Pre-weekend short takes: Teladoc posts much smaller Q3 loss, 17% revenue boost; is telehealth threatening disability care quality; $2.8M for Australian wearables; more healthtech layoffs at Antidote, OrCam, Ada Health

October 28, 2022 | by

Teladoc today (27 Oct) beat Wall Street consensus in reporting revenue of $611.4 million, a 17% increase versus prior year. It also reduced its per-share losses to 45 cents per share ($73.5 million) versus last year’s Q3 loss of 53 cents ($84.3 million) and Q2’s stunning $3.1 billion loss due to goodwill impairments from the Livongo acquisition [TTA 30 July]. Powering today’s stock bump (6.5% to $28.47) was primarily loss reduction from the prior quarter zeroing out the goodwill impairments and lower net interest expense. Motley Fool, Mobihealthnews

Disability groups are expressing concern that incentives to promote telehealth may be discriminatory. The concerns are primarily around the need for in-person care.  Groups such as the American Association of People with Disabilities admit that telehealth can benefit the disabled, but are wary of a swing towards telehealth as a cost-saving measure versus in person. Federal data confirms that Medicare beneficiaries due to disabilities use telehealth at about twice the rate of age-eligible Medicare beneficiaries. There’s also concern about how the disabled can access and use telehealth platforms, as well as the quality of assessment during the virtual visit. POLITICO.

The Australian government is funding three five-year projects using wearable sensors for activity and diagnostics. The US$2.8 million will go to Curtin University for monitoring activity in children with cerebral palsy who are unable to walk (US$950,000), University of New South Wales for a cuffless blood pressure for hypertension monitoring (US$1.2 million), and Bond University for a project combining data from wearable devices and medical records for Type 2 diabetes patients (US$700,000). Mobihealthnews

More healthcare tech layoffs confirm that VC Elvis has left the building. The tech downturn has hit Israel-based startups particularly hard, but Europe is also affected. This is despite fundings for two of them earlier this year.

  • Pinkslipping over a third (23) of its employees is telehealth platform Antidote Health. Based in Tel Aviv and New York, the layoffs hit primarily R&D staff in Israel. Antidote in March closed a $22 million Series A, bringing total funding to $36 million (Crunchbase). Antidote offers telehealth primary care, mental health, and hypertension chronic care as well as featuring sinus, tick bite, and UTI treatment on its website. The platform connects users to a network of about 100 doctors with a smart chatbot and through video calls. Their target audience is uninsured and underinsured people. Calcalist CTECH, Mobihealthnews   
  • Larger OrCam in Jerusalem is laying off about 16% (62) of staff, again primarily in Israel, as part of a reorganization. OrCam develops devices to help blind or visually impaired people read and navigate daily life more easily via AI. OrCam has over $86 million in funding through a Series A and three venture rounds (Crunchbase), the last in 2018. A planned 2020 IPO valuing the company at $3 billion never happened. The company also has offices and staff in New York, London, and Cologne. Calcalist CTECH, Jewish Business News

Berlin, Germany-based Ada Health also pinkslipped 50 people. According to a spreadsheet linked on Layoffs.fyi, most of the layoffs are in Europe and the UK in tech and product development, with others in marketing and medical. Ada has a medical assessment app that claims 10 million users and 25 million assessments. Employees are based in the US, London, and within Germany. Most recent funding was in March from a $30 million Series B, adding to a 2021 Series B of €74 million funded by Bayer (Crunchbase).

Short takes for Thursday: TimeDoc’s timely $48M, Glooko buys France’s DIABNEXT, Jio Health’s $20M, Pear’s Tokyo sleep-wake, Antidote’s $22M, and Centene’s new, young CEO signals big changes

March 24, 2022 | by

TimeDoc Health, a Chicago-based virtual care management platform that enables doctors to manage their patient populations between visits, has raised $48.5 million in a Series B funding round led by Aldrich Capital Partners.  This follows on a modest $5.7 million Series A round and equally modest seed rounds (Crunchbase). (This Editor notes that funding is becoming more modest this year anyway.) TimeDoc provides remote patient monitoring (RPM), chronic care management, and behavioral health monitoring, plus about 150 care coordinators who do it. The funding will be to add 20-40 new hires to the care coordinator group monthly and undoubtedly build out within and without its present 35 state coverage. The 2025 goal stated by their CEO is to serve one million patients monthly. Axios, Mobihealthnews

Palo Alto meets Paris, with Glooko buying DIABNEXT. The French company, which had been marketing its own diabetes management app, will be rebranding as GlookoXT, use the Glooko platform and continue to market its established app and remote monitoring products. Terms were not disclosed, but the DIABNEXT team will be joining the Glooko team. Glooko’s been hitting the European capitals, since last month they acquired Berlin-based xbird.  Release, Mobihealthnews

In Asia-Pacific news, Jio Health, based in Vietnam, now has $20 million in a Series B funding led by Singapore’s Heritas Capital. The startup is an interesting blend of telemedicine and e-prescribing via app, physical “smart” clinics, 300 branded pharmacies, and on-demand home care. Mobihealthnews

Sleepless in Tokyo? In Japan, Pear Therapeutics and SoftBank are teaming up to develop a digital therapeutic treating sleep-wake disorders. Pear has an FDA-approved prescription product for chronic insomnia, Somryst, and is pursuing a strategy of marketing sleep treatments in countries outside the US. Pear went public via a SPAC at end of 2021. Mobihealthnews

Telehealth is still captivating investors, with a $22 million Series A raise by the interestingly named Antidote Health. This tops off $12 million in seed funding by iAngels, Group 11, and Flint Capital. Their virtual consults are pitched as affordable either on a one-time or subscription basis. The raise will go towards adding chronic and primary care services, plus R&D activity, which includes advanced AI screening and clinical decision support system capabilities built on a claimed 20 year database.

And for those of us who are survivors of US health plans, top payer Centene, after 25 years of one man at the top, now has a new CEO, effective immediately. To no one’s great surprise, the pick is Sarah London, formerly vice chair of the Centene board of directors, one-third of their ‘value creation office’, and part of the Office of the Chairman. London previously headed Centene’s non-plan, primarily technology-based businesses. In 2020, she joined Centene from Optum Ventures, UnitedHealth’s VC arm, and prior to that was chief product officer of Optum Analytics. She fits a picture of Centene being a technology company for value-based care that also owns health plans, once sketched out by their now former CEO, Michael Neidorff.

Neidorff was a casualty of December’s shakeup by activist investor Politan Capital Management, along with three board members over the now-mandatory age 75 limit [TTA 18 Dec 21]. Since February, Neidorff has been on medical leave of absence from the BOD chairman’s position, with James Dallas, formerly of Medtronic, now acting chair. Neidorff is now 79 so would not be able to remain on the board unless an exception is made. He remains one of Centene’s largest individual shareholders, though he has sold millions of dollars of shares in recent years. We wish him a speedy recovery and a quiet retirement.

London’s youth at 41 and fast rise is a seismic change for Centene, and this Editor predicts a lot of changes to come quickly from top to bottom, including holdings, location, organization, and culture. Centene release, Healthcare Dive  Disclosure: this Editor worked for a division of WellCare that was acquired by Centene, and remained with the company for six months after the closing.