Breaking–Masimo Mystery SOLVED–cyberattack, website down for days, new websites up–and where’s the public explanations? Sound United sold.

May 7, 2025 | by

The Masimo website goes offline–coinciding with their investor meeting. When this Editor posted an article on former Masimo CEO Joseph Kiani’s “beneficial ownership” SEC filing (Schedule G/A, for amended) last Tuesday late evening (29 April), as we generally do, we included a link to the main corporate website. I noted the following day that the home page was down and displayed a ‘performing some maintenance’ message. This is not especially unusual in the evening, as our Readers know, but unusual to continue beyond that.

Checking Wednesday, the website remained down. Yet their consumer-direct sales ‘Shop’ and Investor Relations pages remained up if you linked to them directly, though the medical monitoring smartwatches listed on the shop page were ‘coming soon’. Consulting with Ted Green of Strata-gee, who follows Masimo from their now-sold audio business (see update below) and an excellent source for us, he followed up as it remained offline into Thursday. Press contacts there were unresponsive. An “inside source” provided the only answer obtainable, which was ‘we’re working on it’. Ted called their main line–and received a recorded message that “All circuits are busy, please try your call later”. Calling Customer Service as a final attempt, even they did not know what was going on with the website…and, while phones were working, their internal systems had gone down. Finally, late on Thursday, Ted received an email from a PR representative who pointed him to their changed message on their website stating that the website was down and that they were working to resolve the issue. Ted relates this far more entertainingly in his Search for Information. 

Certainly an unusual and embarrassing situation for a tech-based medical device company, especially one that, at least for investors, is backing up its claims of a new transparency to the max. (See their working Investor Relations page for their postings of their Q1 financial presentation, webcast, and press release). For those of us in the business, an extended ‘offline’ means that we automatically think ‘hack’–another victim of cyberattack or ransomware.

And that is exactly what it turned out to be. Masimo’s SEC Form 8-K filed yesterday led with the following:

On April 27, 2025, Masimo Corporation (the “Company” or “we”) identified unauthorized activity on the Company’s on-premise network. Upon detection, we activated our incident response protocols and implemented containment measures, including proactively isolating impacted systems. We promptly commenced an investigation and are actively working to assess, mitigate, and remediate the incident with the assistance of third-party cybersecurity professionals. The Company has also notified and is coordinating with law enforcement.

As a result of the incident, certain of the Company’s manufacturing facilities have been operating at less than normal levels, and the Company’s ability to process, fulfill, and ship customer orders timely has been temporarily impacted. The Company has been working diligently to bring the affected portions of its network back online, restore normal business operations and mitigate the impact of the incident.

The investigation of the incident remains ongoing, and the full scope, nature, and impact of the incident are not yet known. At this time, the Company believes that the incident appears unrelated to and is not affecting the Company’s cloud-based systems.

Comments below Ted’s Strata-gee article, from an anonymous commenter, said that the FBI had visited the Masimo Irvine headquarters, which lines up with the last sentence of the first paragraph. The filing confirms that the intrusion was detected on Sunday, 27 April–which does not mean that they started then, just that it was found.

It is also evidently broad and deep, not only affecting the website and internal systems used by customer service, but also internal systems used in manufacturing and at all Masimo locations are ‘locked down’ in the words of another commenter. It’s serious when orders can’t ship and most employees are reportedly being told to stay home for the better part of the week, according to commenting insiders.

According to the report in FierceBiotech, CEO Katie Szyman stated that the cyberattack will not dent the company’s financial guidance for the year.

What’s not here: what Masimo is doing to inform customers of the outage, how long it will be, changes in delivery dates of devices, and if performance of any devices has been affected.

Back to the ‘restored’ websites:

A questionable restoration of their website(s). As of Tuesday (6 May, 9 pm EDT), the Masimo website is back live–but it depends on how you enter the URL! There are apparently two websites: a finished corporate and professional product website with a Personal Health section under construction with placeholders, but other live web pages which are accessible, apparently mainly for Canada–or for US under construction or discarded designs. 

