News and deal roundup: Best Buy’s $400M for Current, VA’s Cerner restart 2022, CVS-Microsoft product deal, and Athenahealth (finally) sold for $17B

December 3, 2021 | by

Whew! Best Buy revealed on its quarterly earnings call that they paid $400 million for Edinburgh/Boston-based RPM developer Current Health [TTA 13 Oct]. It’s near the end of the call transcript published on the Motley Fool. There will be no impact on their financial performance this year and will have a slightly negative impact on the Q4 non-GAAP operating income. Hat tip to HISTalk. 

Also today in HISTalk is a nifty summary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Cerner implementation timing and restaffing. There’s a graphic on the 2022-23 (FY 2022-24) rollout plus the new organization. VA has appointed a new Program Executive Director, Terry Adirim, MD, MPH, MBA, moving from Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, and established a new EHR Integration Council. VA release. VA also published a 10 page analysis on what went wrong with the initial tests and lessons learned, such as creating an EHR ‘sandbox’ for clinician training.

CVS Health and Microsoft continue with a new partnership, this time for digital health products. The five-year deal will include development in two areas: personalizing health recommendations that direct consumers to when and where they need a CVS, and operationally to leverage technology and machine learning for automation to reduce waste. Microsoft release, Healthcare Dive, HealthcareFinanceNews

And in the biggest non-surprise of the past few days, Athenahealth’s (or as they prefer, athenahealth) sale closed before the end of the year in a deal valued at $17 billion. The buyers were, as expected [TTA 19 Nov], Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman, along with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The 24 year-old Athenahealth, one of the EHR pioneers, was acquired by Elliot Investment Management’s PE arm Veritas and Evergreen Coast Capital in 2019 for about $5.7 billion. Its base is down to about 140,000 ambulatory care providers, having exited the small hospital market some time back. In the EHR market dominated by Epic and Cerner, surely Veritas and Evergreen are relieved to be at least getting some cash back. But there’s Misery Sharing, as they are both retaining a minority investment. (A small hint from a marketer–never lower-case the first letter in any part of your name. You make yourself unimportant and it hasn’t been ‘modern’ for a loooong time. It wasn’t lucky for British Airways, either. Perhaps the new majority owners will get this.)  Healthcare Dive, Business Wire

News and deal roundup: Babylon’s $200M raise, Best Buy buys Current Health, Virgin Pulse-Welltok, Devoted Health’s $1bn raise, Withings watch gains FDA ECG clearance

October 13, 2021 | by

Babylon Health adds $200 million to the accounts–in advance of its SPAC. Babylon’s raise of $200 million (€173M) in a ‘sustainability-linked investment’ came from the strategic capital investment firm, Albacore Capital Group. With the SPAC and PIPE, Babylon will now have access to over $800 million in capital [TTA 7 Oct]. Whew! Mobilhealthnews, Babylon release 

A score for Edinburgh. Current Health, a biosensor-based monitoring and home care management/remote patient monitoring system based in Edinburgh and Boston, sold itself to US retailer Best Buy. The company recently raised $43 million in an April Series B, which makes its quick sale somewhat unusual. Terms were not disclosed other than it was a cash deal and that Current’s CEO Christopher McCann will be remaining with the company. Best Buy extends its reach into digital home health, following on their 2019 buys of GreatCall, Critical Signal Technologies for RPM, and partnership with Tyto Care.

Current had achieved FDA Class II clearance in early 2019 [TTA 7 Feb 2019], had piloted with Mount Sinai Brooklyn and in the UK, Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust for a post-discharge monitoring program, and recently had created a “Community” initiative to build diverse longitudinal datasets for decentralized clinical trials [TTA 18 Feb]. Current Health announcement, Best Buy release, Mobihealthnews, Healthcare Dive

The wellness app-employee/health plan engagement program area continues to consolidate with Virgin Pulse’s acquisition of Welltok. In recent years, Welltok has concentrated more on data analytics and predictive capabilities in its member experience and patient acquisition/retention platforms for health plans and systems, after a start in employee wellness programs. Virgin Pulse, which exited the Richard Branson universe (despite the logo) when sold to Morgan Equity Partners in 2018, is now backed by Marlin Equity Partners. Terms and leadership were not disclosed. Virgin Pulse release, HISTalk

‘Insurtech’ Devoted Health raised a hefty $1.15 billion Series D led by Uprising and Softbank Vision Fund 2, along with a long list of returning and new investors. Icing on the cake is that they are closing in on an additional $80 million in funding to accommodate an investor. Devoted is led by former athenahealth and government IT leaders Ed and Todd Park. It’s one of the smaller in footprint tech-based Medicare Advantage providers but combines their plans with health coverage via Devoted Medical, a telehealth and in-home care provider, and partner providers. FierceHealthcare

The ECG monitoring space is now a little more crowded. Withings finally received FDA clearance for their ScanWatch’s ECG and SpO2 monitoring, nearly two years after its introduction in January 2020. It received clearance in Europe a year ago. The cleared features are atrial fibrillation detection alerts, which advises users to take a 30-second ECG readings, and SpO2 blood oxygen monitoring for detection of respiratory issues. Withings joins the Apple Watch, Fitbit, Samsung, and the grandaddy of them all, AliveCor’s KardiaMobile, for ECG monitoring–but packs this monitoring into a good-looking watch. Mobihealthnews

Deal and news roundup, 17-18 Feb: Sharecare goes SPAC for hefty $3.9 bn valuation; Humana Care Support pilots; AliveCor, AstraZeneca partner on renal, cardiac; Current Health RPM in clinical trials

February 18, 2021 | by

Sharecare, a free/paid app platform that enables users to consolidate all their health and wellness data in one location and use proprietary health management tools, is going the SPAC route with Falcon Capital Acquisition Corp. It will trade on NASDAQ under SHCR. Initial enterprise value is expected to be $3.9 bn with approximately $400 million in growth capital. Closing is expected to be in Q2 of this year.

