Short takes: fundings for Huma, Truvian, Headway, ThymeCare, Freshpaint; Headspace’s new CEO; UK M&A RLDatix-Carebeans; Elevance earnings news, another Steward shocker; Meta’s Reality Labs AR unit sinking–is Meta?

July 18, 2024 | by

Rounding up the fundings first, as signs of life persist through AI disruptions, hacking, and layoffs:

Huma, the former Medopad, now up to a Series D and over $322 million in total funding. The $80 million funding represents a share issuance. Funders included AstraZeneca, Hat Technology Fund 4 by HAT SGR, HV Fund by Hitachi Ventures and Leaps by Bayer. London/New York-based Huma’s last major round was in May 2021 with a jumbo $130 million Series C, not unusual for that time. That round had a $70 million add-on option; looking at Crunchbase, there was a corporate round of £25 million and a debt financing of $30 million between the Series C and D. In 2020, Huma renamed, relogo’d, and pivoted then from something ill-defined around predictive diagnostics to a platform that supports ‘hospital at home’ plus pharma and research companies in large, decentralized clinical trials.

With the funding, Huma also announced the Huma Cloud Platform, designed to benefit their own projects and those of digital health developers with a library of pre-built modules and device-connectivity capabilities. The platform is FDA Class II, EU MDR Class IIb and Saudi FDA Class C cleared.  Huma release, Mobihealthnews

Truvian Health, developer of an automated digital benchtop blood-testing and diagnostics system, scored a $74 million raise in a venture round. The round was led by Great Point Ventures and Wittington Ventures, with participation from existing investors Medical Excellence Capital, Tao Capital, DNS Capital, 7wireVentures and TYH Capital. The company has raised over $208 million through this round and a 2021 (!) $105 million Series C. Truvian’s analyzer is not FDA cleared as of yet and the raise will be used to obtain that clearance. Truvian is also partnering with Shoppers Drug Mart, Canada’s largest pharmacy, as a commercial partner, having worked with Truvian last year on an onsite evaluation versus standard lab testing. Echoes of Theranos, except that it may work?  Release, Mobihealthnews

Behavioral health platforms are still getting financing, with Headway benefiting from a $100 million unlettered venture round. Spark Capital led the round with previous investors participating including Thrive Capital, Accel, Andreessen Horowitz and Global Founders Capital for a total funding of $325 million and a $2.3 billion valuation. Their last round was a $125 million Series C in October 2023 which was pretty impressive in the middle of a funding drought. Reports are a little scarce including no mention on their website, but Behavioral Health Business has what’s available via Bloomberg News. Headway’s niche is exclusively partnering with health plans to provide members with therapy and psychiatry.

One of Headway’s competitors, Headspace, named a new CEO, Tom Pickett, as their new CEO, effective 12 August. He joins from DoorDash, where he served as chief revenue officer, which is quite a leap. Prior to that, he was in digital media and the US Navy as F/A-18 pilot and “Top Gun” graduate. Pickett replaces Russell Glass, who resigned in March. Headspace has had a rocky time of it versus competition, with layoffs of 15% last July and a $105 million senior debt financing to get by [TTA 27 July 2023]. Release

Value-based cancer care platform Thyme Care announced a capital raise of $95 million. The Series B round of equity funding was led by Concord Health Partners with participation from all existing investors, including CVS Health Ventures, Town Hall Ventures, a16z Bio + Health, AlleyCorp, Echo Health Ventures, Frist Cressey Ventures, and Foresite Capital. Adding to this was a $40 million debt financing from Banc of California. The fresh funding brings their total to $178 million. According to MedCityNews, “Thyme Care manages over half a billion dollars in medical spend through its risk-based contracts and anticipates tripling that amount within the next year. The company has also doubled its oncology partnerships in the last six months and intends to expand nationwide by securing new contracts with health plans, employers and primary care groups that bear financial risk”. Release, Mobihealthnews 

Freshpaint took a slightly different tack with its announcement of a $30 million Series B round. Their CEO/co-founder’s blog for this healthcare-focused performance marketing/data infrastructure security company interestingly asks the question why they decided to obtain additional financing. Well, they want to cover the waterfront (Editor’s term) of healthcare beyond hospitals to payers, other providers, and retail health. The financing was led by Threshold with additional participation from SignalFire, Intel Capital, Zero Prime, and Y Combinator. Their Series A back in November 2022 was a modest $9.5 million, for a total since their start of $42 million. 

