TTA’s Hello to Fall 8: Walgreens’ 2nd corporate quake, Amazon Prime deep discounts One Medical, Owlet’s Dream Sock clears FDA, Best Buy-Mass General partner, healthcare VR revives, more!

November 10, 2023 | by

 

 

Our lead and breaking story is about more corporate shakeups at Walgreens, starting in the suites. There’s better news at Owlet, Best Buy, Envision, Walmart, and Philips. VR looks like its day in healthcare may finally come. And Amazon bites a bullet and deep discounts One Medical virtual services for Prime members. (But what if they actually use it?)

Breaking: Walgreens lays off 5% of corporate staff; chief medical officer, chief of staff for CEO to depart (The quake shakes the suites)
Short takes: Owlet Dream Sock FDA clearance; Best Buy-Mass General partner for at-home care; Amazon offers Prime members deeper One Medical discount (Need to pay off that $3.9 billion!)
Get your goggles on! Augmented and virtual reality finally taking off, from alleviating child pain to astronaut mental health (‘Bout time)
Early news roundup: Envision exits Ch. 11, splits; Walgreens’ new CIO; Philips’ $60M from Gates Foundation; more on Walmart-Orlando Health partnership; Cigna may sell MA business

A jam-packed week kicks off November with major payer and Amwell Q3 earnings. We catch up on Oracle Cerner and VA news, including a dubious AI effort. Some end-of-year signs of life with sales, financings, and partnerships. But sadly more layoffs (Centene, Carbon Health) and foldings (OliveAI). And once again, DOJ says it’s out to make M&A difficult.

Week-end short takes: payer earnings for Centene, Cigna, Humana; Centene and Walmart partner in FL; Dispatch Health and US Acute Care partner; Amwell widens loss; ProMedica $710M home health sale; AQuity’s $200M sale to IKS Health (Not beer and skittles for payers)
This ‘n’ that: HHS settles *2017* ransomware breach, Carbon Health lays off 114 in restructuring, why oh why VC General Catalyst wants a $3B health system, when Larry Met Billy, a lexicon of workplace terms
Catching up on Oracle Cerner and the VA, plus the AI ‘tech sprint’ (More distractions for the VA)
Olive AI selling rest of business to Waystar Health and Humata Health, winding down: reports (Another unicorn minus a horn)
News roundup: Walgreens & CVS pharmacy staff 3 day walkout, DOJ ramping up healthcare acquisition scrutiny, Cantata Health sold to TT Capital, Lancashire County Council chooses Progress Lifeline for TECS (UK) (On DOJ and M&A, we told you so!)
UHG’s Optum UK closes £1.24B buy of EMIS Group (One year later)

A busy week with some signs of life–and the first IPO in a year–in healthcare/tech funding. But others run out of money runway as year’s end approaches. Teladoc’s 2023 far better than their disastrous 2022–why stock doesn’t reflect it. Apple Watch violates patents again according to ITC. And can prescribed apps win in the UK?

Weekend reading: new study finds lack of GP and healthcare access driving 55% of UK patients to online/apps, desire for prescribed apps (Maybe now’s the time in the UK)
Breaking: ITC bans Apple Watch imports on violating Masimo blood oxygen measuring patents (updated) (David v. Goliath Redux)
Teladoc narrows loss in Q3 and YTD, grows revenue, adjusted profits…but stock sinks (Time to change direction again)
News roundup: Waystar’s $8B IPO plan, Perficient to buy SMEDIX, PicnicHealth buys AllStripes, MDLIVE buys Bright.md, Sage garners $15M, Cureatr shuts suddenly, Calibrate reorganizes, BetterUp lays off 16% (updated)

Big changes and losses roil the retail healthcare side through to primary care. Big reorganizations, closings, layoffs at Walgreens, VillageMD, and CVS Health. Rite Aid goes Chapter 11 to deal with litigation and losses. One Medical’s Iora Health finally rebrands in moving under Amazon.

Turmoil smacks retail healthcare (updated): Walgreens to shut 60 VillageMDs, as Village names 3 new presidents; CVS shakeup continues; Rite Aid bankrupt; Amazon’s One Medical rebrands Iora (Seems like the projections were more than a little off)

A busy HLTH brings news and a lot of resetting, notably Walgreens’. Big Investor General Catalyst gets into the ‘health assurance’ business (sigh) and merges two portfolio companies. Big Funding for rural health. Cano Health scrambles to survive, Babylon UK transitions but Rwanda shuts. And DEA kicks the controlled substances telehealth prescribing can down the 2024 road.

Short takes: follow up on Cano Health’s survival moves, eMed transitioning Babylon Health UK but Babyl Rwanda shuts, DEA extends telehealth prescribing for controlled substances thru 2024 (Closing chapters)
Walgreens’ transformation continues: new CEO enters, CIO exits, launches Virtual Healthcare in 9 states (The tap dance accelerates)
Two studies: telehealth’s ‘generation gap’ and $22B target for healthcare generative AI–by 2032
Funding/new business roundup: General Catalyst’s HATco ‘health assurance’ venture and $6B portfolio merger, Brightside Health expands, Diana Health’s $34M, Headway’s $125M, Main Street Health’s $315M (Back to ‘transforming healthcare’)

The EMIS acquisition cleared the CMA in the UK. Rock Health tries to put the best face on Q3’s US digital health funding doldrums.

Rock Health Q3 funding roundup: shrinking to fit ‘the new normal’ = the doldrums (Nothing mighty about being stuck in the horse latitudes)
CMA clears £1.2B EMIS acquisition by UnitedHealth Group’s Optum (UK) (It took a year, but UHG nabs the UK GP EHR leader)

It’s feeling like autumn in endings and change. Cano Health is being parted out like an old unrestorable car. Veradigm’s Nasdaq troubles accelerate with delisting and UpHealth is another cracked SPAC. Yet there is encouraging fresh growth with one big merger in employer wellness benefits and two fundings in women’s midlife health and home-based acute care.

