TTA’s It’s June: Anthropic’s pending IPO, the AI Hype Curve, Oracle Health for sale, Schoenberg’s move to Amazon, Mass. sues UnitedHealthcare, Signos/H1 raises, more!

June 4, 2026 | by

Thursday 4 June 2026

This Editor is closing and sending out Alerts a little early this week as off to an event. Most significant this week is Anthropic’s confidential, unpriced IPO filing on top of a $65B raise, a sure mark of Peak AI and the next stages of the Gartner Hype Curve. The other is an analysis of the potential market for a sell-off of Oracle Health’s EHR and what that entails–oddly coinciding with Roy Schoenberg’s move to Amazon Health. More about raises, UHG’s senior MassCare plans accused of fraud, and new Teladoc business. From last week–our Must Reads about the societal impact and the divinity of AI.

Enjoy your week and weekend!

Please feel free to comment on the articles and pass along this Alert. Let me know if this is worth it to you! Also check out my personal page on Substack.

Chutes & Ladders: MA sues UHG on Medicaid fraud, Teladoc joins Walmart’s Better Care Services, raises for Signos and H1

Breaking: Anthropic files confidential S-1 with SEC for IPO, less than one week after $65B raise. But is this Peak AI?

Selling Oracle Health’s EHR–what are the potential buyers, their odds, and price?

Breaking: Roy Schoenberg moving to Amazon to lead Health Services; Neil Lindsay to depart

Last Week’s Headlines

Weekend Must Reads on AI: its societal and economic effects, and why its developers see it as replacing God

Short takes: Garner Health’s $100M Series E; Veradigm files financial reports for ’23/’24, moved to net loss; Rovex debuts autonomous in-hospital transport robot

Post-holiday news roundup: Oracle Health acute care EHR market share crumbles to 20%–what that means; retail real estate downsizer marketing Walgreens leases; Oura files for US IPO, Swoop buys NimbleRx

Holiday weekend roundup: VA asks for ‘cyberspeed’ 25% EHR budget bump, update on EHRM fraud indictment; Commure raises $70M; Innovaccer buys Caduceus, lays off staff; Doximity, OpenEvidence slugfest gets hot

 

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Selling Oracle Health’s EHR–what are the potential buyers, their odds, and price?

June 2, 2026 | by | 5 Comments

The speculation is now “official”, since it is by a London investment banking firm, but it confirms this Editor’s earlier view: Oracle, to become an “AI Infrastructure Landlord” (in their apt term), has to sell off what was Cerner and the EHR operation. 

That train is now approaching, though realistically, no one knows when it is due and at what station.

The need: Oracle must reduce the extent of its “liquidity and capital expenditure crisis” in order to stay in the AI Game. Layoffs of 30,000 staff, or 18% of their global employees, is not enough. A fresh financing of $16 billion from the PIMCO bond fund and others cannot relieve the financial stress created by a previous estimated $72 to $100 billion in previous debt load and payments, so significant that banks refused to lend to still-profitable Oracle. And the AI transformation itself is high risk. Oracle owes OpenAI alone $553 billion in remaining performance obligations, and it has obligations to Meta as well. Add to this the long “taffy pull”–the years-long process of building, chip expenditure, then making a data center operational and generating cash. [TTA 14 May, 7 May, and prior; also Ed Zitron’s article for a much longer take.] Take all of them together, and they are polite words for “rock and a hard place” or a Very Dark Corner.

The London investment banking firm Nelson Advisors has taken a deep yet remarkably easy-to-digest analysis on a potential sale. Highlights are below. The paper is one long web page, not a deck of 50 pages. It is well worth your reading time.

Background: Cerner was bought four years ago in the go-go days of June 2022 for $28 billion. Cerner had an aging EHR and a deteriorating market share. Recently it’s plummeted to a 27% market share versus Epic’s 48% in large health systems. Oracle’s interest was not only in health, but also the health data Cerner contained. The plans were to update the software based EHR to a cloud-native data platform as the linchpin of Healthcare Transformation (Ed. note), except that integration proved to be slow and far more expensive than estimated.

