TTA’s cool looks: Oracle Health speculation, Singapore charges Biofourmis ex-CEO, OpenEvidence tops $12B valuation, Carbon Health’s Ch.11, financings, M&A, a future IPO, more!

 

13 February 2025 (yes, Friday the 13th)

A big two weeks for news. The hottest article is a review of all the speculation on whether Oracle will ditch its expensively created Oracle Health–and Cerner–to finance building AI data centers. In shockers, Singapore has brought fraud and related charges against Biofourmis’ former CEO–and OpenEvidence is topping a $12 billion valuation. We also have a lot of fresh financings, some small M&A, and even one pending IPO, in contrast to 2025’s Gobi Desert. Bankruptcies continue, with an excellent Must Read on Carbon Health’s transition from $3B unicorn to Chapter 11.

Please feel free to comment and pass along. Let me know if this is worth it to you!

News bites: Amazon Pharmacy’s same-day delivery zooms, One Medical’s lab results app, OpenEvidence’s valuation shock, NYU Langone-Isaac Health, HealthMark buys Purview, Harbor Health buys Rippl, big raises for Solace Health, Talkiatry

Must Read: an excellent analysis on Carbon Health’s bankruptcy–and the Ominous Parallels

Chutes and Ladders w/o 9 Feb: Biofourmis’ ex-CEO faces 7 major Singapore fraud charges (updated), Doximity’s 17% drop; Devoted Health’s big $366M raise, Garner Health garners $118M, Synthpop’s $15M Series A

What’s happening now with the VA on the Oracle EHRM rollout?

Chutes & Ladders this week: Carbon Health’s Ch. 11; Centene’s 2-way beat, TrumpRx.com debuts; Doc.com files for $24M Nasdaq listing, $55M for Alaffia Health, big Series Ds for Midi Health and ElevenLabs

Summing up the speculation: will Oracle sell off Oracle Health/Cerner to finance $300B OpenAI datacenter buildout?

Oh yes, one more….So why is there a ‘100% Written by a human’ flag in the header?

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Telehealth & Telecare Aware – covering news on latest developments in telecare, telehealth and eHealth, worldwide.

News bites: Amazon Pharmacy’s same-day delivery zooms, One Medical’s lab results app, OpenEvidence’s valuation shock, NYU Langone-Isaac Health, HealthMark buys Purview, Harbor Health buys Rippl, big raises for Solace Health, Talkiatry

Amazon Pharmacy growing same-day prescription delivery to 6,500 cities and towns by end of 2026. This adds nearly 2,000 locations. Amazon currently delivers to all 50 states and DC with either same day or next day delivery. Same day is adding locations in two new states, Idaho and Massachusetts. The release rather amusingly lists the horses they use on Mackinac Island, Michigan (no cars or e-anything), e-bikes in Manhattan, EVs in the suburbs, and One Medical kiosks in Los Angeles, which debuted last October. Amazon also touted their savings outside of insurance, an item much in the news with TrumpRx.com–up to 80% on generic medications and 40% on brand-name medications through Prime Rx at no additional cost. What does this mean for telehealth competition? A drop in stock price for Teladoc, Hims & Hers (added to by a GLP-1 pill patent infringement suit by Novo Nordisk), and battered Doximity (Doximity Dialer). Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch  

Amazon’s clinic network, One Medical, premiers a ‘beta feature’ that analyzes personal lab results. The Health Insights feature, developed in partnership with Lifeforce, is on the Lab Results tab. After answering a questionnaire, the patient can see an AI-generated:

  • Personalized wellness score based on their biomarker profile
  • Detailed analysis of individual biomarkers categorized by health domain
  • Evidence-based lifestyle recommendations around nutrition, physical activity, stress management, and sleep
  • Scientific references supporting each recommendation

This Editor noted that One Medical is gradually transitioning to an Amazon identity and logotype. Release

Shocked, shocked at OpenEvidence’s $12 billion valuation? According to Katie Adams in MedCityNews, mais non. We noted at the end of January, when OpenEvidence collected $250 million in a Series D, that it was this year’s “hot number”. Certainly it’s “IT” with the docs as a reference source, claiming daily average usage by 40% of US doctors in 10,000 hospitals and medical centers. More than 757,000 clinicians use their free search engine trained on journals and clinical medical data only, coupled with an AI chatbot agent. It does a job that Doximity, Epocrates, and Medscape aren’t doing. It also dispenses with going through organizations as it permits direct signup. Pharma likes the model and votes with its shrinking dollars, giving OpenEvidence a $100 million revenue run rate. So do investors, who’ve socked $700 million into the company since 2021. There’s nothing like being the ‘up and comer’, as was said on a recent analyst call this Editor was on.

Isaac Health partners with NYU Langone for virtual dementia care. The NYC-based health system, with a strong base in neurology and brain health, seeks to reduce the time for a referral and testing for cognitive impairments. With Isaac, the patient is scheduled quickly, usually within a week, for a virtual consult. Isaac is integrated with NYU Langone’s systems to combine virtual with in-person care. If the patient is not comfortable with technology or the visit, a trained helper can be sent to the home to help manage the virtual visit. Isaac releaseMedCityNews

M&A and raises, in contrast to 2025, remain busy

HealthMark Group buys Purview. Purview’s cloud-based systems provide quick access to ingestion, analysis and sharing of medical imaging data, providing access to imaging records quickly. HealthMark Group is a provider of clinical information exchange solutions for healthcare providers. Acquisition cost was not disclosed, but Annapolis MD based Purview is listed as having less than 10 employees on Crunchbase with no funding listed, while HealthMark Group was refinanced last July by TA Associates private equity, retaining an interest from Ridgemont Equity Partners.   Release

