stage, improving treatment outcomes and saving lives. www.senzo.com.