News roundup: Veradigm facing Nasdaq delisting, UpHealth files Chapter 11, Virgin Pulse-HealthComp $3B merger, MidiHealth’s $25M Series A, Inbound Health’s $30M Series B (Veradigm still hasn’t figured out a financial software problem after 6 months?)
Cano Health’s dismemberment: Texas, Nevada primary care centers sold to Humana’s CenterWell for $66.7M, more to come (Parting out the old car)

Catching up on industry fundings and pivots, ATA, Walgreens at a crossroads, and the controversies surrounding DocGo in New York.

Short takes: Intuition Robotics gains $25M funding, Akili Interactive abandons digital Rx therapeutics, NextGen goes private for $1.8B, ATA’s DC advocacy ‘fly in’ + launches new tools on disparities
Walgreens trying to reboot “healthcare transformation” momentum, looking for new CEO, settling with Theranos litigants (The high cost of an industry race)
Could DocGo be another Babylon Health or Theranos? CEO resignation may be only the start of their troubles. (NYC/NYS controversy that may forecast further problems)

Following up on Babylon’s bankruptcy and administration, was it simply another Theranos? The fate of the GP at Hand (UK) service seems to be separate from Babylon. 

Echoes of Theranos in Babylon Health? And additional information on GP at Hand.
Babylon Health UK in administration, assets sold to eMed Healthcare Ltd.

Best of back posts!

Short takes: FTC’s Lina Khan’s vendetta on tech, employers disillusioned with virtual care, telepsychiatry cuts LOS and inpatient ED, Lotte’s AI-assisted telepsych diagnostics, ThymeCare’s $60M Series B (Why Cassandra is warning you!)

Weekend reading: Forbes picks the next $1B startups, is TV streaming analogous to the future of healthcare? (Yes, there may be unicorns, and the fracturing of TV and healthcare)

Babylon Health files for US Chapter 7 bankruptcy, winding down Babyl Rwanda and ending care for 2.8 million users (Hull loss for Babylon. Parting out starts 12 Sept)
 

M&A and FTC/DOJ antitrust changes

Healthcare M&A hit a 3 year low in Q2 2023, to the surprise of none: KPMG (Many reasons why-and we add a few observations)

FTC, HHS OCR scrutiny tightens on third-party ad trackers, sends letter to 130 hospitals and telehealth providers

Another antitrust shoe drops: FTC, DOJ publish Draft Merger Guidelines for comment–what are the effects? (New restrictions not good for founders, managers, VCs)

FTC, DOJ float enhanced information requirements for HSR premerger notification filing process–what will be M&A effects? (More dampers on a down market?)

Insurtechs and their pivots

Living to fight another day: insurtechs Bright Health, Clover Health, and Oscar Health report improved Q2s, H1s (updated) (Bright still at brink, but Clover and Oscar pivoting)

Legal roundup: Dorsata sues athenahealth, provider group on trade secret theft, Nevada terms Friday Health Plans (Dorsata as another ‘David’)

Why the ‘insurtechs’ didn’t revolutionize health insurance–and the damage they may have done (Back to the legacy payers)
Bright Health to exit insurance business, selling California plans to Molina for up to $600 million–contingent on surviving to 2024 (A dicey proposition all round)

Funding for telehealth and digital health
Rock Health’s first half funding roundup adjusts the bath temperature to tepid, the bubbles to flat (2020-22 an aberration)

“Hope is not a business model”–advice from two VCs, with a bit more advice on basic banking (We unpack good advice for early-stage companies)

‘Warning flare’ study: will pandemic-induced digital health solutions get renewed by hospitals in 2023-4, or will they churn? (Get cracking with your account relationships)

Watch your cash burn! Now 31 months average for startups between Series A and B. Now what do you do? (Cautionary advice for startups)

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Early news roundup: Envision exits Ch. 11, splits; Walgreens’ new CIO; Philips’ $60M from Gates Foundation; more on Walmart-Orlando Health partnership; Cigna may sell MA business

November 8, 2023 | by

Staffing firm Envision Healthcare exits Chapter 11 bankruptcy, splits off AmSurg clinics. One of the Big Bankruptcies earlier this year has been reorganized, cutting $8 billion in debt by 70% and spinning off its AmSurg surgical clinics to new ownership. The hospital and physician staffing company was hurt as early as 2020 with shortages of available staff, then the pandemic which cut patient volumes, and conflicts with payers around out-of-network billing charges. The last put the company in conflict with the ‘no surprises’ patient protection billing law that took effect this year. One particular legal spat with UnitedHealthcare tied up both companies for years, but was won by Envision after an independent arbitration panel this past spring awarded Envision $91 million, finding that UHC breached its in-network contract. KKR, which had taken Envision private in 2018, lost $3.5 billion in equity, one of their largest corporate investment losses. Henry Howe, the company’s chief financial officer, takes over as interim CEO on 1 December as current CEO Jim Rechtin leaves to join Humana. Healthcare Dive  Background: TTA 12 May, 16 May   

Walgreens fills its chief information officer vacancy with the interim CIO. Neal Sample was appointed last Wednesday (1 Nov) as CIO and EVP, reporting to new CEO Tim Wentworth and joining the executive and IT governance committees. Sample was appointed last month as an IT advisor after CIO Hsiao Wang left suddenly on 2 October. Both Wentworth and Sample worked with each other at Express Scripts, with Sample holding both COO and CIO positions there, then departing for the CIO position at Northwestern Mutual. Walgreens release, Retail Dive

Philips receives an additional $44 million from the Gates Foundation for further Lumify Ultrasound System development. The total of $60 million in grants starting in 2021 was for the development of AI-enabled applications to improve obstetric care in low- and middle-income countries. The Lumify handheld ultrasound system assists frontline health workers, such as midwives, in interpreting obstetric images and identifying possible complications during pregnancy in hours versus weeks of training. The system’s Kenya trial was successful. The additional funding will be used to expand global adoption in underserved rural communities. Philips release  This follows Gates Foundation grants to GE Healthcare ($44 million) and Butterfly Network ($5 million) for easily deployed ultrasound and imaging systems to support low-income countries’ rural maternal health and respiratory scanning. Mobihealthnews

