Veris Health, a subsidiary of PAVmed, has been awarded a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The aim of the two-year grant is to fund research and upgrade and verify the Veris cancer care platform designed for medically underserved patients with cancer.

PAVmed is a medical technology company in the medical device, diagnostics and digital health space. Veris Health's main product is the Veris cancer care platform. 

The research project, "Bridging the Gap: Enhancing Cancer Care for Underserved Populations with the Veris Health Cancer Care Platform," will center on patients with language barriers and narrow access to technology and socioeconomic inequality.

"We are honored to receive this prestigious NIH grant, which recognizes the potential of our Veris Cancer Care Platform to enhance cancer care," Dr. James D. Mitchell, PAVmed's vice president of digital health and Veris's chief medical officer, said in a statement. 

"This grant will accelerate our efforts to expand the reach and impact of our technology, while strengthening our relationships with academic cancer centers and within the oncology community. We look forward to bringing the benefits of this technology to broader and more diverse patient populations, to improve patient outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and increase patient access to enhanced cancer care."

Dr. Lishan Aklog, PAVmed's chairman and chief executive officer, said the NIH grant provides Veris with important non-dilutive funding and comes at a pivotal time for Veris as it pursues financing to advance its commercial strategy, which includes the regulatory clearance and launch of its implantable physiological monitor.

"This aligns with PAVmed's long-term strategy, which seeks to assure that its subsidiaries, such as Veris, are independently financeable but able to leverage PAVmed's shared infrastructure," Aklog said in a statement.

THE LARGER TREND

In September, PAVmed announced that, as part of an effort to regain compliance with Nasdaq's listing requirements, Lucid Diagnostics would be deconsolidated from PAVmed's financial statements; therefore, PAVmed will no longer report consolidated financials reflecting Lucid's operating losses.

PAVmed's holdings of Lucid common stock remained unchanged and the value of the holdings will be reported going forward as an asset on its balance sheet.

In June, PAVmed, announced that its subsidiary, Veris, had launched a pilot program with the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, and enrolled the first patients on the Veris Cancer care platform.