Oracle also inherited from Cerner two huge and impossible to escape Federal obligations: the Military Health System EHR and the Veterans Health Administration EHR Modernization, two separate but mandatorily interoperable systems. MHS was the first implemented and is now  completed, but remains an obligation. The VA EHRM, as TTA has chronicled, started rolling out in 2020 and by 2023 was halted after five implementations Due to Disaster. It resumed in April 2026. The VA and Congressional process for funding now has tight guardrails in place on continuance.  

Who will buy the Oracle/Cerner EHR operation is the question. For how much isn’t as clear. Selling Oracle Cerner “represents the most significant “lump sum” of liquidity available. In the Nelson analogy, Oracle took the Cerner cow, milked it of data to feed its data into its LLMs, and no longer wants knackered ol’ Bessie even rejuvenated by the cloud. (In this Editor’s view, Oracle knows it is fighting a losing battle against Epic, which does privately pretty much what it wants and plans to stay that way.)

The obvious group of potential buyers are ‘hyperscalers’ who view health data as the Next Frontier. They already have feet in this healthcare pond. They also meet approved FedRAMP High security requirements for the VA and MHS contracts. Equally, they all have drawbacks.

Microsoft seems the most logical. It already has a huge footprint and expertise within health systems, courtesy of ambient scribe Nuance/DAX Copilot and cloud computing platform Azure.

  • Conflict #1: Epic is a major Azure customer. Would Microsoft be willing to lose this business in a high-stakes move?
  • Conflict #2: FTC would likely challenge the acquisition based on this huge existing footprint.

Amazon is also engaged in healthcare, but not with health systems. It has Amazon Health Services comprising Pharmacy, One Medical, and DTC telehealth services. (Editor’s note: not mentioned by Nelson is that Amazon Health has a new leader, Dr. Roy Schoenberg, with experience in Federal contracts via Amwell for the Defense Health Agency and MHS. This broke late last week.)

  • Conflict: Amazon Web Services is an established vendor in other areas of health systems, and acquiring an EHR could be seen as too much under one roof.
  • Problem: no experience with EHRs (same as Oracle) nor highly regulated health systems. The scale of the MHS/VA implementation and academic hospitals would be a steep learning curve with little existing precedent or credibility in Amazon-World.

Google certainly has the size and resources, and could position the EHR to rival both Microsoft and Epic. 

  • Conflict #1: Cultural. Google moves fast and healthcare slowly.
  • Conflict #2: Lacks the enterprise sales and support needed to service health systems. It doesn’t have a service culture.
  • Editor’s note: Google has tried and failed to be a healthcare giant at least twice. It doesn’t seem to fit.

Nelson also looked at two outliers, UnitedHealth Group/Optum and the hospital groups HCA or CommonSpirit Health. Both would be vertical integrators. Hospital groups do not have the margin nor borrowing power to make the move. UHG and their Optum operation face cash crunches and ongoing Federal scrutiny. (Had this been a few years ago under a different management, this would have been on strategy for UHG.)

Another outlier from the international space is SAP. Their aim would be global expansion into the Middle East and Europe with another asset their enterprise resource planning (ERP) expertise. Their problem? Lack of experience in the highly regulated US environment. In the Nelson view, the US Government could be the make/break for any deal.

The final destination for this ‘hard to sell’ asset? Private equity. And more than one involved. Nelson looked at five PE players in the healthcare space: Thoma Bravo, Francisco Partners, Bain Capital, Blackstone, and New Mountain Capital. (All are familiar PEs to Readers.) Even with their considerable individual assets, it would likely take a consortium to buy Oracle Health in a $20 to $25 billion deal. Nelson rates this as the most likely scenario as long as a consortium could be formed and it can be seen as a turnaround. The drawbacks are a governance structure and the real lack of an exit strategy. (PEs always need exit strategies to keep the funders happy. They are not in it to buy and keep.) The lower price could be made palatable to Oracle if they retained the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) network and the Oracle Autonomous Database revenue streams.

The other partner in this consortium scenario? The Federal Government. It’s a high priority to secure the EHR for both the MHS and VA. Congress is already concerned.

Place your bets!  Hat tip to a Reader who wishes to remain anonymous.

