Sharecare expands health education capabilities, acquires CareLinx home care for $65M (updated)

August 19, 2021 | by

Sharecare, a free/paid app platform that enables users to consolidate and manage all their health and wellness data, is adding to its health management platform additional tools for patient engagement, including more health education. These four will be available on the Sharecare platform in Q4 this year, based on their release:

  • “All Together Better” social aggregator – a dynamic, curated collection of social media content containing relevant conversations, influencers, and news.
  • Condition-specific chatbot – this lets users explore their condition-specific questions through a range of questions and topics related to their health concerns
  • Condition-specific virtual assistant – a virtual assistant to help navigate questions, answers, and resources
  • Interactive data visualization and mapping – this new mobile- and web-based experience takes users on a highly interactive data-driven health education journey with animated graphics and national- to community-level maps.

Interestingly, both care management and health education are converging in services such as Emmi Wolters Kluwer, Milliman HealthIO, and even apps such as Wellframe which have added biometric alerts and RPM. Release, Mobihealthnews

Last week, Sharecare had its own ‘shake’ of the home care market with the acquisition of CareLinx, a home care provider with a network of 450,000 caregivers. The CareLinx platform facilitates care team management and delivery of a wide variety of home support services. Sharecare acquired it from Europ Assistance for $65 million–$54.6 million in cash and $10.4 million in Sharecare common stock. Another shakeup of the otherwise sleepy home care market, in size smaller than the Honor-Home Instead deal that also took place last week. Release

Earlier this year [TTA 18 Feb], Sharecare went the SPAC route with Falcon Capital Acquisition Corp., trading on NASDAQ under SHCR as of 2 July. Sharecare received $571 million in gross proceeds and is reported to have a valuation of $3.9 billion. Management is staying in place. Release, Capital 

Speaking of aggregation, in the past two years, Sharecare has become an aggregator, or perhaps a conglomerate, of multiple digital health companies that operate separately or are integrated within the company. Their recent purchases include two AI platforms–doc.ai.in capturing data; WhiteHatAI, which is now Sharecare Payment Integrity; MindSciences (DrJud.com) in behavioral health and smoking cessation; and value-based care gap closer Visualize Health into their provider dashboard.

Action This Day in US healthcare, coming to pharma, insurance, home care and innovation

February 1, 2017 | by

Action This Day, in Churchill’s words. Today’s news of President Trump meeting with the CEOs of US pharmaceutical companies– Novartis, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Lilly, Celgene, and Amgen–along with the PhRMA association head, indicates the speed of change that this two-week old Administration intends in healthcare. Trump’s points to the Pharma Giants: drug prices need to be brought down, especially for Medicare and Medicaid patients, through competitive bidding not price-fixing; bringing home production to the US; and that there is ‘global freeloading’ on US drugs. This last is a bit vague, and the pricing part may stir some Standard Republican Resistance, but what Trump also came down firmly for is speeding up the drug approval process. In return, the execs asked for tax reform.

Notable here is this quote:  “I’ll oppose anything that makes it harder for smaller, younger companies to take the risk of bringing their product to a vibrantly competitive market,” Trump said. “That includes price-fixing by the biggest dog in the market, Medicare, which is what’s happening.” The Hill, Business Insider

Does this mean an open door and encouragement for healthcare technology?

Certainly many startups, early-stage companies, and Grizzled Pioneers are eagerly anticipating a more open healthcare business environment than the many dictates, restrictions and the constant changing of goalposts they have faced for the past eight years. The hope is an openness of the Powers That Be on the Federal side (CMS, HHS, FDA) to innovation, patient-centered care and a change away from hammering constantly on lowering cost through a multitude of controls and top-down diktats on what Healthcare Should Be.

This Editor has seen companies straining to hang in there, playing the niches, moderating their equity raises, merging, projecting profitability sometime in the future. Some have not made it. One is the pioneer telehealth company Viterion Corporation, which was quietly dissolved by its parent company in Japan for various reasons at end of last year. (Editor’s disclaimer: I was marketing director for the company.)

