Wednesday roundup: athenahealth acquisition closes, Tyto Care receives lung sound CE Mark, NHS’ elective care recovery plan for 6 million, NSW health secretary to Telstra Health

February 16, 2022 | by

Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman completed their $17 billion acquisition of athenahealth on Tuesday. The purchase was from Veritas Capital and Evergreen Coast Capital, which remain minority shareholders along with an affiliate of GIC and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. athenahealth claims over 140,000 ambulatory care providers in the US, which is not much growth considering they had 88,000 in 2017 and reportedly grew to 160,000. Release 

Telehealth diagnostic monitor Tyto Care received CE Mark approval for the Tyto Lung Sounds Analyzer. It is a standalone Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) that alerts to the potential presence of an abnormal breath sound in respiratory recordings that may be wheezing in adults and children. The analysis is based on their database of clinical exam recordings. Release

Whither the 6 million waiting? The NHS intends to reduce the backlog of elective care caused by the pandemic through the Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care. Highlights are the rollout of a new online platform called My Planned Care, as well as plans for 100 community diagnostic centres, new surgical hubs, and increased capacity to offer tests, checks, and treatments–over three years. Healthcare IT News

And in Australia, the revolving door spins. Elizabeth Koff, secretary of NSW Health, will be moving to Telstra Health as managing director effective 1 July. She succeeds Mary Foley, who will continue to be a special adviser and a non-executive director of the board. Ms. Koff has spent three decades in the state health department which manages 228 hospitals and around 127,000 staff. New South Wales was subject to severe lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, which continue to a lesser degree.  Healthcare IT News ANZ

A finger-prick, 10 minute CBC test which actually works from Sight Diagnostics (Israel)

July 14, 2018 | by

The Theranos Effect may have tainted innovation investments (versus easy puzzle-piece fits), but complete blood count (CBC) via small blood samples is hardly a dead idea. It’s very much alive with the scientists who founded Sight Diagnostics, an Israeli startup with a fit-on-a-desktop lab, Olo, which can run multiple CBC counts. Blood can be taken from a traditional or finger-stick draw, with the usual caveats on capillary blood. The technology works via machine vision to take images of the blood sample to identify and count the different types of cells with AI to do the analysis. The goal is to be able to install a lab in a doctor’s office and run the test in 10 minutes, not five days.

Sight was founded by Daniel Levner, an artificial intelligence expert who was a scientist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (not a Stanford undergrad dropout), and Yossi Pollak, previously at Mobileye, an automotive computer vision developer that Intel bought for $15.3 billion last year–the largest Israeli tech exit ever. Oh, and they have an advisory board of Real Scientists.

Adding to Sight’s credibility is their CE Mark gained for Olo and completion of a 287-person clinical trial at Israel’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, both announced this week. Webwire

The company is up to a Series B and has raised over $25 million since 2010 (Crunchbase)–a drop compared to Theranos, a subject where the founders are a little bit touchy, based on this Editor’s read of the Forbes article. While Olo is investigational in the US, their malaria test Parasight – which detects malaria using digital fluorescent microscopy and computer vision algorithms–has already sold over 600,000 units in 24 countries across Europe, Africa, and Asia–another major difference from Theranos. A significant investor is Eric Schmidt, formerly of Google, and head of Innovation Endeavors (SF Business Journal, slightly paywalled).

Video (01:56)

https://youtu.be/G1iSO1KaJ-Y