News roundup: Hinge Health public @$32/share, lower valuation. Is WeightWatchers game over? Calibrate replaces CEO, new prez for Oak Street, NMC gets ‘Smarter’ rolling up 3 portfolio companies, another splash of investor ‘cold water’

May 22, 2025 | by

Hinge Health now public. Today (22 May) Hinge Health debuts as HNGE on the NYSE, the first big IPO for healthcare tech in two years. Last night, the virtual MSK/physical therapy provider raised $437.3 million in its IPO. Shares were priced at the high end of the offering range at $32. The timing is a small surprise, as in early April insiders said to press that they had not committed to any dates due to the market’s roller coaster, but they stayed on their original schedule [TTA 8 Apr].

The nitty-gritty:

  • The floating is 13,666,000 shares of Class A common stock, 8,522,528 of which are being sold by Hinge Health and 5,143,472 of which are being sold by certain selling stockholders.
  • The underwriters have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2,049,900 shares of Class A common stock at $32, less underwriting discounts and commissions.
  • The valuation comes in at the $2.6 to $3 billion range. This is a shave-and-a-haircut from the bubbly days of November 2021, when its Series E raise of $600 million gave it a valuation of $6.2 billion–and this was on top of a January 2021 Series D of $300 million [TTA 5 Nov 2021]. 
  • Hinge also has a Class B voting share class that ensures that major investors including Insight Partners (19% prior to the IPO) and Atomico (15%), along with co-founder and CEO Daniel Perez (18.9%), retain control of the company

The IPO was delayed repeatedly in an uncertain market for health tech raises, much less IPOs. Starting in 2024, rumors flew, early filings were made from last April then in October last year [TTA 3 Oct 2024]. Total raises for Hinge as a private company were $826 million from multiple investors, who were undoubtedly clamoring for OPM (other people’s money) and a full or partial exit. Hinge also let some positive results sink in; they reported a 50% increase in Q1 revenue to $123.8 million from $82.7 million in Q1 2024. Net income went positive at $17.1 million, reversing a net loss of $26.5 million in last year’s Q1.  Endpoints (requires registration), Hinge Health release, CNBC  Will competitor Omada Health be far behind?

The rest of the news is a bit more sobering, reflective of the real challenges health tech/digital health faces, in multiple businesses.

WeightWatchers’ bankruptcy and fast reemergence may be only a brief waypoint in its troubles. This Editor opined at the time of the 45-day prepackaged Chapter 11 that WW was simply kicking the can down the road. Their subscription model of low calorie diets, points, and exercise no longer worked when well-funded teleprescribers such as Hims & Hers, LifeMD, FuturHealth, and Ro, along with traditional telehealth providers like Teladoc, had long since jumped on the GLP-1 promise of quick and assured weight loss. WW didn’t enter GLP-1 prescribing until October 2024, well after it took off even in high prices and scarcity, but continued to lose subscribers. The coup de grace? The partnering deals that teleprescribers as well as CVS Health’s Caremark PBM worked with Novo Nordisk to stimulate their volume for Ozempic and Wegovy. Thus the Chapter 11 and the dumping of $1.15 billion in debt may buy time, but not solve, their market disconnect.

An article from earlier this week in MedCityNews takes the same tack in an interview with industry analyst Michael Schnell, a director in health consultant West Monroe’s healthcare M&A group. Mr. Schnell regards WW as a legacy company in representing the old ‘diet culture’, with the new teleprescribers representing “private, digital-first, affirming wellness experiences that are in themselves a rejection of ‘diet culture.’” It’s a positioning (real estate in the mind/Denny Hatch) dilemma that in its clarity somehow evaded this marketer. It’s echoed by another industry analyst and Virta Health’s CEO Sami Inkinen, a company that has focused on diabetes control and weight loss via nutrition but pivoted last year to add GLP-1s.