More on Orlando Health’s partnership with Walmart. Briefly noted here last week in Walmart’s release and reporting on Walmart Health’s new partnership with Centene’s Ambetter plan in Florida was the Orlando Health hospital partnership. This will coordinate care for patients admitted to the health system’s hospitals or who need specialty care. It is a first for Walmart as it has not previously partnered with local health systems on specialty and hospital care as an extension of its clinics. Eight of its 48 clinics are in the Orlando area. Becker’s Health IT 1 Nov, 6 Nov

Cigna is exploring a sale of its Medicare Advantage (MA) business. According to the exclusive report by Reuters (may be paywalled), Cigna is in early stages, at this point consulting with an investment bank. Cigna is not much of a player in the difficult state-by-state, county-by-county MA business, with 599,000 members as of 30 September, which is about 3% of their 19 million total insurance members. But it has been problematic, with Cigna recently paying CMS $172 million to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by submitting incorrect data to obtain higher payments. By comparison, UnitedHealthcare and Humana have nearly half (47% or 14.5 million) of the national 30.8 million MA members (KFF). Becker’s

Close of week short takes: Q2 earnings up for GEHC, Talkspace; UnitedHealth invests $11M in SDOH; fundings for two AI startups, K4Connect, UpLift, Family First

July 28, 2023 | by

Winding up this week on nothing but positive news.

GE Healthcare was up smartly on revenue. For Q2, GEHC reported revenue of $4.8 billion, up 7% versus Q2 prior year, and a 9% organic revenue growth.  The adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBITDA) was $711 million versus $719 million prior year, with net income slightly down at $418 million versus $485 million prior year. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.92. Orders were up 6%. GEHC is adjusting its earnings upward by one percentage point for the full-year guidance on organic revenue growth and 10 cents in adjusted EPS at the midpoint. GEHC spun off from GE in January. Mobihealthnews

Talkspace had a far more mixed picture. Their Q2 revenue climbed 19% versus prior year to $35.6 million. This was due to an 82% increase in B2B revenue partially offset by a 41% consumer revenue decline. The other good news was that they narrowed net loss to $4.7 million from the prior year’s $23 million. Adjusted for EBITDA, the loss was $4 million. Another positive factor was that operating expenses were reduced 32% to $24.2 million. They are seeing an increase in revenue for 2023 to $137 million to $142 million and moving towards breakeven by end of Q1 2024. Another entrant in the crowded telemental health space, Talkspace went public in 2021 through a SPAC, trading as high as $11.95. Late last year, it flirted with delisting on Nasdaq, but is currently trading at $1.70. Mobihealthnews

UnitedHealthcare’s big bet on social determinants of health (SDOH) involves $11.1 million in grants to 66 nonprofits across 12 states. Part of their Empowering Health initiative, the grants help organizations that aid uninsured individuals and underserved communities in areas such as food insecurity, nutrition, social isolation, memory loss, behavioral health issues, health literacy efforts, and more. Since its start in 2018, UnitedHealthcare invested $62 million in grants that serve more than 11 million people in 30 states and the District of Columbia. MedCityNews, UnitedHealthcare news

Digital health and AI fundings are also ramping up–a little–in the $9-15 million range:

  • Two generative AI startups, Hippocratic AI and GenHealth AI, had early funding rounds in the $15 million range. Hippocratic AI is a safety-focused large language model (LLM) for healthcare competing with GPT-4, outperforming it on 105 of 114 healthcare exams and certifications. Their second seed round funding of $15 million from Cincinnati Children’s and HonorHealth adds to their May $50 million seed. GenHealth AI raised $13 million in a venture round from Obvious Ventures and Craft Venture. Their form of generative AI they call a large medical model (LMM) trained on medical-event data called DOOG-E. Two Washington veterans joined their board: Dr. Don Rucker, former national coordinator for health IT in the Trump administration and currently on the 1upHealth board, and Aneesh Chopra, the first chief technology officer of the US in the Obama administration.
  • Senior housing focused K4Connect received a venture round of $9 million from AXA Venture Partners and Bryce Catalyst with existing investors Forté Ventures, Intel Capital, the Ziegler-LinkAge Fund, and Topmark Partners, for a total of $41 million. K4Connect is positioned as an operating system (FusionOS) that integrates multiple senior living technologies. Mobihealthnews
  • Telementalhealth provider UpLift raised $10.7 million in Series A funding from Ballast Point Ventures with participation from Front Porch Ventures, Kapor Capital, and existing investor B Capital for a total raise of $22 million. UpLift is a direct to consumer therapy model which promotes both insurance coverage, affordable rates, and medication management. Another Series A funding of $11 million went to Family First, a technology platform for enterprises that supports caregivers’ mental health and wellbeing, The round was led by RPM Ventures and Eos Venture Partners.  Mobihealthnews

AI news: GE HealthCare’s 510(k) for Precision DL (+ GE stake sale), Samsung adopts care.ai for in-facility patient monitoring, Mayo Clinic-Google Cloud generative AI, Wolters Kluwer buys Invistics for drug diversion detection

June 8, 2023 | by

GEHC receives FDA clearance for Precision DL (deep learning) image processing software. It improves image quality on GEHC’s PET/CT, Omni Legend, which enables faster scanning time and improved small lesion detection. Deep learning as part of AI is a subset of machine learning (ML), which uses a neural network with three or more layers that simulates the human brain in processing and ‘learning’ from large amounts of data and drawing judgments from it. (See our recent Perspectives for a more nuanced explanation.)  According to GEHC’s presentation brochure on Precision DL, it is trained with thousands of PET images made using multiple reconstruction methods. Mobihealthnews

GEHC was spun off from parent General Electric (GE) in January. GE retained about 19% of its stock at the time with the remaining being distributed to GE shareholders, but on Monday announced that it would sell 25 million shares, or about $2 billion in value, in a debt-for-equity exchange. The debt is held by affiliates of Morgan Stanley which would then receive the stock, which has done well. This would reduce GE’s stake in the spinoff considerably.  Reuters, Yahoo Finance

