Rock Health’s ‘Another record-breaking first half’ in digital health funding is actually–flat. (With a Soapbox Extra!)

July 4, 2018 | by

The Breathless Tone was the clue. “It’s déjà vu for digital health, with yet another record breaking half for venture funding.” It was déjà vu, but not of the good sort. This Editor hates to assume, so she checked the year-to-year numbers–and first half 2018 versus 2017 broke no records:

  • 2018:  $3.4 bn invested in 193 digital health deals 
  • 2017: $3.5 bn invested in 188 digital health companies [TTA 11 July 17]

But ‘flat’ doesn’t make for good headlines. Digging into it, there are trends we should be aware of — and Rock Health does a great job of parsing–but a certain wobbliness carried over from 2017 even though the $5.8 bn year finished 32 percent up over 2016, analyzed here [TTA 5 Apr 18]. Their projection for 2018 full year is $6.9 bn and 386 deals.

Let’s take a look at their trends:

  • “The future of healthcare startups is inextricably linked to the strategies of large, enterprise-scale healthcare players—as customers, partners, investors, and even potential acquirers.” It’s no mistake that the big news this week was Amazon acquiring tiny, chronic-conditions specializing prescription supplier PillPack after a bidding war with Walmart for an astounding $1bn, making its 32 year-0ld founder very rich indeed and gaining Amazon pharmacy licenses in 49 states. (Prediction: Walmart will be pleased it lost the war as it will find its own solutions and alliances.) 
    • Enterprise healthcare players are cautious, even by Rock Health’s admission, but the big money is going into deals that vertically integrate and complement, at least for a time–for example, Roche’s purchase of Flatiron Health. And when it doesn’t work, it tends to end in a whimper–this May’s quiet sale by Aetna of Medicity to Health Catalyst for an undisclosed sum. Back in 2011, Aetna bought it for $500 million. (Notably not included in the Rock Health analysis, even though they track Health Catalyst and the HIE/analytics sector.)
  • The market is dependent on big deals getting bigger. If you are well-developed, in the right sector, and mature (as early-stage companies go), you have a better shot at that $100 million B, D, E or Growth funding round. B rounds actually grew a bit, with seed and A rounds dipping below 50 percent for the first time since 2012. 
  • The Theranos Effect is real. Unvalidated, hyped up claims don’t get $900 million anymore. In fact, there’s real concern that there’s a reluctance to fund innovation versus integration. The wise part of this is that large fundings went to companies validating through clinical trial results, FDA clearance (or closing in on it), and CDC blessing.
  • The dabbling investor is rapidly disappearing. 62 percent of investors in first half had made prior investments in digital health including staying with companies in following rounds.
  • Digital health companies, like others, are staying private longer and avoiding public markets. Exits remain on par with 2017 at 60. Speculation is that Health Catalyst and Grand Rounds are the next IPOs, but there hasn’t been one since iRhythm in October 2016. The Digital Health public company index is showing a lot less pink these days as well, which may be an encouraging sign.
  • Behavioral health is finally getting its due. “Behavioral health startups received more funding this half than in any prior six-month period, with a cumulative $273M for 15 unique companies (nearly double the $137M closed in H1 2016, the previous record half for funding of behavioral health companies). Of these 15 companies, more than half have a virtual or on-demand component.”

Keep in mind that Rock Health tracks deals over $2 million in value from venture capital, excluding government and grant funding. They omit non-US deals, even if heavily US funded. 

Their projection for 2018 full year is $6.9 bn and 386 deals. Will their projection pan out? Only the full year will tell!

A Soapbox Extra!

