News and deals roundup: Owlet’s $1B SPAC, Carbon Health’s $350M Series D, Series Bs by Woebot Health and b.Well, digital health rakes in $15bn

July 23, 2021 | by

Baby monitoring system Owlet closed its SPAC late last week with Sandbridge Acquisition Corporation. It is now trading on the NYSE (OWLT) for around $8 per share. With Sandbridge’s investment and the concurrent private placement (PIPE), Owlet now has $135 million and a valuation of over $1 billion, far exceeding the $325 million estimated [TTA 17 Feb]. Owlet started in 2013 with a ‘Smart Sock’ (right) at $299 using pulse oximetry to monitor baby heart rate, oxygen levels, and sleep patterns with readouts via their app, but has expanded to include an Owlet Cam and a Dream Lab to encourage good baby sleep, which parents will be the first to appreciate. Mobihealthnews

Carbon Health, which is certainly an odd name for a primary care provider plus virtual health with a streamlined patient record/EMR system and makes insurers happy because they charge only Medicare rates, received a hefty $350 million Series D raise. Led by Blackstone Horizon Partners with Atreides, Homebrew, Hudson Bay Capital, Fifth Wall, Lux Capital, Silver Lake Waterman, and BlackRock participating, along with returning investors Dragoneer Investment Group and Brookfield Technology Partners along with a slew of private investors, it follows on last November’s Series C of $100 million for a total raise since 2016 of $522 million. Valuation is what used to be an eye-blinking $3.3 billion. Carbon’s locations are a bit strange–concentrated in California and SF area with outposts, many of which are limited service or ‘pop-ups’, in Florida, Arizona, Kansas, and NYC. Unlike the recently covered One Medical, it does not require any kind of annual concierge fee. The model is an interesting one in positing high service and low cost. The founders are also staking out becoming the largest US primary care provider, which Village Medical or UnitedHealth Group would not be delighted about. One wonders if all this staking out will work, or is to attract payer investment when the VCs decide to exit. FierceHealthcare, Mobihealthnews (referring to them as multimodal, which sounds like ocean/rail transport or articulated lorries), Forbes

Also in the Mobihealthnews article: a Series B $90 million raise by Woebot Health, developer of a mental health chatbot (ok, relational agent), and the $32 million Series B raise of b.well Connected Health, a patient-facing health management platform that will get a big boost from interoperability around patient records required under the Cures Act. Woebot’s twee infographic about their therapeutic bond study in the JMIR is woeful, though, as large parts are unreadable.

No surprise that digital health funding hit a $15 billion high in the first half of 2021, up 138%, driven in large part by telehealth investment. This is based on a report from Mercom Capital Group. FierceHealthcare

Digital Health as Boom Town: 2020’s dizzying funding rounded up by Mercom Capital, StartUp Health

January 9, 2021 | by

BOOM! Mercom Capital Group published their Q4 and 2020 roundup of global digital health investment and, no surprise, the investment picture for just about anything digital health was in sharp contrast to most of the COVID-afflicted world economy.

The topline:

  • Global VC funding (private equity and corporate venture capital) was $14.8 bn across 637 deals. It was a 66 percent increase in funding compared to 2019’s $8.9 bn in 615 deals. The modest increase in deal number and huge increase in funding points to the acquisition of more established companies requiring Big Deals.
  • Total corporate funding, including VC, debt, and public market financing, totaled $21.6 billion

 

In a stunning change, telemedicine was Top Of The Pops, with $4.3 bn in investment, 139 percent over 2019’s $1.8 bn. It was over double the former star categories of data analytics and mHealth apps.

The top five disclosed M&A transactions in 2020 they tracked were:

  • Teladoc’s acquisition of Livongo Health for $18.5 bn
  • Blackstone’s acquisition of a majority stake in Ancestry.com for $4.7 bn (despite the ‘bloom off the rose’ of consumer genetic testing)
  • Philips’ acquisition of BioTelemetry in cardiac monitoring for $2.8 bn
  • Invitae’s acquisition of ArcherDX for $1.4 bn
  • WellSky’s acquisition of Allscripts’s CarePort Health (CarePort) for $1.35 bn

The Executive Summary is available for free download at the link in the release. The full report will set you back $599 – $999, depending on the version.

StartUp Health has slightly different numbers but in total investment tracks almost to Mercom Capital’s estimate at $21.5 bn. For telemedicine, it still triples year-over-year but StartUp’s totals are lower: 2019’s $1.1 bn to 2020’s $3.1 bn. Part of the difference may be remote monitoring, which StartUp considers separately. It doubled from $417 million to $941 million. Their deal counts were also higher: 764 in 2020 compared to 716 in 2019. Another fun fact in their tracking are their city leaders in health innovation funding: Beijing, Tel Aviv, and London, confirming that New York and the San Francisco metro no longer have money, interest, or their former attraction. A fuller list would have been interesting. More is in their Part 1 study. Part 2, to be released next week, will cover their dozen ‘health moonshots’.