Austin, Texas-based Harbor Health is acquiring dementia care platform Rippl. Harbor Health combines a clinic network in Texas with health plans. Most of the clinics are in Austin with expansion to El Paso, San Antonio, and Dallas via last year’s acquisition of 32 VillageMD clinics [TTA 9 October 2025]. Rippl’s platform is designed to support care at home for those with dementia via early detection of physical and behavioral issues. Rippl is also obtaining additional financing from seven investors including General Catalyst and Google Ventures. Acquisition cost was not disclosed. Harbor Health release

And to close, two hefty later-stage raises:

  • Solace Health notched a surprising $130 million Series C. It provides healthcare navigation via advocates for patients requiring guidance on a new diagnosis, needing referrals, understanding insurance coverage, and care coordination. Costs are covered by Medicare, most Medicare Advantage plans and some health insurance carriers. The round was led by IVP, with participation from Menlo Ventures, SignalFire, Torch Capital, Inspired Capital and RiverPark Ventures. This topped last year’s $60 million Series B for a total $211 million financing since 2021. Valuation entered unicorn territory of over $1 billion. MedCityNews, Mobihealthnews 
  • Talkiatry raised $210 million in a Series D, but presently no plans for an IPO. Their total financing now tops $400 million. Talkiatry was an early entrant (2019) in virtual psychiatry and therapy, and employs over 800 psychiatrists and 300 therapists, delivering 3 million patient visits to date. Another asset is that it is in-network with over 100 payers. The round was led by Perceptive Advisors with four other participants. MedCityNews

Distance concierge medicine: telemedicine connects US doctors to Chinese patients

Another ‘burden shift’ in medical care. As we in the US wrestle with the issues of telemedicine, cross-state consults, and payment parity, companies are finding a niche in cross-border international virtual consults. A startup in NYC, Docflight, now connects Chinese patients to a claimed several hundred US doctors from prestigious medical centers: Dana-Farber Cancer Center, NYU Langone, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General, New York-Presbyterian, and others. Founded by Sally Wang, an attorney with a MPH, she developed the idea after negotiating the US healthcare system for her mother with breast cancer and considering how difficult it would be in China to do the same.

The patients pay an upfront fee of about $2,000 in what is essentially long-distance concierge medicine. Docflight first screens the patient, then recommends an appropriate specialist. Once matched, Docflight collects the patient’s medical records (machine translated then human reviewed) and schedules the consult time. The US doctor then advises their Chinese patient on health issues and performs a virtual visit, often with an attending Chinese doctor, and offers recommendations for treatment in an average 45 minute session. The doctors cannot prescribe, perform treatments or procedures. 

China has a burgeoning middle class and an aging population, which in combination with the hospital-based system of care in China means that individual patients receive little time with a physician, don’t have a personal relationship with one or more doctors, and don’t expect much of a personal relationship with their doctor. Their government is trying to swing the balance to a primary care model, but with 1.4 bn people that will take awhile. Telehealth and remote patient monitoring is one avenue being explored [TTA 12 Oct 16] but for acute care, a different model is needed. For the Chinese middle class, Docflight is an alternative to medical tourism, a time-tested safety valve for the affluent commonplace for patients from Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia to international medical centers, though Docflight will arrange such trips to the US.

It’s reasonable that healthcare crosses borders to increase access and overcome language barriers. We’ve previously profiled Mexico’s Salud Interactiva, which provides telephonic consults within the country plus select services through partners ConsejoSano (US) and Konsulta MD (Philippines) [TTA 16 Aug]. Dictum Health, an early-stage health tech company dual-headquartered in Dubai and Oakland, Calif., provides telehealth/telemedicine services long-distance to clinics in Costa Rica, refugee camps in Jordan, and oil rigs [TTA 19 Sep]. Crossing borders to burden-shift care and using technology to facilitate it is a trend to watch for in 2018. NBC News (video)Bold Global Media (video)Crunchbase  Hat tip to reader Jeanmarie Tenuto of Healthcare Technical Solutions.

Telemedicine used in MS neuromodulation study at NYU Langone, with positive results (US)

MS patients in a small NYU Langone Medical Center-led pilot of neuromodulation and cognitive training using telemedicine supervision experienced significant improvement in complex attention and reaction time. Non-invasive transcranial direct current brain stimulation (tDCS) was added to a previously tested cognitive training program for MS patients. Telemedicine (real-time video) was used to deliver the training, monitor patients in the program and provide follow-up support.

The study control was a cognitive training (CT)-only group. According to the abstract, “after ten sessions, the tDCS group (n = 25) compared to the CT only group (n = 20) had significantly greater improvement in complex attention (p = 0.01) and response variability (p = 0.01) composites. The groups did not differ in measures of basic attention (p = 0.95) or standard cognitive measures (p = 0.99).” These results corresponded to the stimulation area in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, according to the lead researcher Leigh Charvet, PhD.

The current used in the tDCS unit helps neurons fire more readily, versus making them fire. The tDCS unit used was likely provided by NYC-based Soterix Medical, a developer of neuromodulation systems used in clinical trials. One of the study authors, Abhishek Datta, PhD, is their CTO.

The research is also promising in helping to deliver therapy to MS patients at home, reducing the travel need on both sides, and to develop analytics to optimize medication. In future, the researchers hope to expand the study group to Parkinson’s disease patients. MedCityNews, Neuromodulation (the official journal of the International Neuromodulation Society; abstract only, full study requires additional access)