Samsung partnering with care.ai for facility ‘smart care’. Orlando-based care.ai’s Smart Care Facility Platform monitors for conditions and learns from patient behaviors. It can be used for infection prevention and control, patient and protocol monitoring, workforce optimization, and virtual care. The AI-powered platform will be integrated into Samsung displays for clinician use, including virtual care. The system will be utilized in hospitals, nursing homes, and care facilities. care.ai release, 

Mayo Clinic is also jumping on the AI bandwagon with Google Cloud. Google Cloud’s Enterprise Search in Generative AI App Builder (Gen App Builder) will be used to make it easier for clinicians and researchers to find the information they need and improve the efficiency of clinical workflows to ultimately improve patient outcomes. According to the release, Enterprise Search in Gen App Builder unifies data across dispersed documents, databases, and intranets, making it easier to search, analyze, and identify the most relevant results. Mayo is an early adopter of the system. Google Cloud release  

Wolters Kluwer Health has acquired Atlanta-based Invistics. Invistics’ Flowlytics tracks medication in hospitals and other patient care settings through ML-based systems. The most critical ‘hot button’ use is for detecting drug diversion, which is when a healthcare worker illegally obtains or uses prescription drugs intended for a patient. This is done by reconciling drug transactions from purchase to patient, with their system being used to rapidly and accurately identify patterns of behavior consistent with drug diversion. More routine usage is for automating controlled substance compliance. This will fit in with Wolter Kluwer’s existing products Simplifi+ and Sentri7 in their Clinical Surveillance, Compliance & Data Solutions unit. Information on transaction cost and management transitions were not disclosed. Release

Hat tip to HIStalk’s new AI News feature 7 June for both Mayo-Google Cloud and WK-Invistics.

Weekend news roundup: GE Healthcare spins off, adds CTO; Allscripts now Veradigm; NHS Brainomix AI stroke trial success; Withings home urine scanner; Careficient buys Net Health EMR; CommonSpirit’s class action suit on data breach

January 7, 2023 | by

GE Healthcare now trading on its own. On Wednesday, GEHC rang Nasdaq’s traditional opening bell virtually on its first day of trading Wednesday (4 Jan). The bell ringing was unique as the first company in Wisconsin to do so from their plant in Waukesha. GE retained approximately 19.9% of the outstanding shares of GE HealthCare common stock with the remaining 80.1% distributed to current GE shareholders. Today it closed at $58.95 and remains headquartered in Chicago. (It moved from Amersham UK back in 2016.) Management is now independent, with Peter Arduini as CEO and adding yesterday a new chief technology officer, Taha Kass-Hout MD, MS, from Amazon’s health AI area to lead the company’s new science and technology organization through their four areas: Imaging, Ultrasound, Patient Care Solutions, and Pharmaceutical Diagnostics. Release, Yahoo Finance  Also Mobihealthnews

Remember back in 2019 when problematic EHR Practice Fusion was renamed Veradigm? Allscripts has now renamed the entire company as Veradigm, after expanding it to analytics and research. After two years of reorganizing and downsizing (plus paying off Practice Fusion fines), selling off their hospital/large practice EHRs to Constellation Software/N. Harris Group for $700 million last May, the slimmed-down Veradigm Network encompasses electronic health records, practice management systems, and patient communication platforms. Interestingly, a search first leads you to a main corporate website under Allscripts and doesn’t forward automatically to Veradigm, making this a softer-than-usual name change. Now Veradigm can pick up a few companies on the market, as they announced last year. Release    Hat tip to HISTalk

NHS using Brainomix AI to diagnose stroke faster, tripled near-full recoveries to 48%.  The key finding: patients diagnosed using AI made near full recoveries increased from 16 to 48%. The trial of e-Stroke Suite took place in 22 hospital trusts in England across 111,000 suspected stroke patients. The AI in the e-Stroke Suite cut average diagnosis to treatment time by an hour from 140 to 79 minutes. The AI technology was developed by UK company Brainomix. Daily Mail, Oxford Academic Health Science Network case study (Note: Oxford AHSN, Brainomix, and Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust (RBH) are partners in the National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging (NCIMI).)

Withings is debuting the U-Scan, an in-home urinalysis device, at CES. The 90 mm device sits in the toilet bowl and uses cartridges to analyze urine components, sending results to the Withings Health Mate app. Cartridges for Europe so far are Cycle Sync for menstrual period tracking and ovulation windows, and Nutri Balance for hydration and nutrition. Nutri Balance analyzes specific gravity, pH, vitamin C, and ketone levels. The U-Scan will debut in Europe at the end of Q2, with the U-Scan starter kit priced at €499.95.  Both await FDA clearance. Withings U-Scan page, Mobihealthnews

Careficient buys Net Health’s home health/hospice EMR. Careficient already is present in the home health, hospice and home care cloud EMR market. Net Health is selling its home health, hospice, home care and palliative solutions EMR, marketed under HealthWyse and Hospicesoft, as well as its revenue cycle management (RCM) division, to concentrate on wound care and rehabilitation therapy. This expands Careficient’s client base by 750 locations in 39 states. Transaction cost was not disclosed. Release

Add to the cost of hacking multiple class action lawsuits. CommonSpirit Health, based in Chicago and the second largest health system in the US covering 21 states under CHI and Dignity Health names, not only has to remedy a massive 600,000 patient data breach discovered last October [TTA 3 Dec], but also fight a class action lawsuit filed 29 December by a patient in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Financial, health insurance, and medical information were all breached. The suit requests damages exceeding $5 million and injunctive relief, including stronger data protection practices. It will be the first of many as a quick search indicates multiple law firms seeking claimants. FierceHealthcare, WGNRadio

News roundup: CVS abandons (?) Cano Health buy; Signify adds home RPM; BioIntelliSense RPM acquires AlertWatch; GE Healthcare, AMC Health partner; Viome raises $67M, other fundings

October 21, 2022 | by | 1 Comment

CVS Health apparently backs away from a strategic primary care buy. Earlier this week, both Barron’s and DealReporter (via FactSet) reported that CVS Health is no longer pursuing an acquisition of Cano Health, a primary care provider group in Florida, Texas, Nevada, California, Illinois, New Mexico, and Puerto Rico that concentrates on senior health, Medicare Advantage patients, and value-based care. Cano has 4,000 employees and 280,000 members. Reasons why were not disclosed by either CVS or Cano. Cano shares listed on the NYSE fell on the news from Monday’s open of $8.22 to $4.50 today (20 Oct). An alternative buyer may be Humana, which has a right of first refusal on a sale dating back to 2019, but Humana has been quiet on the acquisition front of late.