Rock Health, like most Left Coast companies, believes that Vinod Khosla is a semi-deity. This Editor happens to not be convinced, based on predictions that won’t pan out, like machines replacing 80 percent of doctors; making statements such as VCs have less sexual harassment than other areas, and even banning surfers off his beach. He was at a Rock Health forum recently and made this eye-rolling (at least to this Editor) statement:

Is there one area in the last 30 years where the initial innovation was driven by an institution of any sort? I couldn’t think of a single area where innovation—large innovation—came from a big institution. Retailing wasn’t disrupted by Walmart, it was by Amazon. Media wasn’t changed by CBS or NBC, it was by YouTube and Twitter. Cars weren’t transformed by Volkswagen and GM—and people said you can’t do cars in startups—but then came Tesla.

Other than making a point that Clayton Christensen made a decade or more ago, the real nugget to be gained here is that formerly innovative companies that get big don’t grow innovation (though 3M tends to be an exception, and Motorola didn’t do too badly with the cell phone). They can buy it–and always have. 

Go back a few more decades and all of these companies were disrupters–and bought out (or bankrupted) other disrupters. CBS and NBC transformed entertainment through popularizing radio and then TV. VW created the small car market in the US and saved the German auto industry. GM innovated both horizontally (acquiring car companies, starting other brands) and integrated vertically (buying DELCO which created the first truly workable self-starting ignition system in 1912).

YouTube? Bought by innovator Google. Twitter? Waiting, wanting to be bought. Innovation? Khosla is off the beam again. Without Walmart, there would be no Amazon–and Amazon’s total lifetime profit fits nicely into one year of Walmart’s. Tesla is not innovative–it is a hyped up version of electric car technology in a styled package that occasionally blows up and remains on the borderline of financial disaster. (Model 3, where art thou?)

I’d argue that Geisinger, Mayo Clinic, and Intermountain Healthcare have been pretty innovative over the last 30 years. Mr. Khosla, read Mr. Christensen again!

News roundup: First Stop, GlobalMed, American Well, Avizia, Medicity, Health Catalyst, Allscripts, Welbeing, BenevolentAI

May 9, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /]Announcements and acquisitions have been multiplying–here’s what’s most interesting.

In companies we’ve recently written about:

Our recent Contributor Bruce Judson, now with corporate telemedicine provider First Stop Health, wrote us enroute to the Government Finance Officials Association conference in St. Louis that FSH achieved triple-digit top-line revenue growth and also achieved an average utilization rate of 52 percent. The formal announcement was made earlier this week at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas (release), where another one of our Contributors, Sarianne Gruber, is attending for Answers Media Company.

GlobalMed, a prior contributor to Perspectives, is offering a lower cost telemedicine alternative to practices with a flat fee starting at $799 per month for three years. Startup costs remain at about $5,000. The starting kit includes a cart, a total exam camera, stethoscope and vitals linked to the organization’s network, and a nurse license. Additional compatible equipment is available at extra cost. We know that a number of comparable telemedicine cart-based kits run upwards of $8,000. It is one of the first public acknowledgments this Editor has seen (but has known for years) that high cost is a major impediment for implementing both telehealth and telemedicine in practices. Health Data Management.

In other news:

Telemedicine and telehealth consolidation continues with American Well’s acquisition of hospital-based telemed/workflow systems provider Avizia. Avizia has a product line of telemedicine carts and workflow software for 40 different specialties, including telestroke and telebehavioral health. The acquisition price was not disclosed. Prior investors in this 2013 Cisco spinoff include Northwell Health, NY-Presbyterian, HealthQuest, and other providers in seven rounds totaling over $23 million. Healthcare IT News

A further sign of consolidation, this time in the crowded health information business, is the Medicity acquisition by Health Catalyst. Health Catalyst is primarily a data analytics and warehousing company while Medicity focuses more on data interoperability and patient engagement for practices, health systems, and HIEs. Medicity was purchased by Aetna in 2011 with much fanfare for $500 million as one of its ‘Emerging Businesses’, rebranded as Healthagen in 2013 [TTA 28 Feb 14] which never quite took off. Out of that unit, what remains are Active Health Solutions and Aetna Accountable Care Solutions, a payer-driven value-based care management company. The amount of the sale was not disclosed but is expected to close in 90 days. Health Catalyst’s CEO Brent Dover served as president of Medicity up to 2013, and both companies are located in Salt Lake City. What is interesting about this sale is that CVS, which is buying Aetna, has no comparable in-house technology. It’s a probable shedding of peripheral or money-losing businesses prior to sale.  HISTalk, MedCityNews