On the M&A front, we have the UK’s RLDatix acquiring Carebeans. Transaction cost and staff transitions were not disclosed. The two systems will be integrated with single sign in. RLDatix is a healthcare operations platform that captures data across risk, safety, compliance, provider lifecycle and workforce management. Carebeans also provides care management services software primarily in the domicilary, care planning, supported care, and social care management sectors. Release

Elevance (the former Anthem) had a decent quarter. Their Q2 notched $2.3 billion in profit but the company turned around and lowered their full year guidance due to weakness in the health insurance business that reduced total revenue slightly to $43.2 billion. While beating Mr. Market, the ongoing weaknesses in the payer market have analysts seeing yellow and red flags. Elevance’s Medicaid enrollment declined 5%: 2.2 million to 45.8 million. As UHG stated in their earnings results, they are swimming against a general trend toward elevated utilization rates and higher acuity populations, particularly in Medicaid, which was offset by increased premiums. For Medicare Advantage, they believe their plans will benefit from CMS’ rerun of the Star ratings and balance out reimbursement cuts. Healthcare Dive, FierceHealthcare

As if the Steward Healthcare story couldn’t get any more seamy (not steamy–that was earlier this month), 14 executives paid themselves $1 million + salaries and bonuses in the year prior to the company’s Chapter 11. MedCityNews did the math on the bankruptcy filing addendum (Statement of Financial Affairs Amendment). The CEO earned a $3.7 million salary, the president of Steward Health Care a $1.73 million salary plus a $500,000 bonus, and the EVP for human resources a $842,000 salary with a $300,000 bonus. Extremely high C-level/EVP salaries in healthcare are not unusual even for smaller organizations, but Steward was in trouble plenty for some years, and being sued right and left by vendors for long-delayed payments and bouncing checks. You wonder what the debtors-in-possession will make of all of this

Last but certainly not least are reports of layoffs and major restructuring at Meta (Facebook)’s Reality Labs, which is their unit for augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) headset and software development unit. It’s now separated into two units, Wearables (headsets, glasses such as smart Ray-Bans) and Metaverse (platform and Quest headsets). Reports that are primarily paywalled have said that multiple leaders have been laid off from the company, with The Information (paywalled) stating the late June layoff affected a dozen VPs and directors. Teams also have to cut spending 20% by 2026, with the bulk of the cuts this year. Meta, despite billions in investment and Metaverse hype by Mark Zuckerberg including a corporate name change, has largely failed against Apple’s Vision Pro and others. ABPLive, EM360Tech

Whither Meta? An Editor’s Opinion: This Editor believes that Meta requires a real housecleaning which may be beyond the abilities or interests of its controlling shareholder. The Reality Labs reorganization resembles rearranging deck chairs on a listing ship as AR/VR users in healthcare invariably use Apple and other headsets. While claiming 175 million users of an X-like platform called Threads, does anyone actually use it? Facebook is suffering from an aging user base and Gen X defection. Ads are down in overall share though still around 10%. Effectiveness in the past few years is also dropping due to fatigue factor. As a Facebook admin for a non-profit organization, their tools feel a decade old–clunky and hard to use. Facebook Marketplace is a modest success as an e-commerce adjunct to Facebook, but resembles CraigsList. Zuckerberg seems to care more for his charities and political influence, so perhaps it’s time for him to leave management to others–and retire.  