WW’s fundamental dilemma is encased in its fundamental 60 year old promise–that you can lose weight, but it requires commitment and work. Their traditional weight loss model of diet and exercise, once fairly simple, grew complicated and not cheap. Complicated and costly will be beaten every time by those who promise a lot less effort, even with cost and side effects that are significant. Now it costs even less. Cigna’s Evernorth announced yesterday that its PBM Express Scripts now will cap monthly out-of-pocket costs of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Lilly’s Zepbound at $200/month, saving an estimated $3,600 annually versus typical DTC discount programs. FierceHealthcare Can WW buy enough time to solve their market problem? Based on prior marketing experience, it’s not likely even if WW completely reinvents itself.

Even among the weight loss teleprescribers, all is not keen and peachy. Calibrate changed out its second CEO in just over a year. Rob Rebak, most recently CEO for three months of Mosaic Diagnostics and earlier CEO of Forefront Telecare (sold to Access TeleCare), replaces Rob MacNaughton, who joined in February 2024 from venture chair of Redesign Health. Other executives have also departed: CFO Bert Smith and chief clinical officer Jane Ruppert. According to CEO Rebak, MacNaughton will remain on Calibrate’s board as an advisor to him. Joining is a new COO, Paul Merrick, another former Forefront Telecare exec. The breaking report is in Endpoints (may be paywalled) and oddly, not elsewhere including the Calibrate website which does not have an executive list, nor press releases on Business Wire.

Originally a portfolio company of Redesign Health, Calibrate has had its ups and downs. The company sold a 70% interest in a 2023 ‘reorganization’ to private equity firm Madryn Asset Management along with other investors  with founding CEO Isabelle Kenyon departing. An early entrant in the GLP-1 obesity management game, promoting ‘metabolic reset’, it also received the brunt of drug scarcity and social media backlash, refunding millions to subscribers.[TTA 26 Oct 2023]

A sidebar on GLP-1s. A systemic review and meta-analysis of 497 articles by a team at Sacred Heart University (CT), retaining eight randomized controlled trials comprised of 2372 participants, all with a BMI ≥ 27 kg/m2, indicates that after discontinuing GLP-1 therapy, weight regain was proportional to the original weight loss. The regain varied by type of GLP-1 drug, but the study labels it ‘significant’. Obesity Reviews (Wiley) 4 April 2025   GLP-1 weight loss is not one course and done–actually good news for the teleprescribers and pharmas as in ‘they’ll be back’. 

Oak Street Health replaces its president. The CVS practice unit named Creagh Milford, DO, MPH as Oak Street’s new president. He comes from CVS’ Minute Clinic as head of retail health from January 2024. Dr. Milford replaces Brian Clem, a 10 year Oak Street veteran who according to the Crain’s Chicago Business article and his own LinkedIn posting, “had decided to move on” after being president since May 2019, prior to CVS. Previously, Mike Pykosz, CEO and co-founder of Oak Street Health, had moved up in the months after the May 2023 buy of Oak Street into CVS corporate, eventually heading up their Health Care Delivery unit. He departed fairly suddenly in November 2024 [TTA 27 Nov 2024]

New Mountain Capital (NMC) does the smush again with three portfolio companies. The new entity, Smarter Technologies, combines SmarterDx (AI for chart analysis catching missed billing codes and appeal denied claims), Thoughtful.ai (agentic AI for checking insurance eligibility and prior authorization), and Access Healthcare (RCM). The revenue cycle management (RCM) company for health systems and hospitals will be headed by Jeremy Delinsky, an executive advisor to NMC and founding COO of Devoted Health. It now totals according to their release 200 clients, including more than 60 hospitals and health systems with over 500,000 providers. It processes more than 400 million transactions and manages over $200 billion in combined revenue annually. No other management transitions are mentioned but on the website, the co-founders/CEOs of the three companies are listed alongside Mr. Delinsky. It’s the second big rollup in less than one year for NMC, which last September combined Apixio’s payment integrity business and Vario into The Rawlings Group to create one giant $3 billion payment integrity company. Last January, NMC acquired Machinify Inc. to roll into Rawlings.

NMC is a big investor with $55 billion in management assets that evidently buys with an eye to combining companies–and also isn’t afraid to back quickly out of deals that don’t work. Just ask Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe.