Allscripts continues on its acquisition binge with patient communication and engagement platform HealthGrid. HealthGrid is a mobile app platform that delivers care and education materials traditionally distributed from practices to patients via paper. In January, Allscripts bought practice EHR Practice Fusion for $100 million (a loss to investors) and earlier McKesson’s HIT business for $185 million. It’s a noticeable shift to value-added care tools for this formerly EHR-centric company. Mobihealthnews. 

In UK news:

Welbeing has won Norwich City Council’s Norwich Community Alarm Service (NCAS). It provides a 24-hour, year-round monitoring and response service for over 6,500 adults who are vulnerable or at risk in this part of East Anglia. The press release is on UK Telehealthcare‘s news page. 

BenevolentAI, a UK company using artificial intelligence for drug development, raised $115 million in new funding, mostly from undisclosed investors in the United States, according to Mobihealthnews, for a total funding of over $200 million. The company uses AI to reduce drug discovery time and risk. It does not do its own drug discovery but sells the intellectual property discovered by their AI algorithms, claiming to cut drug development timelines by four years and improve efficiencies by 60 percent compared to pharma industry averages.

Analysis of the CVS-Aetna merger: a new era, a canary in a mine–or both?

December 6, 2017 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canary-in-the-coal-mine.jpgw595.jpeg” thumb_width=”150″ /]This Editor has been at two healthcare conferences in the last four business days (with tomorrow being a third). They should be abuzz about how the CVS-Aetna merger may transform healthcare delivery. To her surprise, there’s been a surprising lack of talk. There is a certain element of ‘old news’, as the initial reports date back five weeks but the sheer size of it ($240bn combined future value, $69bn purchase, an estimated $750 million in near-term synergies), being the largest health insurance deal in history, and the anticipated effects on the health delivery model normally would be a breaking news topic. To this Editor, it is a sign that no one truly knows what to make of it, and perhaps it’s too big–or threatening–to grasp for provider and payer executives especially.

For an overview of what we saw at the time as reasons why and possible competitor reaction, Readers should look back to our original article [TTA 28 Oct]. It’s being presented by both companies as a vertical merger of two complementary organizations, which already were moving towards this model, integrating their different services into “America’s front door to quality health care” (CVS CEO Larry Merlo)–a lower cost setting that saves premium dollars and brings integrated care to consumers’ doorsteps.

CVS brings to the table huge point of care assets: 9,700 pharmacy locations, 1,100 MinuteClinics, Omnicare’s senior pharmacy solutions, Coram’s infusion services, and the more than 4,000 CVS Health nursing professionals providing in-clinic and home-based care. Aetna has about 23.1 million medical members, 14.5 million dental members, and 15.2 million pharmacy benefit management (PBM) services members. Aetna also has a wealth of advanced data analytics capabilities through two subsidiaries, ActiveHealth Management and  Medicity’s health information exchange technology.

Seeking Alpha has an intriguing POV on this entry into a ‘new era’: that both CVS and Aetna consider this to be a long-term reshaping of their business model under the threat posed by Amazon, and are willing to do this despite little short-term financial benefit for either company. The problem as the writer sees it: execution. This is re-engineering care on a national scale, and its benefits are based upon combining intangibles, a murky area indeed especially in healthcare. Time is also a factor, as Amazon is getting pharmacy licenses in multiple states, and is rather an expert at combining intangibles.

Does it signal that the approach to a ‘new era’ in healthcare is accelerating? If this is a preview, 2018 will be extremely interesting. Our ‘canary in the coal mine’ may tweet–or fall over on its perch, asphyxiated.

