News roundup: MSK is ‘it’ with Hinge Health’s IPO filing, Vori Health’s $53M raise, Dario Health’s 33% revenue increase; CoachCare buys VitalTech, ModMed investor sells majority stake, Health NZ uses Excel–only; Holmes gets rehearing extension

March 14, 2025 | by | 1 Comment

Companies in MSK therapies (and more) were the ‘IT’ this week:

Hinge Health’s IPO filing this week the talk of healthcare finance. In the teeth of a roiling market (for no good reason at all in C), Hinge’s SEC S-1 filing of a preliminary prospectus has many agog. Hinge had a 33% 2024/2023 revenue growth to $390 million and $468 million in billings, 2,250 employer clients and approximately 20 million contracted lives as of the end of last year. Net loss was reduced substantially, to $11 million from 2023’s $108 million.

Not disclosed in the filing are the number of Class A shares on offer (on the NYSE under HNGE) or the pricing range. According to FierceHealthcare’s and TechCrunch’s IPO specialist source at Renaissance Capital, Hinge Health could raise $500 million in its IPO. It already has substantial funding through 10 rounds, the last 2021’s Series E of $400 million, totaling $826 million .(Crunchbase) Its backers who are prepping for a partial or full exit are 8% shareholders Coatue, Tiger Global Management, Whale Rock Capital Management, Bessemer Venture Partners, Insight Partners (19%), and Atomico (15%). Founders Daniel Perez (CEO) and Gabriel Mecklenburg (director) own 18.9% and 8.2%, respectively. It is one of the largest and most successful in a highly crowded market in MSK therapy and virtual physical therapy, with Sword Health its largest competitor–and also talking IPO. And like others, it has diversified into other medical areas: pain management (Enso) and female pelvic health.

Surprisingly, Hinge Health was first incorporated in 2012 as a private limited company in England and Wales. It was incorporated in Delaware in 2016. Release, Mobihealthnews

One of Hinge’s competitors, Vori Health, scored a $53 million Series B funding round. New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led this round along with previous investors  AlleyCorp, Intermountain Health’s Intermountain Ventures, Echo Health Ventures, and Max Ventures, bringing their total funding since 2020 to $109 million. Vori’s model is physician-led with patients working with a virtual care team organizing care from diagnosis to therapy, prescriptions, labs, and imaging. They claim results of 91.6% of patients reporting clinically significant pain improvement, 78-90% reduction in elective orthopedic surgeries, a 42% decrease in opioid utilization, and up to a 68% reduction in depression and anxiety among patients. The funding will be used to deepen its value-based care initiatives (including evolving toward models with two-sided population health risk), invest in advanced data analytics for more precise targeting of high-risk members, and enhance its AI-powered technology platform and clinical programs to benefit patients, employers, and health plan partners. Release, Mobihealthnews

Another competitor which has considerably branched out from MSK is Dario Health. Their 2024, marked by the dizzyingly funded acquisition of Twill telementalhealth [TTA 29 Feb 2024] bumped up in full-year by 32.9% to $27.0 million, from $20.4 million in 2023. Net loss was reduced to $42.7 million from 2023’s $59.4 million. While still in MSK, Dario has branched out into diabetes, hypertension, weight management including GLP-1 therapy with MedOrbis, and behavioral health in-person and app based management in a B2B2C model for members of health plans and other payers, self-insured employers, providers, and consumers. Back in January, they completed a $25.6 million private placement of 25,606 shares to extend their cash runway. Release, Mobihealthnews

NYC-based CoachCare is acquiring Carrolton, Texas-based VitalTech. Both companies monitor chronic conditions via remote patient monitoring (RPM) and are about the same size. Acquisition cost was not disclosed. VitalTech CEO Jeh Kazimi and the under 50 person VitalTech staff will be joining CoachCare. CoachCare claims that they cover 200,000 patients in 3,000 locations. Release

Investor Warburg Pincus sells majority stake in ModMed to Clearlake Capital. The investment was not disclosed, but reports indicated the valuation of the EHR and practice management system company is estimated now at $5.3 billion. Summit Partners and ModMed cofounders Daniel Cane and Michael Sherling maintain a minority share. ModMed has been for sale on and off since 2022, most recently in January, but was looking at acquisitions last fall. Original reporting was from the Financial Times. Axios, Bloomberg Law, Release