Gimlet EyeWe close with a Gimlety view from three health investors. MedCityNews’ recent INVEST conference hosted three investors who opined on three important topics: Raffi Boyajian, Principal, Cigna Ventures; Aman Shah, Vice President of New Ventures, VNS Health; Dipa Mehta, Managing Partner, Valeo Ventures. Your Editor’s comments follow.

  • Does every startup need to be AI-powered? Everyone may be pitching AI in their models, but it may not really mean anything. What really means something is building a good business first, then adding in AI to make it better, according to Aman Shah of VNS Health. When is AI just a buzz word and really machine learning? Much of the time. Do these companies really understand it? Or is it a money and time-burning diversion?
  • There aren’t a lot of new things to build anymore. It used to be that companies found a problem and invented a new way to solve it (ah, remember the cocktail parties of yore?), but that is not the way it works now. Where the most success is now is “creating companies with customers versus trying to create something on their own,” according to Dipa Mehta of Valeo. This is a partnership model that can go sideways if a young company is not careful. Customers may not want to pay and you remain in ‘pilot hell’.
  • Value-based care isn’t everything. For early-stage companies, “you can get upside down on your contracts very, very quickly in terms of a financial perspective,” according to Raffi Boyajian of Cigna Ventures. VBC is complicated for providers and for management service companies (MSOs)–imagine being an outsider. 

Breaking: 23andMe sale bids slide from $2.53 per share to $0.41 to none in 11 days, as board rejects CEO’s offer

March 4, 2025 | by

23andMe’s future growing dimmer by the day. Last week before Friday, 23andMe seemed to have a fighting chance. The 20 February Schedule 13D filing proposed a take-private offer for $2.53 per share, or $74.7 million, a small premium above their Nasdaq CM trading price, with CEO and controlling shareholder Anne Wojcicki joined by investor New Mountain Capital (NMC) [TTA 27 Feb]. Evidently that offer went sideways before the board of directors’ Special Committee could even consider it. By Friday 28 February, a week later, New Mountain withdrew from the acquisition bid for unspecified reasons. On Sunday 2 March, Ms. Wojcicki offered instead to the board her non-binding all cash bid of $0.41, or about $12 million. This would acquire the current outstanding shares not owned by Ms. Wojcicki (or not rolled over by current shareholders).  Amended Schedule 13D 

It took about “24 little hours” for the 23andMe board and their advisers to unanimously reject that offer, stating that at $0.41, it represented an 84% decrease to the prior $2.53 offer made with New Mountain Capital. Release.  It is one cent above Anne Wojcicki’s offer made back on 31 July 2024, which matched the price of the shares at that time. No one involved had any comments. (Share price today: $1.37)

So the genetic data/testing/telemedicine company returns to Square Zero. One can only speculate why NMC withdrew so quickly, on what they saw after a bid that made them run, not walk, to the exit. One wonders how Anne Wojcicki would offer not only a misfire of a bid, but also counter with a ridiculously low bid that she had to know would be rejected. Then again, one wonders what the board’s options really are, given the parlous state of their cash reserves. Will this be the second board that throws up their six hands and resigns? CNBC, Business Insider

23andMe gets a $74.7M offer from Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital–this time for real?

February 27, 2025 | by | 2 Comments

If at first you don’t succeed, make another take-private offer, as the company is sinking. Anne Wojcicki, CEO of the terminally beleaguered 23andMe, has with little fanfare placed on the table a take-private offer for $2.53 per share, or $74.7 million, a small premium above their Friday close on Nasdaq CM at $2.42. (Wednesday’s close was $2.23.) With a market cap today of $65 million, it is a far cry from their post-SPAC days in 2021 where their valuation hit a peak of $4.8 billion by October. The news was revealed in their filing of a Schedule 13D with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ms. Wojcicki, or more exactly the Anne Wojcicki Revocable Trust, is backed in this take-private transaction by New Mountain Capital, with her legal advice from heavyweight law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP. New Mountain Capital is being advised by Ropes & Gray LLP. Dechert LLP is reportedly on the company’s side although in January Goodwin Procter LLP was listed.