Walking away seems contrary to CVS’ stated strategy of pursuing deals in primary care, provider enablement, and home health, but CVS can afford to be choosy. There’s speculation that CVS has a different provider/VBC enablement target in mind.  Jailendra Singh of Truist Securities identified ACO management services organization Privia Health as a potential buy that would fit well with CVS’ pending buy of Signify Health, which includes competitor Caravan Health (more on this here). But who knows if this ‘walk away’ is final? Healthcare Finance, FierceHealthcare

CVS’ pending deal, Signify Health, announced the addition of spirometry testing to evaluate patients for COPD. This will be added to their existing suite of in-home diagnostic testing and tracking, In-Home Health Evaluation, targeted to Medicaid and Medicare Advantage members. Mobihealthnews

If there’s a Cinderella this inflationary, recessionary year, it’s remote patient monitoring (RPM). BioIntelliSense has been in RPM since 2020 with on-body/stick-on sensors such as the BioButton and the BioSense 30-day monitor. Their latest addition through acquisition is the AlertWatch clinical intelligence and triage system. AlertWatch will join BioIntelliSense’s product group within Medtronic’s HealthCast portfolio in US hospital patient monitoring as part of their existing partnership. In the past ten years, AlertWatch achieved four FDA 510(k) clearances for its specialized product offerings for the operating room, intensive care unit, and labor and delivery unit.  BioIntelliSense release

Veteran RPM company AMC Health will be partnering with GE Healthcare (GEHC) for post-discharge in-home care monitoring. This will extend GEHC’s hospital-based monitoring into post-acute patient needs and anticipate future care needs, potentially reducing unnecessary readmissions. It’s also planned that eventually both hospital and home data will be integrated into GE’s Edison Health database. GEHC also announced additional details about its spinoff, due to happen in early 2023. [Also TTA 12 Nov 21 and 20 July] Mobihealthnews

Healthcare/health tech raises haven’t entirely disappeared. Viome, which uses AI to test the oral and gut microbiome to prevent, diagnose, and treat chronic diseases and cancer, just raised a $67 million Series C led by Bold Capital Group with participation from Khosla Ventures, West River Group, Glico, Ocgrow Ventures, and Physician Partners, for a total raise since 2017 of over $169 million (Crunchbase). Viome recently launched the CancerDetect test for oral and throat cancers under the FDA Breakthrough Device Designation. Last year, they expanded their partnership with GlaxoSmithKline to research and potentially develop interventions for some cancers and autoimmune diseases. Viome release  

Mobihealthnews rounds up several other financings from genomic tester Variantyx’s $20 million in debt financing to mental health app Mindful Care’s modest $7 million Series B and dataset research collaboration platform Rhino Health‘s $6.7 million seed round extension for an $11 million total.

Rounding up the week with good news: AliveCor’s Series F round, Scotland’s Smplicare gains £750K for fall research

August 19, 2022 | by

AliveCor has moved to a Series F round led by GE Healthcare. In this funding-parched environment, this is impressive though the funding amount is (sigh) not disclosed. The round was joined by NGK-NTK (through a CVC partnership with Pegasus Tech Ventures) and existing investors including Khosla Ventures, Bold Capital Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and WP Global Partners. The fresh funding will be used to advance new innovations, their AI roadmapping, and existing ones such as introducing subscription services, KardiaCare and KardiaComplete for patients, payers and employers, and KardiaPro for physicians. KardiaCare has 165,000 members, claiming 2 million users and 160 million ECGs to date. GEHC and AliveCor currently partner on integrating KardiaMobile 6L’s ECG data directly into GE Healthcare’s MUSE Cardiac Management System.  Release. Hat tip to Dr. Dave Albert, founder and Reader.

The UK funding environment is also perking a bit in the public/private area. Edinburgh-based startup Smplicare now has £750,000  to explore how commercially available wearable technologies can predict the risk of falls and other age-related health issues. Funding came from private investors and UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)’s Healthy Ageing Challenge, with the goal of adding five years of healthy, independent living for everyone by 2035. Overall, the challenge has seven themes and an extensive list of partnerships worth referencing if your technology, platform, or social enterprise is in this area of keeping older people active, productive, and in their communities. Smplicare’s tech uses a questionnaire to easily determine levels of clinical fraility, then a dashboard to project trends. Their project is to monitor 300 individuals 55+ and with a history of falls agreeing to wear a mainstream wearable for six months. What this will enable Smplicare to do is to have enough data to create an AI-powered algorithm that will predict the likelihood of a fall, possibly saving the NHS more than £4.4 billion annually. The research is led by Smplicare’s chief innovation officer, Dr. Adrian Smales, an award-winning PhD in health informatics. Support comes from the analytics team at Data Lab, Scotland’s innovation center for data and AI, and on the clinical side, Dr. Atul Anand, an NHS and University of Edinburgh geriatrician with experience in big data clinical studies. Insider.co.UK, The Scotsman

Midweek heat wave roundup: GE Healthcare’s new name, hospital-to-home health trending big, over 2 million patient records hacked

July 20, 2022 | by

GE’s breakup into three public companies, announced last November [TTA 12 Nov 21], has been formalized with brand names. No surprise, the healthcare business has but a teeny tiny change to GE HealthCare (logo left) and after the spinoff will be trading sometime in early 2023 under GEHC on Nasdaq because “GE HealthCare will benefit from the exchange’s profile and track record as a market for innovative, technology-led public companies, particularly in the healthcare sector. The heritage ‘meatball’ (as we called it in marketing internally, but formally the Monogram) will be retained but the color will change from poison green to “compassion purple” to reflect more humanity and warmth and achieve greater distinction”. The hardest hit part of GE, the energy businesses, will be spun off as GE Vernova and key color an ‘evergreen’. What is left will be GE Aerospace, retaining its name and change its color to an ‘upper atmosphere’ blue that is almost black. Outer space, anyone? GE release, interview on YouTube

Au courant is hospital-to-home (H2H) and home health, digitally enabled mais bien sûr.