  • Masimo.com entered as this link (https://www.masimo.com) features a home page with Masimo SET and their professional products such as SafetyNet Alert, a ‘cloud-based telehealth platform’. It is a tidy, respectable, and up-to-date corporate website featuring the full line of Masimo’s many professional monitoring products. Links in header and footer are standard, including corporate information and links to investor relations. Where it is not complete: clicking on Personal Health in the footer links will take you to a URL with a path that indicates a US ‘Shop’ page but is titled Support–Masimo Customer Service. Links for four individual product areas, including ‘Health at Home & Opioid Safety’, lead only to customer support information and a repeated, annoying cookies permission popup. This website appears finished except for Personal Health.
  • But if you enter only Masimo.com, the URL immediately redirects to a Canadian shop domain page and path that features how their pulse oximetry device and app (SafetyNet Alert) can monitor prescribed opioid usage for difficulties in breathing (respiratory depression) which can prove, from their tragic case study example, fatal. The new Halo app can be downloaded on the Apple App Store or Google Play. Want to find out more about it? It goes to a page that no longer exists. 
  • Clicking on the Personal Health tab at the top, it links to another Canadian ‘Shop’ domain page highlighting that their noninvasive monitoring used by hospitals is now available for home use, but the only item for sale is the Denon PerL Pro earbuds with a Canadian dollar price. No mention of SafetyNet Alert. 
  • To find their personal health devices, one has to go to the links on the footer under Customer Service>>Track Order’. This takes you to the US ‘Shop’ path page. There three ‘Health at Home’ devices are featured without descriptions. Clicking on the ‘Shop All’ button takes you to a US path page featuring the MightySat home pulse oximeter, the W1 smartwatch, and the RadiusT temperature tracker. Unfortunately, clicking on the ‘Find A Retailer’ button on each individual page leads you to a 404 page–‘That Page No Longer Exists’. 
  • These pages are in layout and style unlike the corporate website. Formats vary all over the lot.
  • On other pages linked in the footer, it appears there are some new pages, along with old web pages restored without updating.
  • Extremely annoyingly, on every page or return to a page, a permission popup for accepting cookies blocks the page until you accept or decline.

Where’s the project/marketing manager supervising this? Again, it’s embarrassing for a digital health technology company, even post-cyberattack, to have this level of visible website disorganization, coupled with days offline and reports of complete disruption. The best approach would be a minimal website until a finished website, working on all URLs and paths, is completed. Other than the main corporate website, the ‘Canadian’ and other pages should be offline until discarded or finalized.

As of 13 May, there are still problems and ‘holes’ in the websites, with the tracking the same.

Update–Sound United sold. Also announced yesterday (6 May) was the $350 million cash sale of Sound United to HARMAN International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. The definitive agreement release did not mention staff transitions. HARMAN’s audio products include Harman Kardon, JBL, and AKG. The sale is scheduled to close by the end of 2025. The sale was mentioned several times during the Q1 earnings call but HARMAN was not mentioned. The sale is not included in Masimo’s 2025 forward outlook, versus the considerable impact of tariffs on their imports from China and Malaysia.

Sound United’s sale for a third of its purchase price is the finale of a very big, very bad billion-dollar bet made by Joe Kiani and his management team in 2022. The ‘vision’, such that it was, was that the audio brands would leverage consumer health wearables into retailers such as Best Buy. It didn’t. The buy immediately tanked the value of the company by an estimated $5 billion in one day, and kicked off a long trail of investor unrest that resulted in a takeover by Politan Capital and the ouster of Kiani and his board members last year. The rest, as they say, is history. (And Joe Kiani is likely enjoying a good bottle of vintage Pol Roger and shivering with schadenfreude.) Wall Street Journal

This just in: Teladoc acquires UpLift for $30M, bolstering struggling BetterHelp telemental health; Q1 revenue down 3%

May 1, 2025 | by

Teladoc closed out a down Q1 with buying UpLift. The $30 million acquisition is clearly strategic in bolstering BetterHelp, their floundering direct-to-consumer mental health provider. It closed on 30 April, the same day as Teladoc’s Q1 results call. UpLift was bought in an all-cash transaction, with up to $15 million in additional contingent earnout consideration. UpLift’s 2024 revenue was approximately $15 million. It is small compared to BetterHelp’s Q1 revenue of $239.9 million, which fell 11% versus Q1 2024 and continuing a decrease from Q4 2024, when its revenue was $250 million, after sinking through the entire fiscal year. 