And you think you might be behind the times? Health New Zealand likes to keep it simple…very simple. They run all their financial management on a single Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. HNZ spends NZ $28 billion and replaced 20 district health boards to consolidate their efforts, increase efficiencies, and reduce costs. According to their health minister, HNZ operates an estimated 6,000 applications and 100 digital networks. The Deloitte survey found at least five major issues, from hard-coded financial data making updating and sourcing difficult to do and trace, to simple human errors. Is that all? So if you need a chuckle… TechRadar

And even more head-shaking is Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes challenging the courts, yet again. A report through Reddit, posted by legal maven mattschwink, tells us that she, through her attorneys, two days after the Ninth Circuit upheld both her and Sunny Balwani’s verdicts [TTA 5 Mar], filed on 26 February to extend the time to file a motion for a rehearing. It was granted on 3 March. The filings are noted on the public site Court Listener. Given the track record of these courts, the likelihood of a rehearing by a larger panel in the Ninth Circuit or even by the US Supreme Court on finding some kind of error in both the original verdict and appeal is akin to a snowball lasting in the Bryan, Texas prison courtyard on July 4th. But she does get attention.

News roundup: VA’s 2025 EHR budget + vendor breach, Neuralink robot arm study, linking mood prediction to sleep, CoachCare buys Revolution Health RPM/CCM, Seen Health’s $22M launch, Spectrum.Life in Deloitte Ireland’s Fast 50

December 5, 2024 | by

It’s $869 million for the EHR budget. The total budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs for FY2025, which started back on 1 October but is still unapproved by Congress, is $369 billion.

  • The overall EHR budget of $869 million includes current operations of VistA, Oracle Health, and exchange with the DOD/MHS system
  • Drilling down, the budget section for Oracle Cerner for the EHRM (EHR Modernization) has $375 million earmarked for the federal EHR contract. This addresses clinicians’ issues and supports healthcare deployment strategies that optimize resources throughout procedures.

VA decided in FY2023 that there would be no further deployments of Oracle Health’s EHR until the current multiple issues present at the existing six facilities using the Oracle Cerner EHR as well as the James Lovell joint MHS/VA implementation completed earlier this year were at least on a pathway to resolution. However, VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in April during early House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearings on FY 2025 and 2026 budgets that there was the possibility that implementation may resume before the end of FY2025 using carryover funding, not FY2025 allocated funding. Whether Secretary McDonough will be remaining under the Trump Administration is, of course, subject to change.

In June, VA extended its contract with Oracle Health for another 11 months, not having much of a choice. In July, VA was sued by Laurette Santos, a VA clinical social worker in the White City, Oregon facility, over worker accessibility standards and lack of Federally mandated assistive technology in the Oracle EHR.

Additional funds are on request for IT–$6.2 billion for IT systems–and $10 million for AI research and development. ExecutiveGov

VA’s breach problem. It’s located with a vendor for medical transcription, DBP, Inc. According to the Veterans Health Administration release, the attack on DBP’s server encrypted files that were then potentially copied by the hacker. DBP shut down the server and disconnected it from the internet, preventing additional attacks. The vendor purchased new hardware and implemented new security controls. 2,302 veterans were affected with some or all the following information exposed: full name, medical record information, or Social Security number. It was also geographically wide: Maine, Boston, Connecticut, Baltimore Amarillo TX, and Minneapolis MN.

Neuralink moves forward with feasibility study with a robotic arm. Four months after Elon Musk proposed the N1 implant be capable of moving an Optimus (Tesla Bot) robotic arm or leg, Neuralink has an approved feasibility study, code named CONVOY, to investigate whether the N1 implant can move an Optimus robotic arm. Start date is not disclosed. This follows on the announcement of the clinical trial with Health Canada for the “Canadian Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface” (CAN-PRIME) for N1 brain implant and its R1 robot, which is used to place the 64-thread implant into the brain, and approval last month for Blindsight, an implant for sight restoration. [TTA 27 Nov]. Mobihealthnews