Mid-week roundup: Promising Langone AI/LLM predicts hospital readmits; Huma gains FDA 510(k) Class II clearance; telepsychiatry’s challenges; layoffs/asset buys/losses from 23andMe, Cityblock, Thirty Madison, Butterfly

June 14, 2023 | by

New York University’s Langone Health’s large language model (LLM) accurately predicting hospital readmissions, more. NYU’s academic medical center NYU Langone Health has developed an LLM using medical language, NYUTron, from unstructured clinical notes in patient records, then fine-tuned it across a wide range of clinical and operational predictive tasks. The dataset was immense:  ‘NYU Notes’ covers 7.25 million clinical notes (for example, radiographic reads, history, and physicals) from 387,144 patients across four hospitals, and more. According to their study published in Nature on 7 June, it was tested for predictive ability in five areas: 30-day all-cause readmissions, in-hospital mortality, comorbidity index, length of stay, and insurance denial. The NYUTron system in testing has achieved results improved over conventional structured models’ baselines. From the Nature study:

  • For 30-day readmission prediction, it had a median area under the curve (AUC) of 79.9% ± 0.168% with a 5.36% improvement
  • On in-hospital mortality prediction, NYUTron had a median AUC of 94.9% ± 0.168% with a 7.43% improvement.
  • On comorbidity index imputation, NYUTron had an OVR median AUC of 89.4% ± 0.275%
  • On binned LOS prediction, NYUTron had a median AUC of 78.7% ± 0.179% with a 12.3% improvement 
  • On insurance denial prediction, NYUTron had a median AUC of 87.2% ± 0.246% with a 14.7% improvement.

In a test of the system during January-April 2022, the system analyzed 29,286 discharged encounters, with 3,271 patients (11.17%) returning within 30 days. NYUTron predicted 2,692 of the 3,271 readmissions (82.30% recall) with 20.58% precision. Also HealthcareITNews

London-based Huma (the former Medopad) gained US FDA 510(k) Class II clearance for their Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) platform. This is defined as disease and age-agnostic digital health pathways through which data are collected from patients for self-management or to be assessed remotely by healthcare professionals. Huma also recently obtained EU MDR Class IIb approval and with Health Canada through the FDA’s joint eStar program. Huma’s tech also includes remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems and companion apps to enable disease management, with third-party device integration. For providers, the platform hosts AI algorithms that use automated data analytics to support screening, diagnosis, dosing recommendations, clinical decision making, and prognostication for identification of at-risk patients and early intervention. In 2020, Huma acquired BioBeats and TLT; more recently, last year iPLATO patient engagement and in January clinical trials data specialist Alcedis.   Huma release, Mobihealthnews

The growth of behavioral health has come to a screeching halt with the demonstrated abuse of online prescribing, then the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)’s uncertainty around controlled substance prescribing. This interview with the CEO of Array Behavioral Care, one of the Ur-companies in telepsychiatry (1999, originally InSight Telepsychiatry and Regroup Telehealth), points out how the DEA’s post-Public Health Emergency (PHE) policies around Schedule II and higher teleprescribing disrupted their operations. The flexibilities established during the PHE have been waivered to 11 November, though a final rule must replace the temporary extension rule and comply with the Federal Ryan-Haight Act [TTA 11 May]. Other issues addressed are dealing with medical affairs (clinical licensure, primary source credentialing, facility privileging, and payer enrollment), and the potential for AI to create new tools to aid clinicians in evaluating mental health, such as natural language processing (NLP) in transcribing video sessions and suggesting clinical notes, as well as scanning patient intake stories and analyzing that information for the likelihood of certain diagnoses. HealthcareITNews

The slow drip-drip-drip of layoffs, folded companies’ asset sales, and company losses that started in 2022 continue, though at a diminished pace compared to consumer companies:

  • Genomics and DNA testing company 23andMe announced layoffs of 9% of staff or 75 people. This will take place by the end of their FY 2024, which ends next 31 March. In a 9 June filing, the company claimed that it would reduce annualized payroll and benefit expenses by $12.8 million, which leads one to wonder about the compensation level of those 75 and from what area they are in. South San Francisco-based 23andMe continues to be money-losing, increasing annual net losses from $217 million to $317 million in the 12 months ending in March, according to its May earnings report despite a 10% revenue gain. 23andMe is yet another ‘cracked SPAC’, having gone that route in 2021 with a Virgin-backed SPAC. Once trading at highs of $12-13 on the NYSE, it closed today at $1.96. However, they don’t have debt, are hanging on to a valuation of $924 million, and their cash position is apparently strong enough to hold it for two years.  Becker’s, SF Chronicle, Yahoo Finance, SimplyWallStreet
  • Another well-financed company, Cityblock Health, is laying off 12%, or 155 staff. Spun off from Sidewalk Labs (Alphabet Health-Google) at the end of 2017, their CEO announced the layoffs in a blog post late last week and effective immediately for those affected. Cityblock serves Medicaid and low-income ‘duals’ with both Medicare and Medicare in value-based care models with a heavy reliance on technology. Their CEO who joined the company in March phrased it as a restructuring, using technology to automate processes, and reducing staff layer. In contrast to others, Cityblock has had no trouble raising funding in the past; in December 2020 they raised $160 million in a December 2020 Series C, plus another $192 million in a Series C extension in March 2021, then a reported $400 million Series D in September 2021 with total raises over $890 million. But their cash burn with high-cost operations in six states (HQ New York, Massachusetts, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Washington DC) is also likely high. FierceHealthcare
  • Thirty Madison buys assets from bankrupt The Pill Club. The assets? Over 100,000 patient files for $32.3 million. The Pill Club entered Chapter 11 in April after being charged by California authorities of defrauding the state Medicaid program. It paid $18.3 million to settle the charges. But that wasn’t all. According to Mobihealthnews, “the settlement came just days after a state court unsealed a whistleblower complaint against the company in which former nurse practitioners alleged it had defrauded private insurers in at least 38 states. According to a statement from their attorneys regarding the settlement, the whistleblowers would receive approximately $5 million.” The patients covered by The Pill Club’s prescriptions will be converted over to another Thirty Madison brand, Nurx, and offered other services such as behavioral health and dermatology services. The Pill Club raised a lot of money from 2016–$51 million in Series B funding in 2019 and another $41.9 million in 2021. Thirty Madison is a private multi-line of consumer-marketed brands such as Keeps (hair), Picnic (allergies), Cove (migraine), and Facet (psoriasis, eczema) and is at a Series C with a total raise of $209 million. Axios, 
  • Butterfly Network, which some years back developed a hand-held ultrasound device (Butterfly iQ) and entered a crowded field with GE HealthCare’s VScan, Mobisante (apparently defunct), and Philips Lumify, reported Q1 revenue of $15.5 million, flat year-over-year compared to Q1 2022 and which missed analyst estimates (again). Somewhat better news was narrowing last year’s loss to a Q1 loss of $33.5 million which was less than Q1 2022’s loss of $44.5 million. It’s another early SPAC that hasn’t had a great time of it. Since its debut on the NYSE in December 2021, the stock has had the typical drop in altitude from $19.79 to $2.42. It has since expanded to enterprise imaging with Blueprint. Mobihealthnews, Yahoo Finance, Zachs

Weekend short takes: Theranos’ Holmes post-prison mental health + more on Shultz and Balwani; global M&A, funding roundup

January 14, 2023 | by

It’s been a bumpy road this second week of the New Year, with the passing away of genius guitarist Jeff Beck, Lisa Marie Presley, and historian Paul Johnson, the unrelenting Harry Hullabaloo, a rain-soaked downer of a JP Morgan healthcare conference, plus a certain 1967 Chevrolet Corvette convertible (Goodwood Green, 327 ci/350 hp) keeping garage company with…classified files.

Elizabeth Holmes’ post-prison future already being planned–and it’s all about her. But not as before. After her 11 years and three months (pending appeal) in (whatever) Federal prison she will be assigned to, her three years of supervised release are being planned for her. In an ‘exclusive’, celebrity website TMZ reports that Holmes will be required to complete a mental health program that she will pay for (details undisclosed). If her probation officer has any reasonable suspicion that she’s violating the terms of her release, her home, office, vehicle, and property will be subject to police search, including DNA collection. No details in the article beyond that. At this point, Holmes should be working with prison consultants (yes, there are such people, and they are not your legal team) in setting her expectations for Club Fed Life, planning her day-to-day in prison, and readying a reentry plan draft that can make her probation a bit easier on all.

