Ali Parsa back in the news, just over one year after Babylon Health’s implosion. Babylon’s CEO/founder Ali Parsa has a new and stealthy AI-related venture called Quadrivia. It was announced, unusually, by a personal post on LinkedIn yesterday (12 Nov). As one might surmise, it’s AI-related (this year’s flavor) and provides an AI assistant to clinicians. The company is incorporated in Jersey (Channel Islands) and is UK-based. It is seed funded by Norrsken, a Swedish VC. The amount is undisclosed. (More on this below from Sifted-FT and JFSC registry research) Information on Quadrivia’s capabilities is limited to Parsa’s posting, their... Continue Reading
Search Results for babylon health
Some thoughts on the takeaways from HLTH
...sensible retailers into buying brick-and-mortar primary care practices as extensions of their stores, investors into another iteration of ‘value-based care’, copycat virtual mental health providers, and digital health businesses that were essentially sinkholes, like Babylon Health. The companies may have had a good product or a nucleus of same. Then investors woke up and started to think about how impossible their exits were. Healthcare leaders should remember they’re in the customer service industry. Exactly the opposite of the ‘wholesale’ delivery model. Patients are customers–but a special type of customer. Next year, exit activity will likely still be lifeless in the... Continue Reading
News roundup: SleepioRx clears FDA 510(k), Caregility adds AI fall detection, Otsuka releases Rejoyn depression app, MD Ally’s $14M Series A, Alcove launches CallConnect247 (UK), Health Catalyst buys Lumeon for $40M
...use of Rejoyn reduced depression symptoms and improvement across multiple scales typically used by patients and clinicians to track depression improvement. The Otsuka release and commitment are significant as it’s also the first true involvement of a major pharmaceutical company in telemental health with a highly targeted clinical app that isn’t tied to one of their medications. It’s a long road with a lot of bumps, as Otsuka experienced with Proteus Digital Health’s smart pill tech for its Abilify MyCite, as well as failed companies like Pear and Babylon Health. Release, Healthcare Dive In funding news, emergency services telehealth company... Continue Reading
First half digital health investment — a true rebound or a ‘dead cat bounce’? A Gimlety look at Rock Health’s H1 report.
...never happened except in the wreckage of overfunded/foolish funded companies. And 2023 was marked by four tech bank lender bankruptcies and many high profile bankruptcies such as Babylon Health, Quil Health, and Pear Therapeutics. 2024 should look better than 2023, by that logic. But let’s factor in the following for 2024 H2: The raises are there and they’re fairly steady–but with only a few exceptions, usually AI related, they are far less than in the past, again using 2019-2020 as a baseline. At the same time, layoffs are also prevalent and substantial at all levels, indicative of retrenching. And there... Continue Reading
News roundup: Waystar $1B IPO is on (updated); CVS looking for Oak Street PE partner; 23andMe net loss doubles to $667M, may go private; Otsuka dives into digital therapeutics; HoneyNaps’ $12M no snooze
...in conjunction with Click Therapeutics. Mr. Shah and Otsuka are taking the longer view in terms of development, that future developments will be about both partnerships and solo effort, and that the road is long–and littered with the burnt-out shells of failed companies like Pear Therapeutics, Babylon Health, and way back to Happtique. Otsuka has had its own digital health learning experience. They partnered in 2017 with Proteus Digital Health’s smart pill tech for its Abilify MyCite anti-depressant. After abruptly ending the partnership, Otsuka bought the smart pill technology out of bankruptcy [TTA 19 Aug 2020]. Release, Healthcare Dive One... Continue Reading
Weekend reading: 23andMe’s exploding plastic inevitable fate–and what might have been
...coupled with overwhelming debt that lenders will no longer carry (Babylon Health). A Must Read for your weekend is Arundhati Parmar’s gem of an essay on 23andMe in MedCityNews–the company’s current dilemma contrasted with what if co-founder Linda Avey had not been ousted in 2009. She expertly sets off interviews with Avey and Wojcicki into an illuminating virtual debate that should be part of an MBA candidate’s case study. Parmar sets them off with analyst views, the experience of a referred 23andMe customer who illuminates the life-changing nature of genetic testing as well as 23andMe’s service drawbacks, and a sparkling... Continue Reading
Digital health’s Q1 according to Rock Health: the New Reality is a flat spin back to 2019
...the value for their investment. And funders will scrutinize x 3. Companies, unable to satisfy public shareholders so easily pleased in the SPAC and IPO palmy days of 2021-23, are leaving, not entering, public markets. Veradigm had to delist this year because of Nasdaq financial reporting problems from bad software despite being financially healthy–and acquiring ScienceIO. Rock Health does not include the recent pending delistings of Clover Health and Amwell. Both NextGen Healthcare and SOC Telemed went private last year. Others were acquired: Science 37, BenefitFocus, Castlight, Signify Health, and Tabula Rasa. Four went out of business: Babylon Health (Ch.... Continue Reading
2023 was buying time, 2024 is face the music time: Rock Health
...attractiveness or competitiveness of the company in the real market. It was pure, simple survival of the company and the investment. Startup shutdowns, in their view, were no higher than usual–less than 5% of venture-backed US digital health companies (i.e., have raised >$2M). In this Editor’s view, the percentage does not capture the prominence of the startup shutdowns: Babylon Health, Quil Health, Pear Therapeutics, OliveAI, Smile Direct, Cureatr, SimpleHealth, The Pill Club, Hurdle. It also doesn’t count Amazon shutting down Halo, Cano Health’s parting out before this week’s bankruptcy, as well as Bright Health’s (now NeueHealth) divestitures and shutdowns through... Continue Reading
News roundup: Cano Health files Ch. 11 bankruptcy, delisted (updated), Walgreens lays off more, Allina Health outsources 2,000 RCM jobs to Optum
...Dive. FierceHealthcare dubbed this a ‘spectacular collapse’ (which it isn’t–that was Babylon Health) but includes some speculation from Ari Gottlieb, a principal at A2 Strategy Group whom this Editor has quoted before, that since Humana has a stake in and partnered with Cano, they should simply pick up what’s left. However, Humana may not be in a cash position to do so, given its recent losses in its Medicare Advantage business that also helped to sink Cano (partly paywalled). The local take in the Sun-Sentinel. Less drastic but equally, more signs of the times: Walgreens laid off 145 more staff,... Continue Reading
Peering through the cloudy crystal ball into 2024 healthcare investment and company health
Will 2024 be the mirror image of 2023? This time last year, signs pointed to slow, steady growth after the bubble bath of 2020-early 2022 was followed by failures of tech-leveraged banks (SVB and Signature in March 2023) leading to a mid-year bust [TTA 11 Aug 23]. Some big deals kicked off the year (CVS’ Carbon Health investment, Oak Street mega-buy TTA 16 Feb 23). Then as the year went on, they were followed by sheer turmoil–huge losses and business divestitures (Cano Health, Bright Health, insurtechs like Clover and Oscar), bankruptcies and shutdowns (Babylon, Pear, Quil, OliveAI, Smile Direct, Cureatr,... Continue Reading
Most Recent Comments