Quantifying the link between sleep and predicting moods. This relatively lean bit of research from South Korea uses machine learning (ML) to predict mood episodes in mood disorder patients using only sleep and circadian rhythm data from wearable devices including smartphones used by 168 patients generating 267 days of data. The researchers derived 36 sleep and circadian rhythm features to enable accurate next-day predictions for depressive, manic, and hypomanic episodes. A key finding that daily circadian phase shifts were the most significant predictors: delays were linked to depressive episodes, advances to manic episodes. The study has implications for symptom evaluation and for treatment effectiveness. Mobihealthnews, NPJ Digital Medicine

Acquisitions and funding:

CoachCare acquires Revolution Health Solutions in the busy RPM/CCM space. Both companies offer chronic care management (CCM) services enhanced by remote patient monitoring (RPM) and outsourced teams. CoachCare’s acquisition cost and staff transitions were not disclosed. CoachCare, based in NYC, has raised about $49 million over five rounds in an unusual way–four under $1 million, then in July a private equity round of $48 million from Topmark Partners and Integrity Growth Partners. They claim 150,000 patients and hundreds of healthcare organizations along with five other acquisitions. Revolution Health Solutions, based in Dallas, had no funding rounds listed on Crunchbase. They were founded and led by Jenn Gillette Tompkins who positions it as a partnership (her LinkedIn post).  Release

Seen Health comes out of stealth with $22 million. The Series A has five investors: Virtue, 8VC, Basis Set Ventures, Prime Time Partners, and Astrana Health. Seen is leveraging off the PACE model (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) that helps chronically ill and infirm older adults remain in their homes and out of a nursing home by constructing a care team containing a social worker, nurse, dietician, primary care provider, and others. PACE models that started in San Francisco’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the 1970s have also been supplemented with digital health telemonitoring, such as QuietCare in 2006-9 (Editor’s note). Despite their advantages, PACE programs only cover 5% of older adults. Twin brothers Xing and Yang Su decided to build on PACE, creating culturally apt physical centers and equipping them with technology such as an EHR and geofencing that prevents wandering. Their programs will also include care at home coordinated with local agencies to provide low or no-cost care. The financing will be used to build out their first center in Los Angeles County’s San Gabriel Valley that focuses on the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) communities along with the needed technology and to build out their team. MedCityNews

Some nice recognition for Ireland’s Spectrum.Life. It ranked #41st in Deloitte Ireland’s 2024 Technology Fast 50 Awards, which recognize the fastest growing Irish tech companies. Spectrum.Life’s digital platform supports digital health, mental health, and wellbeing for employers and employees in the workplace, insurers, and educators. Their services are used by 9.8 million insurance members, 3,000 corporate clients, 60+ universities and 650,000 university students. WireNews

News roundup: 4.3M HealthEquity member data breach, CrowdStrike health fallout, more Congress pounding of VA/Oracle; Flo app now unicorn (UK), fundings for Clarapath, CoachCare; AvaSure buying Ouva

July 31, 2024 | by

Health savings account (HSA/FSA) provider HealthEquity had a three-month breach that compromised 4.3 million member accounts. The breach originated with an undisclosed third-party vendor, in a pattern that has become familiar. According to HealthEquity’s filing with the Maine attorney general (though HQ’d in Utah), the breach occurred in that vendor’s “unstructured data repository” at HealthEquity, outside of their core systems, after the hacker stole the password out of a vendor user account. Unfortunately for HealthEquity, the hack that started in March wasn’t discovered until 26 June, giving the hacker free rein in that database for three months. What’s surprising is that the breach wasn’t worse.

HealthEquity is a third-party administrator for companies of FSA/HRA, Commuter, COBRA, and Lifestyle plans.

The Maine AG filing states that information stolen may include customer names, addresses, phone numbers, their Social Security number, information about the person’s employer, benefit type, diagnoses, prescription details, the person’s dependent (if any), and some payment card information. With HealthEquity claiming 15 million+ members, the breach affects a substantial 29% of its membership. Actions they are taking are to notify members and provide them with credit monitoring services through Equifax with a reference guide. HealthEquity notification page, TechCrunch, HealthcareITNews