This is a far cry from her seemingly off-the-cuff offer of $0.40 on 31 July to the previous board’s Special Committee, which this Editor estimates at a $11-12 million offer. The 23andMe seven-person board rejected it a few days later, then departed in frustration on 17 September 2024. They were replaced by a three-person board–plus Ms. Wojcicki, the controlling shareholder. After their 28 January Q3 report that simply confirmed their sinking liquidity and revenue despite shedding/closing lines of business, the new Special Committee, consisting of the three outside directors, opened up 23andMe to ‘strategic alternatives’ on 31 January. 

The consumer/research genetics company’s cash on hand is an anemic $79.4 million as of 31 December–barely above, and likely currently below the $74.7 million Wojcicki/NMC offer. There is nothing left to sell other than Lemonaid [TTA 22 Jan]–but why no one is stepping up to buy a company with a foothold in telehealth remedies including GLP-1 drugs, even with FDA’s change away from compounded drugs, is a mystery

Assume this is a best offer? Whether this non-binding proposal will be countered by others is not known, but a safe assumption is that this will be the only one on the table. Ms. Wojcicki has effective majority control, confirmed in the Schedule 13D filing as 20% of Class A common stock and 69.4% of Class B common stock. Reportedly this gives her 49.99% of the voting power. Both Ms. Wojcicki and New Mountain are offering secured debt financing to fund 23andMe’s operations through the transaction’s closing, As a result, other offers are not likely in this Editor’s estimation.

No timing is reported or comment available from 23andMe.   CNBC, Lawyer Monthly

M&A consolidation + integration continues with Health Catalyst-Upfront Healthcare, New Mountain-Access Healthcare and Machinify, SuperDial-Major Boost

January 15, 2025 | by

The early line on 2025 M&A centers around dinner to snack-size deals that consolidate competitors (or potential competitors) and integrate capabilities–one of our Quirky Predictions:

Health Catalyst agrees to buy Upfront Healthcare. The deal between the two will add Upfront’s personalized patient activation and engagement platform to Health Catalyst’s healthcare management services centered on data and analytics, care management, and performance related services for healthcare organizations. No transaction cost was listed in the release, but the Form 8-K of 10 January details an initial payment of $86 million, composed of $41 million in cash and 5.7 million shares of Health Catalyst stock, plus an earnout of $33.4 million. By comparison, last August’s Lumeon Ltd. buy was for $40 million plus a $25 million potential earnout [TTA 15 Aug 2024]. The UK company’s Care Orchestration service is now integrated into the Health Catalyst suite of services which appears to be the plan for Upfront Healthcare’s services and staff. Closing is stated in the 8-K as occurring during Q1 2025 ending 31 March. Health Catalyst release

Private equity New Mountain Capital invests in Access Healthcare–and reportedly seeks to buy. Based in India with offices in Dallas, Access is a revenue cycle management company for about 150 hospitals and non-acute care practices.  Services include medical billing, coding, and accounts receivable management services. It processes about 400,000 transactions annually according to the Access release today. New Mountain’s investment is (again) for an undisclosed amount. Bloomberg reports that according to the usual insiders, New Mountain is negotiating an acquisition of Access for its portfolio in a transaction that could value Access at about $2 billion. This could close in a few weeks.

On Friday 10 January, New Mountain announced that it will acquire Machinify Inc., a provider of AI-powered software for healthcare payments, for an undisclosed amount. It will join a combined payments company serving over 60 health plans formed by New Mountain from earlier acquisitions The Rawlings Group, Apixio’s payment integrity business, and VARIS. The new company will take the Machinify name and have about $500 million in revenue. Closing is anticipated by end of Q1. Becker’s

Our snack-sized deal: SuperDial’s acquisition of MajorBoost. These two AI-intensive phone call automation providers occupy different parts of the healthcare phone call continuum. SuperDial automates provider to payer and RCM outbound healthcare phone calls for insurance verification, provider attestation for health plans, prior authorizations, credentialing, and more. MajorBoost also automates  provider calls to payers through waiting on hold and navigating their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) phone trees. Acquisition cost nor management transitions are not disclosed, but MajorBoost is listed on Crunchbase as pre-seed with only $350,000 in funding. SuperDial is listed as having $4.2 million in funding over three seed rounds. Release

News roundup: Owlet expands to EU, mPulse buys Zipari, New Mountain PE merges 3 payment integrity firms in $3B smush, Candid Health’s $29M raise, Oura buys Veri, Bloomer Tech’s cardio bra

September 18, 2024 | by

It’s a dogpile of catchup news.