Some additional points to consider: (more…)

Towards 2020: Big Tech developments predicted to impact healthcare delivery

February 14, 2017 | by | 2 Comments

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Gartner-curve.png” thumb_width=”175″ /]Healthcare doesn’t stand outside major technology trends, and two we’ve covered extensively are machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), which this Editor observed [TTA 3 Feb] may beat out Massive Data Crunchers like IBM Watson Health for many diagnoses. What has been ‘bubbling up’ in the past year is blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin which is a ‘distributed, secure transaction ledger’ that uses a private key. Each record block has an identifying hash that links each block into a virtual chain [TTA 16 July]. Brian Ahier, Director of Standards and Government Affairs at Medicity, Aetna’s data analytics/population health subsidiary, predicts in Health Data Management that both will be the Big Trends for the next three years, with a substantial discussion behind both, particularly AI (though citing global equity funding of $1.5 bn in AI for healthcare since 2012 seems a paltry reinforcement). There are links to two blockchain studies from Deloitte and IEEE (requires subscription or purchase) for further reference. Two other bonuses: a link to New School’s Melanie Swan’s blockchain blog with four potential uses in healthcare and a Gartner hype cycle chart (left above) identifying both machine learning and blockchain (distributed ledger) near the peak of the curve. His third trend, digital transformation, is less a trend than an admonition that our present business structures need to change, that they must realize the potential of fully utilizing data, and to consider the customer experience.

“Events, dear boy, events” (UK)

November 7, 2014 | by

Harold Macmillan probably never said that in response to the question “What is most likely to blow a government off course?”, however we thought we’d use the quote to highlight a few cracking events coming up.

The Wearable Technology event, is being hosted by the Digital Catapult Centre, on 18th November, in London. On the topic of wearables, the BBC’s “the Bottom Line” had a great programme on 30th October on the subject. In the UK (at least) you can download a podcast or listen on iPlayer. There’s also an update on new Jawbone releases which seem now to be going for different form factors to the original UP, whose unreliability resulted in this editor being on his fourth such device in some 15 months. Info on Microsoft’s Band is here. The recent PWC report on Wearables is here.

At the same place starting on Monday 8th December there is a whole week of incredibly valuable assistance in the Digital Health Pit Stop, which is free! Events include a design day (8th), a business day (9th), a health day (10th), a data day (11th) and on 12th December (more…)

Changes afoot at Aetna’s Healthagen?

February 28, 2014 | by

Recent rumors predicted changes at Healthagen, the rebranded ‘Emerging Businesses’ unit of health payer giant Aetna, and that these would be apparent at HIMSS14. Mobihealthnews attempts to ‘Sovietologize’ Aetna chairman Mark Bertolini’s appearance (sponsored by Healthagen, not Aetna) and what products were included in the Healthagen (not Aetna) show floor display. First, the booth: only Accountable Care Solutions and health info exchange Medicity were featured.  Former star iTriage (the original Healthagen product) was relegated to a distant booth. The much-touted CarePass consumer wellness platform? Absent. InvolveCare, the Healthagen caregiver app introduced last fall? Announced to be discontinued 28 April. In the true tradition of Sovietology, omissions are as apparent as inclusions. Second, the keynote: oddly, there are no content points cited from Mr. Bertolini’s speech in Mobihealthnews. We turn then to the Dan Munro in Forbes article, where Mr. Bertolini calls for the ‘creative destruction of healthcare’, a stock rallying point since 2009 (Yes, it doesn’t work. No, it’s not sustainable. It’s an iron triangle. Etc.) The bottom line was his announcing that Aetna’s business going forward would be ACOs and “driving a consumer healthcare experience.” Hopefully that will mean access and quality for the rest of us. Will Healthagen CEO Charles Saunders be part of leading the charge? Not a mention. One could say that the Magic 8 Ball says ‘cloudy’ for the present situation at Healthagen. Perhaps more changes will be revealed in coming weeks.