In related Theranos news, a soon-to-be published biography of George Shultz, a government supremo during the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, claims that by then aged 90+ emeritus supported Holmes to the point of fixation. In a nearly 20-year tenure at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, respected and honored by all but with no medical expertise, he suddenly became a huge backer of Holmes, helped her get financing through his network of contacts, joined the board, and invited her to family gatherings. Grandson Tyler Shultz, who joined Theranos with his grandfather’s encouragement, became one of several whistleblowers, leading to a family rift never quite mended at the elder’s death at 100. More in the Guardian

Sunny Balwani also filed a motion this week to stay out of prison during his appeal process, arguing he presents no flight or public safety risk. The Law360 article on the 10 January 25-page filing is unfortunately paywalled.

London-based Huma is buying Frankfurt-based Alcedis, a data specialist for clinical trials. Huma will form an advanced clinical trials division with digital solutions across the entire development pipeline, from early stage through to Phase IV hybrid and fully decentralized trials. Terms were not disclosed. Formerly the mysterious Medopad [TTA 28 May 21], Huma seems to have settled into decentralized clinical trials and disease management using wearable tech and apps. Last March, AstraZeneca took a $33 million [£25 million] share in the company, with Huma acquiring their asthma and heart failure patient platform. Release, Crunchbase, Mobihealthnews

In Singapore, Amplify Health is acquiring AiDA Technologies. AiDA has developed machine learning tech to automate underwriting, claims processing, and detect fraud, waste, and abuse. Amplify has similar lines of business plus digital health programs for chronic disease management. Terms were not disclosed. Fintech Singapore. Also covered in the same Mobihealthnews article are:

  • India’s Dozee receiving funding from the UK government’s British International Investment (BII) for India’s MillionICU initiative. The BII investment will be used to convert 6,000 conventional hospital beds in about 140 public hospitals’ ICUs to stepdown beds. The MillionICU initiative’s goal is to convert one million ICU beds. Express Healthcare (India)
  • Taiwan’s largest hospital, Chang Gung Memorial, has adopted TPIsoftware’s SysTalk.Chat for AI-powered text and smart voice-enabled customer service. The Apo voice and text agent assists 80,000 ‘person-times’ per month in patient intake and setting appointments, admissions, and medical information. This saves 50% of time in appointment scheduling via texts or calls that happen within 2~3 minutes.  AsiaOne (PRNewswire release)

News and deals roundup: CoverMyMeds ‘big bang’, Noom’s $540M Series F, insurtech Bright Health’s IPO, Grand Rounds-Included Health, GoodRx, Cedar-OODA, Huma, Bluestream Health’s outreach

May 28, 2021 | by

McKesson shmushes four units into CoverMyMeds. McKesson’s Big Bang combines four McKesson business units–RelayHealth (pharmacy networking), McKesson Prescription Automation (software), CoverMyMeds (medication access for patients), and RxCrossroads by McKesson (therapeutic and drug commercialization). They are being reassembled into one massive unit under the CoverMyMeds name. The unit will have about 5,000 people and will be headed by Nathan Mott. More here in a blog post/announcement posting that’s short on information and long on cheerleading.

And the funding rounds keep marching down the alphabet. Noom, the weight loss app, gained a generous Series F of $540 million led by Silver Lake with participation from Oak HC/FT, Temasek (Singapore), Novo Holdings, Sequoia Capital, RRE and Samsung Ventures. Valuation is now at $4 billion. Adam Karol, a managing director at Silver Lake, and former TaskRabbit chief executive Stacy Brown-Philpot will join Noom’s board. The fresh funding will be used to expand into areas such as stress and anxiety, diabetes, hypertension, and sleep.