  • Mass General Brigham (MGB) is reportedly expanding its current 25-bed program to 200 in the next 2.5 years. Since 2016, MGB has treated nearly 1,800 H2H patients. By end of 2023, they plan 90 hospital-at-home beds managed across Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and Salem Hospital. Their new head for home-based care will be Heather O’Sullivan, who comes from EVP and chief clinical innovation officer spots at Kindred at Home, acquired by Humana in 2021. FierceHealthcare
  • Out in rural Wisconsin, Marshfield Clinic is rolling out a H2H program with DispatchHealth, to coordinate medical care for injuries and illnesses including viral infections, COPD exacerbations, congestive heart failure, and more. The goal is to reduce non-emergency ED visits. DispatchHealth can also perform services such as onsite diagnostics, mobile imaging, and CLIA-certified labs for kidney function, electrolytes, and urinalysis. In March 2021, they closed a $200 million Series D bringing their funding to unicorn level. HealthcareITNews
  • UHG’s Optum has moved closer on its $5.5 billion acquisition of LHC Group home health and hospice [TTA 31 Mar] with shareholder approval on 21 June. Once closed later this year, LHC will be integrated into Optum Health. LHC operates in 37 states and the District of Columbia, employing about 30,000 individuals. Home Health Care News, Becker’s

And what would a week with a heat wave that melts runways at RAF Brize Norton and Luton be without a couple of big data breaches to heat up things? Stolen: an iPad chock full of 75,000 Kaiser Permanente patients’ PHI from Kaiser’s Los Angeles Medical Center’s COVID-19 testing center. While the information on the iPad included first and last names, dates of birth, medical record numbers, and dates and location of service (but not SSN or financial information), Kaiser was able to remotely erase the data. At this point, there is no evidence of theft or misuse. NBC Los Angeles, Becker’s   An even larger breach of 2 million records came via a February hack attack on health provider debt collector Professional Finance Company (PFC). Hackers got into PFC’s computers and accessed patient names, addresses, SSN, health insurance, and medical treatment data. Among the 650 client companies affected were Banner Health and Nevada physician network Renown Health. Healthcare Dive

Thursday news roundup: Walmart hiring 50K workers including health, Anthem name-changing, GE Healthcare-AliveCor partner, IPO for Komodo Health amid slowdown?

March 17, 2022 | by

In the midst of war, inflation, and the contradiction of a tight labor market, it’s somehow reassuring that Walmart needs to hire 50,000 new workers–and fast, by end of April. According to reports, some of those new hires will be bolstering the health and wellness areas. In the past, Walmart has hired heavily in their in-store pharmacies. Many of these jobs are lower-end–delivery drivers for direct-to-fridge InHome groceries, in-store workers, and supply chain staff. One higher-level worker area that points to health is global tech, creating offices in Toronto and Atlanta, with Walmart planning jobs for 5,000 engineers, data scientists, analysts, and tech experts. Additional hires will go to increasing its advertising business which is based in the New York metro area. Especially for those high-skill positions, six weeks is not quite plausible in this market. But you have to admire them for trying. CNBC, Becker’s

Anthem changing its name–again. Health insurer giant Anthem, Inc. has announced a renaming to Elevance Health. According to the release, the name is a combination of elevate and advance, presumably for health but as they say in their release, vaulting beyond healthcare into the rarefied air of ‘whole health’. It also reflects vaulting beyond the health plan business, as they fully savor the rarified air of healthcare diversification like fellow giants UnitedHealth Group, Centene, and CVS Aetna.

The parent company of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, Anthem owns non-Blues Amerigroup, Integra Managed Care in NY,  pharmacy benefits manager IngenioRx, plus a $25 million investment in digital health hub Sharecare. Plan and product names, along with organizations will not change at this time–these are major changes that usually require state department of insurance approvals.

To this Editor’s Gimlet Eye, the coined name Elevance feels pharmaceutical and not in a good way–it’s very close to an old anti-depressant, Elavil. A return to WellPoint, a name the company had up to 2014, would have accomplished the same ends. But there’s always the shock of the new, the opportunity to change the tired signage, and behind this, someone making a point for themselves. Undoubtedly the shareholders will agree at the 18 May annual meeting, since they always do, and it will start to be used–presumably with a logo and new graphics they don’t have now–at end of Q2. Another gimlety view–it takes a certain myopia to announce a name change given what’s happening in the world. Healthcare Dive

In time for HIMSS, GE Healthcare and AliveCor, developer of the KardiaMobile ECG, announced their partnership to transmit KardiaMobile 6L data directly into GE Healthcare’s MUSE Cardiac Management System for clinical evaluation. MUSE is used by 87 percent of the top cardiac hospitals in the US. The direct integration of KardiaMobile 6L data that is taken anywhere into the MUSE workflow and then into an EMR, targeting atrial fibrillation but also other cardiac monitoring, is a big validation and win for AliveCor. Release

Analytics software company Komodo Health is preparing an IPO as early as this summer. Goldman Sachs and SVB Securities are rumored to be the lead bookrunners. Timing will depend on markets and financing. Komodo completed last March a $220 million Series E for funding to date of $314 million [TTA 25 Mar 2021]. With a valuation now topping $3 billion, Komodo may be the ‘IT’ company of healthcare IPOs in a market much tamer than last year’s Wild West Rodeo. What they do isn’t easy to explain, but they feed their 325 million patient encounter database drawn from EHR, pharma, lab, and government data into proprietary software to map patient journeys, providing analytics on more than 325 de-identified, real-world patient insights. These are used to drive better health outcomes across therapeutic areas. The primary markets for their data are life sciences and pharma for R&D, clinical trials, and medical affairs, but are seeking to expand to providers and payers.