Already innovation is reaching long-neglected areas like home care. Home support for the aging population isn’t buzzy, analytic or sexy, but it’s ready for change. The Financial Times takes a look at this $40 bn US market, focusing on the Hometeam caregiving service presently in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which has over $43 million in investment after only three years (Crunchbase); Honor, which has over $65 million in funding, operating California and Texas. Their points of difference from traditional home care agencies involve models and technology. Hometeam employs carers who are full employees with benefits and an average of $15/hour pay, double that of the usual minimum wage paid to independent contractors. They equip carers with iPads to track what happens in the home, and to report daily to families. Honor has an algorithm to help it scale up from the 100 or so carers who are the ‘break point’ in matching carers with patient needs. In contrast, the UK is far behind in development. The article looks at Vida which uses a mix of carers and technology for its private pay clients. Now approved by the Care Quality Commission, Vida is already in talks with local councils across London and Brighton. But funding is thin: £400,000 of start-up funding and planning to raise £1 million. Tech start-ups try to fix ailing US elderly care sector. If paywalled, search on the title. Hat tip to Susanne Woodman

Action Next Days? Predictions have been all over the place since the election. Many have been overheated (and highly political), but others explain the complexities of undoing the past six years. A reminder: the PPACA did not go into effect until 2010 and most of the provisions kicked in during 2011. Health tech law firm Epstein Becker Green trotted out its crystal ball (more…)

Technology for Aging in Place 2016

March 2, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/elderly-smartphone.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Laurie Orlov’s updated view of technologies that assist home caregiving/living, and her observations on trends for both boomers and those well over 65, is hot off the (virtual) presses and available here on her website. It is US-market oriented, but the trends explored here will be of interest internationally. The focus in this study is home-based systems for safety, alerts, activity/location tracking (telecare), home care/caregiving tools and what this Editor would call ‘health monitoring light’–med minders and logging apps versus medically-oriented telehealth (vital signs, save for AliveCor) and telemedicine (virtual visits/consults).

Highlights:

  • In communication, internet non-usage among 75+ has declined to 50 percent over the past 15 years.
  • The tablet form factor is losing ground as smartphones get bigger. Older adults and smartphones are beginning to ‘get along’ partly as they grow larger, but also that feature and simple phones are becoming less available.
  • Also losing ground is senior housing–residents are delaying entry to assisted living until they are mid 80s and frailer. Savings and debt in the boomer group is low and high, respectively.
  • Investors are caring more about home care, with large investments ($80 million) in three regional home care worker startups: Honor (San Francisco), Home Hero (Los Angeles), and Hometeam (New York/New Jersey), caregiving apps and chronic care management (CareSync, with an $18 million raise).
  • Dementia care support tools are (finally) developing into its own category.

Surprising conclusions: PERS alerting stays strong, but changes to be mobile-enabled and more cosmetic; a lot of convergence of categories and forms; and the term ‘health tech’ will replace ‘digital health’. Oh my!

‘Déjà vu all over again’ or critical mass? NYTimes looks at older adult care tech

July 28, 2015 | by | 4 Comments

“It’s like déjà vu all over again” as Yogi Berra, the fast-with-a-quip Baseball Hall of Fame catcher-coach-manager once said. About 2006-7, telecare broke through as a real-world technology and the tone of the articles then was much like how this New York Times article starts. But the article, in the context of events in the past two years, indicate that finally, finally there is a turning point in care tech, and we are on the Road to Critical Mass, where the build, even with a few hitches, is unstoppable.

Have telehealth, telecare, digital health or TECS (whatever you’d like to call it) turned the corner of acceptability? More than that, has it arrived at what industrial designer Raymond Loewy dubbed MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable) in keeping older adults safer and healthier at home? The DIY-installed Lively! system keeps an eye on a hale 78 year old (more…)