Noom had a banner year in 2020, with $400 million in revenues as people tried to shed Pandemic Pounds (aided by a near-ubiquitous ad push). The app has had 45 million downloads to date in 100 countries, largely in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand. According to a (paywalled) Bloomberg News report, feelers are out for an IPO which may be valued at $10 billion. TechCrunch, Reuters, FierceHealthcare

Bright Health Group filed its S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Their rumored $1 billion IPO will be on the NYSE and trade under the symbol BHG. Timing, share value, and number of shares are to be determined. It’s speculated that the valuation at that point is expected to be between $10 and $20 billion. Bright Health is an insurtech operating exchange and Medicare Advantage (MA) health plans under Bright HealthCare  in 14 states and 50 markets, covering over 620,000 lives. They also have a separate care delivery channel called NeueHealth, 61 advanced risk-bearing primary care clinics delivering in-person and virtual care to 75,000 unique patients. Last month, they purchased Zipnosis, adding their white-labeled telemedicine for large health systems business. Bright Health Group release, Mobihealthnews

Short takes:

Doctor on Demand and Grand Rounds, which finalized their merger earlier this month, have agreed to acquire Included Health. Terms and timing were not disclosed. Included Health specializes in care concierge and healthcare navigation services for the LGBTQ+ community. FierceHealthcare, Release

GoodRx acquired rival RxSaver for $50 million in cash in late April to bulk up against Amazon. FierceHealthcare

Medical billing and pre-visit tech company Cedar is acquiring payer workflow tech company OODA Health for $425 million deal in a mix of cash and equity. It’s expected to close at end of May. OODA’s co-founder, chairman, and co-CEO is Giovanni Colella, MD, also co-founded Castlight Health and founded RelayHealth (see above), so another successful exit for him. FierceHealthcare, HISTalk

London-based Huma, raised $130 million in a Series C. Leaps by Bayer and Hitachi Ventures led the round. The former, mysterious Medopad now seems to have settled on a platform that supports ‘hospital at home’ plus pharma and research companies in large, decentralized clinical trials. There’s an add-on of $70 million to the Series C that can be exercised at a later date. Release, HISTalk

White-label telehealth provider Bluestream Health is partnering with The Azadi Project to provide virtual care services to refugee women and girls fleeing from countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria for safety in Greece. “Bluestream Health has teamed with The Azadi Project to provide a virtual care platform that stretches around the world. The women fleeing war-torn and conflict-affected countries have suffered unspeakable abuse, and while seeking safety in Greece, they are further exposed to terrible living conditions and hostility.”  said Matthew Davidge, co-founder and CEO of Bluestream Health.  Release

Medopad rebrands, pivots as Huma, acquires BioBeats and TLT, names Alan Milburn as chairman (UK)

April 17, 2020 | by

Medopad, a London-based software developer for healthcare specializing in digital biomarkers generated by wearables and apps, has rebranded as Huma and, with the brand splash, announced the acquisition of two companies:

  • BioBeats, a London-based mental health monitoring app and wearable combination that tracksheart rate, activity, sleep, mood, and cognitive function to create a wellbeing model.
  • Tarilian Laser Technologies (TLT), based in Welwyn Garden City, is a developer of continuous blood pressure and cardiovascular non-invasive measurement technologies. Their assets include patents, software, and hardware awaiting US FDA approval.

Purchase details were not disclosed, but TechCrunch’s sources indicate a $10 million deal for BioBeats.

Joining Huma is former UK Health Minister The Right Honourable Alan Milburn as chairman of its board of directors.

Medopad announced last November a Series B raise of $25 million led by Leaps by Bayer, Bayer AG’s venture capital arm which also participated in their earlier Series A (CityAM/Crunchbase). Medopad’s focus to date has been primarily with life sciences companies to predict disease risk, condition progression, and diagnosis for chronic diseases including Parkinson’s (based on monitoring finger movements, in partnership with China’s Tencent), Alzheimer’s and diabetes. Which does make the pivot surprising, given the financing origin.

The Huma rebranding is accompanied by the usual quotes from the founder/CEO to explain the pivot from disease states to the ‘wellbeing’ sphere and Huma being reflective of humanity (see the daVinci-esque logo). The release quotes are also in Mobihealthnews Europe/UK (along with an unexplained doubling of their Series B raise; their total funding is $50 million). The release also lists offices in New York at the Genome Center on lower 6th Avenue and Shanghai. Hat tip to reader Paul Costello