What UpLift adds is insurance-reimbursable mental health coverage with all major commercial insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid, something that the cash-pay-only BetterHelp lacked. It also adds coverage of 100 million lives and a network of over 1,500 mental health providers. According to the release, BetterHelp will work with its customers to help them access insurance coverage. Their network providers will “have an opportunity to be considered for inclusion in the benefits coverage network, based on the respective requirements, needs and interests”, which is an interesting way to present it.

Teladoc said in the release  and on the earnings call that UpLift will be reported under BetterHelp’s results, although it will be run separately under its current CEO Kyle Talcott. There is no further indication as to management transitions. The impression given from the release at least in the short term is that it will be run separately for management of their provider network, quality and patient outcome oversight and the acceptance and administration of insurance coverage. 

What does this mean? How much of a lift UpLift will give this year to BetterHelp is anyone’s guess, but adding insurance coverage is a much needed move by Teladoc, given BetterHelp’s expensive DTC cash model.

  • Teladoc has known for some time that lack of insurance coverage was a key part of BetterHelp’s performance problems. UpLift will help in that regard.
  • In the past 18 months, it moved from Teladoc’s great hope, one which former CEO Jason Gorevic bet ‘large’ on only for him to depart in a haze of red ink [TTA 5 Apr 2024], to a slowly eroding asset or worse, a rolling failure. It is particularly inexplicable given the growth of virtual mental health.
  • In the past year, BetterHelp operations were responsible for a $790 million impairment that hit Teladoc’s Q2 and a nasty, embarrassing rap by short seller Blue Orca Capital on ChatGPT being used in therapeutic responses [TTA 25 Feb], vigorously denied by Teladoc [TTA 25 Feb]. 
  • BetterHelp’s revenue for the remainder of 2025 is expected to shrink by up to 9.75%.

The main Teladoc operation, segmented as Integrated Care, also performs virtual mental health care within its services. This is noted in the release: “Teladoc Health’s Integrated Care segment offers a range of digital tools, coaching, therapy, and psychiatry services for employers and health plans (Editor’s emphasis), and completed nearly a million mental health visits in 2024.” Since those virtual mental health services are within Integrated Care, its performance is not public. 

Is a real solution a rebranding of BetterHelp when it is integrated (as it eventually will be) with UpLift?

HIT Consultant, FierceHealthcare, Mobihealthnews

Teladoc Q1 financial highlights:

There wasn’t much encouragement across the board in Teladoc’s Q1 report.

  • Total Q1 revenue decreased 3% to $629.4 million from prior year’s $646.1 million in First Quarter 2024
  • The bright spot was that their main business under Integrated Care had a revenue increase of 3% to $389.5 million 
  • As mentioned, BetterHelp’s revenue decreased by 11% to $239.9 million
  • By domestic versus international, US revenue decreased 4% to $525.0 million. International revenue grew 6% to $104.4 million.
  • Net loss also increased to $93.0 million, or $0.53 per share, versus prior year’s Q1 $81.9 million, or $0.49 per share.
  • Adjusted EBITDA for Q1  decreased 8% to $58.1 million, versus $63.1 million in the prior year. \
    • Integrated Care’s adjusted EBITDA increased 6% to $50.4 million.
    • BetterHelp’s adjusted EBITDA decreased 50% to $7.7 million.

The release also confirms full year 2025 revenue projections of $2,468 – $2,576 million. BetterHelp’s revenue is projected to continue to shrink by 3.75 to 9.75%.

News roundup: Hims, Ro, LifeMD and Novo Nordisk partner on Wegovy prescribing (updated); Commure partners with HealthTap for virtual care after hours; WebMD Ignite adds texting to member health ed; hellocare.ai raises $47M for virtual nursing

May 1, 2025 | by

Partnerships and add-ons are much in the news this week.

Hims & Hers isn’t worrying about GLP-1 drug sourcing. Neither are Ro and LifeMD. All three made a deal with Novo Nordisk on providing branded Wegovy to cash-paying members with a prescription. Wegovy is supplied through NovoCare Pharmacy through each of the telehealth suppliers.

