Short takes: 2022’s big kickoff with Babylon-Higi, Vera-Castlight buys; will funding slow down in ’22, eye-tracking telehealth for MS, vital signs tracking lightbulbs at CES 2022, and three catchups!

January 7, 2022 | by

Babylon Health closed out 2021 by acquiring health kiosk Higi for an undisclosed amount. Babylon had earlier invested in Higi’s Series B [TTA 30 May 20] and was reported in October to be exercising its $30 million option to buy Higi after closing their SPAC. Release

Vera Whole Health, an advanced primary care provider and clinic group based in Seattle, is acquiring Castlight Health, a data and care navigation platform. Vera will acquire Castlight in a $370 million all-cash deal. Strategic partners and investors include Anthem, Morgan Health (the JP Morgan Chase & Co business for the transformation of employee healthcare), Central Ohio Primary Care, and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice funds. Former Aetna chairman and CEO Ron Williams will become chairman. Release.

Which leads to the usual question…will funding in 2022 continue the hot streak of 2021? It’s one opinion, but Lee Shapiro of 7wireVentures, formerly with Livongo, is sensing a slowdown, citing increased interest rates (money), the US midterm elections (which don’t affect the rest of the world), less new money, and investors wising up on the length of time any healthcare or health tech investment takes to pay off. 2021 with 79 digital health M&As plus an abundance of SPACs that tailed off by end of year will be hard to match. Mobihealthnews

XRHealth, a telehealth clinic that provides treatments in patients’ homes based on virtual reality treatment, has integrated Tobii‘s eye-tracking technology into the XR platform and the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye VR headset. XR Health provides rehabilitative and pain management therapies via VR. The Tobii system will enable treatment using the headset for multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s, and other neurological conditions. According to the release published in Multiple Sclerosis News Today, “detecting subtle changes in eye movement can help diagnose these diseases at an early stage, as well as assess disease progression and response to treatment. Tobii‘s eye-tracking technology is able to detect those changes in real time, providing data and insights to clinicians during therapy sessions.” Hat tip to Editor Emeritus Steve Hards

CES 2022 is on this week, far less splashy than before as an in-person/virtual hybrid event. Debuting at CES is the Sengled Smart Health Monitoring Light. Looking like a standard LED lamp bulb, it contains sensors that network and can take passive vital signs measurements of sleep quality, breathing, heart rate, and motion of occupants in the home. The more bulbs the better, of course. Whether or not they can detect falls, as the article touts, is likely an inference on motion. They feed into either Alexa or Google Assistant, plus Sengled’s app, using Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar operating in the 2.4 GHz range. Expect it to be coming out towards the end of the year and probably twice the price of conventional LED smart bulbs. TechRadar Hat tip to Adrian Scaife via LinkedIn

Catching up…

Walgreens and VillageMD continue on the ‘go big or go home’ highway with nine more Village Medicals at Walgreens in San Antonio, Texas. Plans are to build 600 Village Medicals at Walgreens in more than 30 markets by 2025, growing to 1,000 by 2027. HealthcareFinance

Centene, the health payer conglomerate, finalized its $2.2 billion acquisition of Magellan Health, a major behavioral health management company. It will likely be CEO Michael Neidorff’s swan song, as an activist investor forced his retirement (at age 78 after over 25 years at the helm) this year and significant board changes. Magellan’s former COO and president Jim Murray will become Centene’s chief transformation officer, a new position, lead what they term the Value Creation Office as well as the Centene Advanced Behavioral Health division. Forbes, Centene release

And suitors with a spare billion or so may be lining up to buy IBM Watson Health. The first offers came in on 4 January with the winner to be announced possibly by end of the month. IBM spent over $4 billion over time to build up Watson Health, but now wants out, badly. Axios

The Trial of Elizabeth Holmes, ch. 17: looking inside the juror decision process

January 7, 2022 | by

How does a juror–and jury–process multiple counts, witnesses, a defendant, and an avalanche of information without drowning? ABC News interviewed Juror #6, Wayne Kaatz, an actor, voice talent, and scriptwriter. We rarely get a glimpse inside the jury box of a high-profile case. It’s well described, which isn’t surprising given that Mr. Kaatz is a writer, mostly for children’s programs. In short, “working class” show biz.

  • They grappled with the ultimately deadlocked three charges–and felt they had failed (Ch. 16)
  • Early on, they discarded the charges involving patients, considering Elizabeth Holmes ‘one step removed’ from them
  • They scored witnesses’ testimonies and Holmes on a 1-4 scale, from not credible to most credible. Adam Rosendorff, the lab director that the defense went after hard, scored a four. Holmes–a two.
  • They were sympathetic towards Holmes, finding her “likable”, with a “positive dream”. 
  • The decision to find her guilty on the four fraud counts centered on her “final approval” and that she “owned everything”.  