Other IPOs rumored to be on tap are Included Health (the former Grand Rounds/Doctor on Demand) [TTA 20 Oct 2021] and Tempus Labs in precision medicine.

News roundup: GE Healthcare spins off, Mercy Health accused of telehealth tech theft, NHS’ proposed $8.1bn bump for backlogs–with a 83 y/o in a 7am queue

November 12, 2021 | by

Breaking up GE is so very hard to do–or is it? The long-rumored spinoff of GE Healthcare will be happening by early 2023. Leadership will also be changing, with Integra LifeSciences CEO Peter Arduini becoming president and CEO on 1 January, replacing Kieran Murphy who came from the Life Sciences business and the UK. A GE connection will remain since GE chairman and CEO Lawrence Culp will serve as non-executive chairman of GE Healthcare after spinoff. Also spinning off by 2024 will be the power and energy business. What remains of General Electric will be the commercial aviation and defense aviation business. 

A spinoff of GEHC was in the works in 2018, but faltered when the then-CEO left. It currently is a $17 billion business which, like its competitors Siemens Healthineers, Philips, Fujifilm, Toshiba, and Hitachi, has been affected by supply chain disruption. In third quarter, there was a 6% decline in revenue to $4.3 billion in the period compared to a year ago. Barron’s estimates that the valuation of GEHC would be about $54 billion after spinoff, even with debt and related costs.

For GEHC and its people, at least one decision about the future is resolved. And one could hope that GEHC could finally free itself of the Welch (and later) ‘take it or leave it’ legacy that never seemed to fit healthcare, the brutal GE internal culture, and chart its own course of innovation and improved customer service.  CNBC, Healthcare Dive

Mercy Health, a health system headquartered in St. Louis, is being sued by former telehealth provider LifeScience Technologies LLC (LST) for misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, civil conspiracy, and more . LifeScience’s m.Care was being used by Mercy from 2015. In the lawsuit filed by LifeScience, Mercy is being accused of giving Myia Health’s software development team improper access to LST’s virtual health software using @Mercy.net credentials. Mercy then invested $5 million in Myia Health and replaced m.Care with Myia’s ‘derivative’ software. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division on 25 October. Springfield News-Leader, LST release

Last month’s proposed NHS budget from the Finance Ministry included a $8.1 million boost to help resolve patient waiting lists and modernize technology. The ‘boomerang’ of cases from the pandemic lingers on. The increase represents $3.2 billion for testing services, $2.9 billion to improve technology, and $2 billion to increase bed capacity. VOA. Perhaps the increase will help a gentleman like Keith Pratt, aged 83, who faced at London Road Community Hospital first a lost blood test that was part of his diabetes checkup, and then, because he had no computer nor access to log in for a new appointment, was forced to queue at 7am at the walk-in clinic. Derbyshire Live reported that “Keith feels that people without internet access are being overlooked when it comes to accessing NHS services in Derbyshire. He said: “I’ve not got a computer and I am like thousands of other people who haven’t got a computer, not just older people like myself.” Will the technology improvements include not losing tests, and phone backup for appointments? Wouldn’t that be nice?

CEO change at GE may mean delay or cancellation of GE Healthcare spinoff–for good or ill

October 3, 2018 | by

The well-publicized and unvarnished dumping of GE‘s CEO John Flannery after only 13 months has led a leading research analyst to predict that the planned GE Healthcare spinoff will be delayed or even halted. Analyst Jim Corridore of CFRA stated on CNBC that incoming CEO Lawrence Culp, a recent board member who was CEO of Danaher, a scientific, industrial and healthcare conglomerate, may decide that the division should stay. 

At $19 billion in revenue with a profit of $3.4 billion, 15.8 percent of GE’s total sales and 43.2 percent of its operating profit in 2017, the wisdom of a GEHC spinoff always seemed doubtful. The selloff was in line with Mr. Flannery’s strategy of refocusing on GE’s industrial and energy business. However, this was not going terrifically well, at least in the BOD’s view, with a sluggish turnaround, shares dropping off the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, projections of missing year-end targets, activist investor Nelson Peltz hovering, and exacerbated by problems at GE Power with its new line of natural gas-fired power turbines. Perhaps a few were doubly offended by the selloff of the corporate jets (relative pennies) as well as the expensive and frankly hard-to-justify corporate HQ move from Connecticut to Boston.

Mr. Culp is apparently well-thought of, having retired after a highly successful 14-year run at Danaher, but he has his work cut out for him. He will also need to quickly judge whether to continue the GEHC spinoff process or bring the cattle back into the fold, as the drive was well underway down the trail. Somehow, spinning off 40 percent of your operating profit seems strategically foolish given a plummeting share price.

A jaundiced opinion. Perhaps as an outsider, Mr. Culp can change the ‘death star’ culture at GE. This Editor, in her brief encounter with GEHC as part of an acquired company (Living Independently Group, developer of QuietCare, circa 2008-9) found their business practices and many of their people to be both ruthless and self-referential to the point of stumbling blindness. The LIG acquisition was part of an ill-considered and perhaps ego-driven experiment by GEHC’s CEO at the time to get into home, remote monitoring, and assisted living health, a developmental, small-scale, early-stage area. It was obvious that GE’s vaunted methodology and hospital-based acute care experience were worse than useless when it came to understanding what is still a developmental area. The home health businesses were sold, closed, or (in the case of QuietCare), spun off into a joint venture. That CEO and a few other people leveraged it well; LIG’s employees, shareholders, and others at GEHC did not. 

As Star Wars fans know, Death Stars are destroyed in the final reel.