Hims & Hers received immediate benefit–their stock jumped 23% on Tuesday above $33. Wegovy is already available to Hims & Hers members, but  those without a membership, they will bundle a membership with Wegovy and supply services including 24/7 care, nutrition guidance, and clinical support, starting at $599/month. Longer term, the two companies plan to match up Novo Nordisk’s technologies with Hims & Hers’ ability to scale access to care. Novo Nordisk’s programs with competitive telehealth prescribers Ro and LifeMD start at $499/month, but may be more based on services provided.

Updated: The smaller LifeMD, a below $10 Nasdaq stock, also jumped 40% to above $8 and settled in around $7 this morning (Friday 1 May). (Ro–Roman Health–is a private company.) FierceHealthcare LifeMD also recently acquired assets of women’s telehealth provider Optimal Human Health MD as their entrée into the women’s health market. The new service will be focused on menopause and osteoporosis, monitoring hormone health, bone density, metabolism and long-term wellness. Debut is this summer. No financials were disclosed.  Release, FierceHealthcare

This was just in time to meet the FDA deadline on GLP-1s. All three teleprescribing companies were using less expensive compounding pharmacies to supply generic versions of semaglutide up until recently. In February, the FDA reclassified the drug as no longer scarce, which ended that authorization to sell the compounded drugs as of now [TTA 25 Feb, 27 Feb]. Hims, as the largest, stood to lose the most and fought very hard to keep the compounded versions of these drugs including an aggressive ad blitz blasting the pharmas. Evidently, they’ve now reconsidered–as has Novo Nordisk in lowering prices and selling through the teleprescribers. If you can’t beat them, join them. However, based on what this Editor hears on the radio, companies like FuturHealth are selling compounded versions alongside branded GLP-1 medications. Mobihealthnews, CNBC

Software integration meets virtual healthcare for after-hours coverage. Healthcare software integrator Commure is partnering with HealthTap‘s online primary care network and telehealth services to provide what they term a ‘unified solution that bridges the gap between in-person and virtual care’. Commure’s slightly bewildering tech stack centers on EHR integrations for workflow, scribing, RPM, RCM, and AI-powered agents–along with a workplace security system, Strongline. The partnership now offers to providers turnkey implementation for services such as after-hours coverage and virtual primary care, with the big plus of not adding staff. Mobihealthnews, Release 

Commure’s interesting developments in the past year or so included a fire-sale priced buy of Memora Health for $30 million in December 2024, adding its conversational AI-powered agent to its ‘stack’, undoubtedly to the relief of in-common investors General Catalyst and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). In October, Commure bought ambient AI medical documentation company Augmedix (one of the few SPACs that didn’t crack) in a $139 million deal [TTA 8 Jan].    Axios‘ further analysis of the Memora Health buy is worth a read.

WebMD Ignite’s Coach health education and engagement platform adds text messaging. The Coach platform, used by care managers for health plan members, has added an integrated SMS text messaging app. This provides for plan care managers:

  • Real-time reach: Push notifications ensure messages are seen promptly, keeping health education and motivation top of mind.
  • Custom branding: Text templates can be customized to reflect each health plan’s brand and messaging.
  • Member convenience: Deliver concise, actionable information directly to members’ mobile devices.
  • Seamless workflow integration: Care managers can select, send and track text-based education within Coach, including opt-in and opt-out management.

The text messaging can also be used for population-wide campaigns to engage members at scale for health initiatives. Text’s advantages over email delivery is immediacy and also more narrow targeting, as many have multiple emails but only one (or two) mobile phone numbers. Release, FierceHealthcare  (Disclaimer: this Editor previously worked as a marketing consultant to what was then Krames, now part of the services under WebMD Ignite)

Our one significant raise of the week is (again) in virtual nursing. hellocare.ai‘s $47 million raise was led by HealthQuest Capital led the round with participation from several health systems and digital health investors, including UCHealth, Bon Secours Mercy Health, LRVHealth and OSF Ventures. hellocare.ai provides an in-room AI-assisted virtual nursing platform for “smart hospital” rooms plus telehealth and hybrid care services for hospitals, home care, and primary care. The platform includes virtual sitting in up to 32 rooms 24/7 on a single remote clinician’s monitor, virtual consultation, ambient documentation, digital whiteboards, patient engagement, and hospital-at-home integrated into the hospital’s EHR. hellocare.ai claims installations in 70+ health systems that include the investors. Since 2012, the Clearwater, Florida company has raised over $88 million. Release, Mobihealthnews