CrowdStrike’s antivirus software update that went waaaay sideways continues its fallout. As most know, it happened when they pushed an update and patch to Falcon, a cloud-based anti-cyber attack product that uses AI to detect intrusions. Well, Falcon’s AI wings were fractured on that 19 July push where testing was apparently lacking. BSOD became their new thing. What made the news was the devastating effect on 8.5 million Windows devices, only about 1%–on Delta Air Lines’ aircraft scheduling and the shutdown of many systems such as 911 and police within cities and states, but apparently a curtain was drawn around the healthcare bed. EHRs were affected at major systems such as Kaiser Permanente, Providence, Henry Ford Health, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Mass General Brigham, RWJBarnabas Health, Penn Medicine, and Seattle Children’s Hospital, causing postponements of medical procedures. At Providence, it totaled 15,000 of the organization’s servers, as well as about 40,000 of its 150,000 computers. It was the equivalent of a cyberattack without being a cyberattack. According to industry analyst Parametrix, US Fortune 500 companies (excluding Microsoft) lost a total of $5.4 billion. MedCityNews

With this kind of devastation, it’s no surprise that these companies and the government are rethinking their approach to cloud computing. They’re very concerned about the oligopoly of three providers: Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Microsoft has 40% of the cybersecurity market with CrowdStrike 15% concentrated in larger organizations.“We’re reaching the point where over-centralization makes us less ‘healable,’ and less resilient,” Robert Thomas, owner of cybersecurity company 180A Consulting said. “We’re losing our resiliency as a nation.”  Systems are still not back up and neither is the CrowdStrike stock. Rumors do persist that they were hacked. Epoch Times   Microsoft also published a recovery tool for IT administrators to expedite the repair process. FierceHealthcare

The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization hearing on 22 July had some further flak-gathering from committee members. Most of the criticism concentrated on the joint MHS/VA rollout at Lovell Federal Health Care Center and the amount of work it required to get the Oracle Cerner EHR to work mostly right. While VA and Oracle leaders insist that Lovell went better than anyone expected, the resources used at Lovell cannot be duplicated at the remaining VA facilities. VA is already facing a $15 billion shortfall for FY 2024 and 2025. The Lovell center had a persistent problem in processing prescriptions, with 60% going unfilled. In member Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) words, “I think we are far from ready to endorse further go-live activities. The two departments threw more resources at this go-live than will ever be available at any future VA facility.” Healthcare Dive  Earlier coverage TTA 24 July

The UK women’s health app Flo is now a unicorn. Their Series C of $200m (£156m), funded solely (and unusually) by General Atlantic, put them at a valuation of over $1 billion. Their total funding is $275 million. Two General Atlantic executives will be joining Flo’s board, Tanzeen Syed, managing director, and Jessie Cai, principal. Flo helps users track ovulation and menstrual periods, enabling calendaring of fertility, and monitoring of over 70 symptoms. It also assists with pregnancy health guidance. The raise will be used to expand into new user segments including perimenopause and menopause. Its current base is 70 million monthly active users (MAUs) and close to 5 million paid subscribers. Flo is marketed in 66 countries, including the US, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria, with centers in Lithuania and the Netherlands.  Release, UK Tech News

Funding/M&A wrap:

Clarapath, a medical robotics developer based in White Plains, NY, scored $36 million in a Series B-1 funding round from Northwell Ventures with participation from new investors Ochsner Ventures, CU Healthcare Innovation Fund, and Mayo Clinic. Clarapath automates pathology lab work. Its SectionStar platform sections biopsy tissue with improved accuracy. It is pre-revenue with a total of $75 million in funding. Axios, Mobihealthnews

CoachCare, a remote patient monitoring/virtual health monitoring developer for practices and health systems, added $48 million in an unlettered venture round funding led by Integrity Growth Partners with participation from Topmark Funding. The platform combines software and connected devices with outreach for RPM, chronic care management, and other virtual care for about 150,000 patients. Funding to date is $49 million. It has acquired four companies in the past year: NVOLVE, CareSpan Health, Alertive (formerly part of Carbon Health), and WebCareHealth. Release, Mobihealthnews

Another virtual care company, AvaSure, is acquiring Ouva’s smart hospital room solutions. Ouva has been partnering with AvaSure to supply AI-enhanced care automation technology. The acquisition will expand the ambient AI capabilities of AvaSure’s Intelligent Virtual Care Platform and double in-house AI engineering resources. AvaSure’s primary market is hospitals. Ouva will continue as a separate company with its pediatric and wayfinding business. Cost is not disclosed. Release, HIStalk 7/31