GE’s change at the top puts a healthcare head first

June 13, 2017 | by

This Monday morning’s Big News was the stepping down, after 16 years, of GE‘s CEO Jeff Immelt effective August 1, and the rise of GE Healthcare’s head, John Flannery. The focus of most articles naturally was the fate of GE. Mr. Immelt may have steered the company through a severe recession starting in 2008, but he managed to lose about a third of the company’s value in the process. Expect some changes to be made in Boston. “I’m going to do a fast but deliberate, methodical review of the whole company,” Flannery told Reuters in an interview. “The board has encouraged me to come in and look at it afresh.” In an earlier call with investors, he said the review would have “no constraint.”

Mr. Flannery is a 30-year GE veteran, head of Healthcare since 2014, and previously head of GE India, its equity business in Latin America and GE Capital in Argentina and Chile. According to Fortune, GEHC is 15 percent of GE’s total business and in recent years has been smartly up in revenue. They have partnered recently with UCSF on predictive analytics, Boston Children’s Hospital on a pediatric brain scan database, and Johns Hopkins of a more efficient hospital bed allocation process. Also is an example of telemedicine remote diagnosis using a GE Health portable ECG device connected to the Tricog smartphone app to take a reading in India which was diagnosed in San Diego.

Usually healthcare CEOs become CEOs of other healthcare companies–witness the rise of one of Mr. Flannery’s predecessors, GE veteran Omar Ishrak, as CEO of Medtronic.  Fortune’s healthcare reporter interviewed Mr. Flannery two weeks ago–more of this interview will be published according to the author. (But hasn’t as of June 21!)

Walgreens partners with Chicago health tech incubator MATTER (US)

December 24, 2016 | by

Walgreens, the US retail pharmacy part of Walgreens Boots Alliance, on 20 December announced its own alliance with Chicago healthcare incubator and innovation community, MATTER. This Editor believes it is the first retail partnership with a health tech-focused incubator or accelerator in the US; most of these partnerships are with angel networks, VCs, health system venture arms or large commercial healthcare partners such as Qualcomm, Allscripts or GE Healthcare. Walgreens’ contribution will be to mentor and collaborate with MATTER entrepreneurs. Reportedly they have or have had more than 150 startups in their program. They are also part of Chicago’s push to slice itself some health tech cake versus cities like San Diego, Palo Alto, Dallas, Boston and New York via the recently launched Health Care Council of Chicago (HC3), which was co-created by MATTER and Leavitt Partners. Hopefully, Walgreens will get some of their $140 million back via their Theranos lawsuit ending their blood testing misadventure [TTA 17 Nov, Ch. 24] and spread their bets with legitimately promising startups. Press release, ChicagoInno

GE Healthcare gets into accelerator biz with five.eight

October 5, 2016 | by

Having tip-toed around the accelerator action with StartUp Health Academy (GE Ventures), GE Healthcare (GEHC) is taking the full dive in with five.eight, named after the 5.8 billion people worldwide (citation not provided) who lack access to quality, affordable healthcare and need tailored approaches. Up to 10 startups in the initial program will be sourced from four social impact investors – Acumen, Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group, Unitus Seed Fund and Villgro. The five.eight funding will be up to $50 million, with each startup funded up to $5 million. The first startup in the program is Tricog, a Bangalore-based startup focused on improving survival rates in India by decreasing the average time between symptoms and treatment of heart attacks. Of course this ties into GEHC’s business in emerging markets, which is their Sustainable Healthcare Solutions, their “affordable care portfolio of high-value, low-cost technologies and healthcare delivery solutions for emerging markets.” HIT Consultant, HealthcareITNews

Care Innovations’ Slovenski, 23andMe’s Schwartz move to Healthways

January 13, 2016 | by

Breaking News: Healthways, an online wellness program company based in Nashville, this morning announced that two executives well known to many of us in digital health have joined them. Sean Slovenski, CEO of Intel-GE Care Innovations, is now their President, Population Health Services. Steve Schwartz, their new SVP Strategy and Corporate Development, joins the company from VP Business Development and Strategy, 23andMe.

Mr Slovenski’s track record in 2.5 years at CI certainly impressed this Editor (formerly with the developer of their behavioral telemonitoring system bequeathed from GE Healthcare, QuietCare) with turning around the company from an outpost of Intel and GEHC having difficulty transitioning from ancient technology (remember the Intel Health Guide?) to a telehealth platform dubbed Health Harmony. He also put together a team that engineered multiple academic and health system alliances, along with an interesting turn into home digital health certification. While he came to CI from health insurance giant Humana in Louisville Kentucky running their behavioral health and wellness businesses, his prior experience includes both entrepreneurial turns at his own company and with smaller companies. He most recently engineered a Louisville outpost of CI [TTA 14 Oct 15]. Since Mr Slovenski is still listed on the CI website as CEO, this may have been a quickly executed move.

Mr Schwartz’s business development background includes long stints at two large healthcare companies, Allscripts (EHRs and practice management software) and LabCorp (lab testing). He weathered 23andMe’s FDA troubles and headed up their B2B sales area. Healthways release

Unusually, Healthways is a NASDAQ traded company that closed at $12.11 today in a down market. It’s old (in our terms) having been founded in 1981, becoming publicly traded ten years later. Its last round of venture financing was $20 million from CareFirst BlueCross Blue Shield in October 2013 (CrunchBase). Healthways has a fairly new CEO as well, who joined last August and obviously feels comfortable adding to his team.

GE Healthcare acquires health consultancy

November 12, 2015 | by

GE Healthcare announced on Monday that it has acquired a US healthcare consultancy firm, The Camden Group. [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/GE-Healthcare-logo.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]Founded in 1970, The Camden Group advices US healthcare organisations such hospitals, health plan providers, medical groups and ACOs and will become the US business unit of GE Healthcare’s international consultancy GE Healthcare Partners.

The Camden Group has been expanding for some time and acquired Health Directions LLC in January of this year for an undisclosed price. By acquiring The Camden Group GE Healthcare will get access to a range of ongoing customers. The $18bn GE Healthcare business announced a $300M commitment two months ago to create a Sustainable Healthcare Solutions unit covering emerging health markets in Asia and Africa.

The price paid for the acquisition of The Camden Group has not been disclosed.