Amazon’s scoop-up of One Medical apparently was not all Skittles, Rainbows, and Unicorns. Large companies like Amazon, Walmart, Allscripts, and CVS are on the hunt to fill gaps in their portfolio and technologies, but only “healthy health tech companies at the right (discounted) price that fill in their tech gaps.” Of course, some of these companies have more chips on the table and in the safe than others.
We know from earlier reporting [TTA 7 July] that One Medical and CVS had some talks, but that One Medical spurned the offer. It did establish that One Medical was in play. Some digging by Heather Landi at FierceHealthcare, taking a walk through SEC documents according to a regulatory disclosure with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed 10 August, found that CVS (identified as Party A) and 1Life Healthcare, the parent of One Medical, started their acquisition talks in October 2021. 1Life was short on cash, getting shorter, needing to expand, and was having trouble raising the $300 million they estimated they needed. Starting this past February, 1Life management started to negotiate with Amazon. On 1 June, CVS offered $17 per share, boosting it by $1 the following day, but were informed by 1Life that there was another suitor. By 2 July, Amazon put $18 in an all-cash deal on the table. When news leaked via Bloomberg on 5 July that CVS was in discussions, CVS bowed out. By the end of July, 1Life and Amazon closed on the deal [TTA 27 July].
It came down to this–Amazon needed One Medical more than CVS. Watch for CVS and Walmart to make more provider/primary care moves by the time the snow flies this year. We’ve already noted that CVS inked a deal with Amwell a few days ago as their provider for Virtual Primary Care and that Walmart outright owns a telehealth provider, MeMD, though their overall strategy remains a bit murky.. CVS also has resources through Aetna that are integratable, such as provider networks.
And speaking of Amazon, they just inked a deal with Ginger to add telemental health as an option for Amazon Care. Healthcare Dive
In the US, we are very close to football–and concussion–season. Multiple concussions lead to CTE, which took a long time to recognize as a cause of premature dementia. A mHealth wearable has been tested to measure head kinematics–head movement–and detect sudden neck strain, such as whiplash. Current systems are embedded in helmets or the X-Patch, which uses accelerometers. According to the report in AAAS’ EurekAlert!, Nelson Sepúlveda of Michigan State University and colleagues developed a novel patch sensor using a film layer of thermoplastic material, a ferroelectret nanogenerator or FENG. “This produces electrical energy when physically touched or pressure is applied. The electrical signal produced is proportional to the physical strain on the neck and can be used to estimate the acceleration and velocity of sudden neck movement, two important markers for predicting concussion.” For this test, a dummy was used. Nature Scientific Reports, mHealth Intelligence
Monkeypox, its transmissibility, and treatment have also percolated this summer. Get Well Network, which we noted last month in a JAMA study used its GetWellLoop RPM and monitoring in a Covid-19 home treatment study, released a new monkeypox digital care management plan. It will permit monitoring of symptoms from home using RPM, help direct patients to higher levels of care if and when needed, and aids hospitals in managing mandatory regulatory requirements for reporting and tracking infectious diseases. LifeBridge Health in the Baltimore area began offering Get Well’s monkeypox symptom monitoring tool last month. Release
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