About the process, they selected a younger man as their foreman from the eight men and four women. They shared initial verdicts on paper scraps and laid out information on a timeline. The jurors got along well over the months-long trial culminating in 50+ hours of deliberation, working on puzzles and swapping sandwiches. 

Mr. Kaatz closed his thoughts: “It was an honor. It was a duty, I did it. I’m done.” Little drama, not ‘Law and Order’ or ‘Twelve Angry Men’. ABC News–and do read the interesting comments, but only halfway through before it devolves into hair-pulling on a wholly different event.

The Wall Street Journal’s follow-up (paywalled text, but audio is not) focuses on Juror #8 (Susanna Stefanek) finding the “smoking guns” as the altered pharmaceutical “endorsements”, singling out Pfizer’s, and the fictional financial projections.

Vox goes into Holmes as Hollywood will be seeing her, with Hulu and Apple treatments teeing up. The NY Times goes on about Holmes being a product of Silicon Valley culture–the puffery, the one-upmanship, and believing their own press releases. But for now, we can give it a rest…till Sunny Balwani’s trial starts.

Breaking–The Trial of Elizabeth Holmes, ch. 16: guilty on four charges of 11

January 4, 2022 | by

Breaking. Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos, was found guilty on four charges of wire fraud of the 11 charges brought by the prosecution. The guilty charges are, according to the reports in the New York Times and the Mercury News (paywalled, but keep refreshing), all related to wire fraud against investors. Counts six through eight are fraud against specific investors. The TTA articles relating to each are linked.

  1. Count one of conspiring to commit wire fraud against investors in Theranos between 2010 and 2015
  2. Count six of wire fraud in connection with a wire transfer of $38,336,632 on or about Feb. 6, 2014. This was part of the $96 million PFM Health Sciences investment detailed in Chapter 9.
  3. Count seven of wire fraud in connection with a wire transfer of $99,999,984 on or about Oct. 31, 2014. This was the DeVos family trust investment (RDV Corp.) in Chapter 5.
  4. Count eight of wire fraud in connection with a wire transfer of $5,999,997 on or about Oct. 31, 2014, made by Daniel Mosley, a financial advisor to Henry Kissinger. Mr. Kissinger was an early investor and sat on the Theranos board (Chapter 6).

Each one of these charges carries time up to 20 years, but in Federal financial fraud cases, time is usually served concurrently. Judge Edward Davila of the US District Court, Northern District of California, will sentence at a later date to be announced.

It’s expected that Holmes will appeal. The issues of emotional and physical abuse, with Svengali-like control on her judgment, at the hands of Sunny Balwani were not enough for this jury to dismiss the key financial fraud charges. They clearly decided that Holmes was fully capable of engineering fraud, not just once but several times. But with the defense having seeded a backdrop of abuse, it may prove mitigating on appeal. (No, this Editor does not believe that Judge Davila will even refer to that during sentencing, having strictly advised the jury to not consider that during deliberations.)

Holmes was found not guilty on three fraud charges against patients and a fourth relating to advertising and marketing services to patients:

  • Count two of conspiring to commit wire fraud against patients who paid for Theranos’s blood testing services between 2013 and 2016
  • Count 10 of wire fraud in connection with a patient’s laboratory blood test results on or about May 11, 2015
  • Count 11 of wire fraud in connection with a patient’s laboratory blood test results on or about May 16, 2015. These two counts pertained to false results on HIV and prostate cancer.
  • Count 12 of wire fraud in connection with a wire transfer of $1,126,661 on or about Aug. 3, 2015 to Horizon Media for advertising and marketing services for the Walgreens launch.

Given the above, was The Verge (Chapter 15) correct in stating that patient fraud, with the concomitant distress and potential for injury, is less important than financial fraud? Or was the case less well made? 

No verdict was reached on an additional three charges relating to wire transfers in December 2013 by other investors. These apparently were the charges that the jury deadlocked on earlier today: 

  • Count three of wire fraud in connection with a wire transfer of $99,990 on or about Dec. 30, 2013. This was part of the investments made from 2006 to 2013 by private investor Alan Eisenman detailed in Chapter 8. Eisenman was a contentious and offputting witness, and will not have any satisfaction.
  • Count four of wire fraud in connection with a wire transfer of $5,349,900 on or about Dec. 31, 2013. This was an investment by Black Diamond Ventures headed by Chris Lucas, nephew of Don Lucas who was on the Theranos board (Chapter 6).
  • Count five of wire fraud in connection with a wire transfer of $4,875,000 on or about Dec. 31, 2013. This was an investment by the Hall Group.

One additional charge (nine according to the Times, 10 according to the Mercury News) was dropped. The Times article also provides a preview on the next trial–Sunny Balwani. Man of Mystery, or just a lucky sod who made a bundle of money from a dot.com?

The trial started on 8 September and concluded just before Christmas. Deliberations took about 50 hours. 

Also CNBC and ABC News. Let the opinion slinging begin!