Founded in 2010 by celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, MD (now on the board and not in active management) and WebMD founder Jeff Arnold, the current CEO, Sharecare will also have an undisclosed investment by strategic partners Anthem and Digital Alpha. Anthem is looking at the AI value plus consumer engagement and personalized care. Helping to fund both the public equity and cash position is a fully committed private investment in public equity (PIPE) of $425 million at $10.00 per share which is below market value. Falcon Capital will retain about 20 percent of the company. Mr. Arnold will join the board and be retained as CEO. After the closing, Sharecare and Falcon will donate about $4 million in stock to Sharecare’s charitable foundation.

Sharecare sells the platform to enterprises such as providers, employers, health plans, government organizations, and communities, as well as individuals on their free apps. Release, FierceHealthcare, Becker’s

Rival health plan Humana is also adding to its care management tools with a pilot of the Humana Care Support program. The platform creates an integrated, personalized experience for members, including a multi-disciplinary care team and SDOH integration. The pilot targets select groups of Medicare Advantage members in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia with multiple chronic conditions, complex congestive heart failure, and diabetes, with multi-disciplinary care teams. Humana Care Pilot is built on Salesforce’s Health Cloud platform for viewing the patient’s medical history and integrating clinician workflows. Its analytics are powered by Microsoft’s Azure and Power BI. The goal is lowering costs and improving outcomes for this high-cost group of patients. If successful, the program will roll out to other markets this year. Humana release, FierceHealthcare

AliveCor, the developer of the KardiaMobile mobile ECG/EKG, and AstraZeneca are partnering on research for new disease management solutions in cardiovascular, renal, and metabolism (CVRM) therapeutic areas. This will use AliveCor’s monitoring system for blood potassium. The Kardia-K AI platform uses ECG/EKG neural network analysis to measure a patient’s potassium levels without a patient blood draw. Hyperkalemia (elevated blood potassium) is linked to renal issues and kidney disease as well as cardiac issues. Kardia-K received Breakthrough Device Designation status from the FDA to screen for elevated levels of blood potassium in September 2018, and was validated in a study with Mayo Clinic published in 2019. Release, Mobihealthnews

Current Health, a monitoring and care management RPM system for enterprise-level health organizations, announced its “Community” initiative to build diverse longitudinal datasets for decentralized clinical trials. Their platform is FDA-cleared and used at scale in phase III and phase IV drug trials by major pharmaceutical organizations for remote endpoint collection and for virtual trial delivery. Monitoring is performed through wearables and sent to the electronic data capture (EDC) vendor for the clinical research organization (CRO). Current Health is using Community for its own COVID-19 study to predict hospitalizations and inform clinical treatment. The study is recruiting US participants diagnosed with the virus in the last 48 hours. Current has locations in Edinburgh, London, Boston, and San Francisco according to their website. Mobihealthnews

News roundup: Current Health’s Class II, Healthware Italy’s €10 million boost, the low state of Latin America telemedicine, weekend reading on digital health in health systems

February 7, 2019 | by

Scottish startup gains FDA Class II clearance, pilots with Mount Sinai Brooklyn. Edinburgh’s Current Health has received FDA Class II clearance for its AI-enabled remote patient monitoring wearable monitors. The single arm-worn wearable sends data every two seconds on oxygen saturation, respiration rate, pulse rate, temperature, activity, and posture. Algorithms analyze the data and alert clinicians to patient status and deterioration. The Mount Sinai pilot follows on Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust for a post-discharge monitoring program, with a 22 percent reduction in home visits plus fewer hospital readmissions and emergency department visits. Current Health is the renamed snap40. Mobihealthnews, BusinessWire release

Healthware, a Salerno, Italy-based consultancy group primarily concentrated in marketing and sales, has received a €10 million investment from Fondo Italiano d’Investimento SGR (FII Tech Growth). The investment will be used over the next two years has received to expand Healthware’s business transformation for life sciences companies and product development and services for digital health start-ups which improve health outcomes through new technologies. Release.  Hat tip to Healthware’s Antonietta Pannella

Telemedicine adoption in hospitals ranges from 65 to below 30 percent in Latin America. A study published this week in Health Affairs Global Health Policy (paywalled) looks at the different rates of hospital-based telemedicine adoption in nine Latin America countries. Leading is Chile with the aforementioned 65 percent; Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru with less than a 30 percent. In the middle: Panama (35 percent), Uruguay and Guatemala in the 40 percent range. Despite supportive official policies in many of these countries, “Efforts to implement telemedicine are isolated and scattered, often left to the public sector or taking the form of insulated projects that are not sustained” or scaled up nationally and regionally. Mobihealthnews

For weekend reading. Intersecting with the Latin America story above is this. This Editor missed the October issue of Global Health: Science and Practice published out of Johns Hopkins, but here it is. The focus of the six articles is digital health integration into health systems in the US and internationally. Hat tip to Alain B. Labrique via Twitter