Considering 2019’s digital health investment picture: leveling off may be a Good Thing

February 7, 2020 | by

2019 proved to be a leveling-off year for digital health investment. The bath may prove to be more cleansing than bubbly.

We noted that the always-fizzy Rock Health engaged in some revisionist history on its forecasts when the final numbers came in–$7.4bn in total investment and 359 deals, a 10 percent drop versus 2018. When we looked back at our 2019 mid-year article on Rock Health’s forecast [TTA 25 July], they projected that the year would end at $8.4 bn and 360 deals versus 2018’s $8.2 bn and 376 deals. That is a full $1bn under forecast and $0.8 below 2018. Ouch!

In their account, the 10 percent dip versus 2018 is due to average deal size–decreasing to $19.8M in 2019–and a drop in late-stage deals. Their analysts attribute this to wobbliness around some high-profile IPOs, citing Uber, Lyft, and Slack, as well as the near-collapse of WeWork right before its IPO towards the end of 2019.

New investors and repeat investors increased to 627 from 585 in 2018, with no real change in composition.

The headliners of 2019 were:

  • Amazon’s acquisition of Health Navigator adding symptom-checking tools to its health offerings
  • Google’s buy of Fitbit
  • Optum’s purchase of Vivify Health, which gives it a full remote patient monitoring (RPM) suite (right when CMS is setting reimbursement codes for RPM in Medicare)
  • Best Buy’s addition of Critical Signal Technologies for RPM
  • Phreesia, Livongo’s and Health Catalyst’s IPOs. For Livongo and Health Catalyst, current share prices are off from their IPOs and shortly after: past $25 for LVGO and $31 for HCAT. Phreesia closed today at a healthy $33, substantially up from PHR’s debut at $15. (Change Healthcare, on the other hand, is up a little from its IPO at $16, which isn’t bad considering their circumstances on their financing.)

Rock Health only counts US deals in excess of $2 million, which excludes the global picture, but includes some questionable (in this Editor’s estimation) ‘digital health’ players like Peloton, explained in the 25 July article.

Rock Health’s analysts close (and justify their revisions) through discussions with VCs expecting further headwinds in the market–then turn around and positively note the Federal backing of further developments in building the foundation for connected health as tailwinds. No bubbly forecasts for 2020–we’ll have to wait.

Is this necessarily bad? This Editor likes an occasional dose of reason and is not displeased at Rock Health’s absence of kvelling.

Confirming the picture is Mercom Capital’s analysis which also recorded a 6 percent dip 2019/2018: $8.9bn with 615 deals, dropping from the $9.5bn and 698 deals in 2018. Their ‘catchment’ is more global than Rock Health, and encompasses consumer-centric and patient-centric technologies and sub-technologies. Total corporate funding reached $10.1bn.

Global HIT, digital health VC funding falls 35% in 1st Q 2015: Mercom Capital

April 28, 2015 | by

Mercom Capital Group, a research and communications group, tracks global VC funding, mergers and acquisitions in the digital health area and notes a distinct slowing of activity, except for mobile health. They tracked $784 million in 142 deals in Q1 2015 compared to $1.2 billion in 134 deals in Q4 2014. Leading are consumer health companies with $437 million in 98 deals, then healthcare practice-centric companies, with $347 million in 44 deals–both dropping over $200 million each versus the previous quarter. Mobile health companies had $282 million in 56 deals; app companies accounted for $220 million. In transactions, mobile health led with $578 million, with UnderArmour’s acquisitions of MyFitnessPal and Endomondo. Since 2010, digital health companies have raised almost $10 billion. Mercom Capital release (the full study will run about $300-500). mHealthIntelligence notes that M&A activity is steadily rising in the healthcare sector. Also iHealthBeat.

Health IT funding bubble seen by veteran investor

February 7, 2014 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/crystal-ball.jpg” thumb_width=”120″ /] How is health tech like the 1990s ‘dot-com’-ers? Veteran Silicon Valley investor (HealthTech Capital) and former entrepreneur Anne DeGheest projects a ‘Series B crunch‘ in funding health tech and IT in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch. The key factors: angels and ‘unsophisticated investors’ are pouring money into all sorts of devices, apps and related services in seed and Series A stages just to get on board in a hot sector. When the founders of these companies get to Series B and present to more demanding investors, the lack of a true value proposition and a detailed business plan that answers basic questions leave them standing on, as aptly put, ‘a pier to nowhere’ or as Joe Hage termed it last month, ‘insolvent with a great idea.’

Ms. DeGheest’s view that we are reprising the elements of the ‘dot-com’ bubble is confirmed by the numbers in Rock Health‘s and PwC‘s funding reports throughout 2013:   (more…)