Healthcare mergers, acquistions, investments and joint ventures are doing their own Charge of the Light Brigade as we cross the mid-year bar.
* Onward the 76 Hundred! 7,600 startups around the world are developing solutions in digital health, according to accelerator/investor StartUp Health’s 2015 mid-year report. It also notes that ‘personalized solutions’ are the It Girl of digital health, and that data analytics/big data has fallen to third in investor interest after wellness/benefits (largely skewed by Zenefits) and patient/consumer experience received large funding rounds. Cheering news is that StartUp Health notes that investment in 50+ health companies is remaining steady. But the rest might be a bit frothy. The Gimlet Eye’s tut-tut: “whatever Zenefits is, it can’t produce enough Employee Wellness and manage enough HR to be worth an investment of $500 million”. For our Readers, we give you a direct link to their 2015 Midyear Funding Insights Report. (We await RockHealth’s take on the the Year to Date.)
* Onward with an IPO! Telemedicine darling Teladoc (TDOC, NYSE) is even more so with a smashing initial public offering, targeted to open at $19 which closed on Wednesday at $28 and today (Thursday) at same. Rosy forecasts abound despite those annoying losses ($12.7 million in 1st quarter ’14) and court action (Dallas News, TTA 9 June) . We at TTA are sticklers on terminology; still, we were happily surprised to see USA Today in our corner chiding Mr Gorevic on his misapplication of telehealth for telemedicine.
* Onward to Invest in Each Other! The new Allscripts-NantHealth deal gives new meaning to swap. EHR Allscripts bought a $200m, 10 percent equity stake in NantHealth, the health informatics chunk of Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks mini-conglomerate. Meanwhile another Soon-Shiong company bought stock valued at $100m in Allscripts. Neil Versel in MedCity News
* Onward from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv! MedCity News and Reuters also report that Teva Pharmaceuticals and Philips Healthcare have inked a joint investment partnership, Sanara Ventures. It’ll invest $26.5m over the next eight years in early-stage Israeli companies. The first two are MGD, which is creating a portable device for measuring lung function in COPD patients, and Kaleidoscope Medical, which has developed shielding for x-rays during catherization.
* Onward to…Kilmarnock! In the UK, Scotland’s Microtech Group has acquired TeleHealth Solutions. In addition to Microtech’s existing telecare for GP surgeries and supportive housing, the TeleHealth Solutions HomePod adds remote patient monitoring from the home and SurgeryPod which records patient information prior to the appointment. Release (PDF)
* Onward to Consolidation!: Regional insurers Centene (Medicaid) and Health Net (government managed care plans, Medicare and Medicaid) are merging in a deal valued at $6.8bn. Release, WSJ. Up in the air: Aetna’s acquisition of Humana, presuming it happens, has consequences for the city of Louisville and in truth, the whole state of Kentucky, detailed in Forbes. (Update 3 July–it’s final). Meanwhile, Cigna and Anthem are still talking, though not agreeing.
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