Owlet announced that it’s expanding its European distribution of the Dream Sock. The new countries are Greece, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. It is currently, according to its website, available in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. It received its CE Mark certification in May. The Dream Sock is a non-prescription device that reports, for babies 1-13 months and 6 to 30 pounds, pulse rate, oxygen, wakings, and sleep trends in real-time via the Owlet Dream App. The app also allows alerts outside of range to be set. Owlet’s financials have improved substantially, though still in the loss column, as detailed in the Mobihealthnews article.

mPulse acquired Zipari for an undisclosed price. Both companies are in the healthcare ‘consumer experience (CX)’ segment which broadly includes using consumer information to ‘personalize health journeys’ that enhance the consumer experience for its health plans. Zipari is apparently more the back end of CX software solutions for insurers, third party administrators, and healthcare payers. There was no disclosure of sale price nor of transition of Zipari staff or the brand name. mPulse now covers 400+ leading healthcare organizations, including 29 of the 30 largest health plans in the country. mPulse is private and controlled by PSG. Release

Private equity company New Mountain Capital, in a $3 billion move, merges three payment integrity companies. New Mountain merged The Rawlings Group, Apixio’s Payment Integrity business, and Varis into a single $3 billion, 2,000 employee company around payment accuracy using various technologies. Rawlings is the largest with over 1,400 employees. It identifies third parties responsible for paying medical claims and is over 40 years old. Apixio provides administration, clinical, and financial program services for payers, previously part of Centene. The remainder of the company–its connected care platform and value-based care services–will be acquired by Datavant. Varis provides overpayment identification solutions including diagnosis-related groups (DRG) and ambulatory payment classification (APC) prospective payments. ‘Smushing’ makes sense if there is one controlling investor and the services dovetail with each other; from the description, the main company will be Rawlings. One hopes that they work out the ‘big bang’ details. FierceHealthcare

In a rare fairly large Series B funding, Candid Health scored $29 million. Candid is a revenue cycle automation and integration platform that simplifies billing for providers through API integrations with current system. The raise was led by 8VC with participation from existing investors First Round Capital, BoxGroup, and Y Combinator. Their total funding since 2019 is $47 million. Release

The Oura ring from Finland is not only still around, but is acquiring a metabolic health company, Veri. One of those ‘neat ideas’ which this Editor thought was gone is still around, having sold 2.5 million rings both direct and through Best Buy currently for $69.99 annually plus local tax, and now tracks over 20 biometrics around sleep, activity, heart health, and stress. Oura has had $148 million of funding since 2013, with its last big $100 million Series C back in the Palmy Days of 2021, with a small venture round in 2022. Veri is also Finnish, already partners with Oura, and has an app that via CGM (Abbott FreeStyle Libre) guides users to the right foods and habits for their bodies. Oura will be launching in conjunction with Veri a new feature, Meals, to help members to see how meal timing affects health metrics like sleep, stress, and recovery. Many of Veri’s team will be joining Oura, including their three founders. Release, Mobihealthnews 

An ECG that looks and wears like a bra. That is the device designed by Bloomer Tech, a MIT spinout. This wearable violates the “smaller and less obtrusive is better” dictum to collect more and more accurate data. The bra design places sensors all around a woman’s torso, the best position for heart data, in an accustomed way to collect data on heart function, lungs, hormones, and metabolism. It connects to an app that collects information and sends it to the wearer’s health provider. Bloomer Tech’s market will be women at risk or with heart disease, with the bra as a prescription item. Its first clinical trial was launched in March, funded by a $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. It comes in 12 sizes from 32B to 44C, Axios Boston

The two women founders, Chong Rodriguez and Aceil Halaby met in the MIT’s masters degree program, founding it in 2018. They named it after Amelia Bloomer, a 19th Century American suffragette, social reformer, publisher/writer, and advocate for less restrictive forms of dress than the whalebone corsets and tight dresses customary of the period. MedCityNews