News roundup: Withings Medical Group service launches, MPs urge cancellation of NHS/Palantir FDP contract, IKS closes TruBridge buy for $557M, ATA comments on prelim CMS PFS for telehealth, Philips’ AI-powered…toothbrush

July 16, 2026 | by

Withings USA expands monitoring into clinical care services. Withings’ reach from devices into clinical care is definitely something unusual, as it’s rare that a device developer gets into the messy care space, much less with a ten-year commitment. Here Withings, with the Withings Medical Group, is entering care for Original Medicare beneficiaries via CMS’s new ACCESS Model (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions). ACCESS is a ten-year CMS Innovation Center model that pays providers on chronic disease management outcomes. It launched on 5 July.

Withings Medical Group will concentrate on cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic health (CKM), beginning with hypertension, diabetes, and obesity. The medical group’s care team will work with the beneficiary’s primary care providers to build an individualized care plan for each member. The Withings Medical Group teams can also prescribe and adjust medications and support the beneficiary on lifestyle changes.

From the release: “This focused scope reflects a deliberate, clinically rigorous approach to entering care, and it marks only the beginning of a broader ambition for how Withings supports health over the long term. It also aligns with the ACCESS Model’s ten-year, phased approach to testing whether outcome-aligned, technology-supported care can improve outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries nationwide.”

In the UK, two Commons committees have urged the Health Innovation Minister to cancel the contract for the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP).  The developer, Palantir, has come under fire in both the UK and US on its ties to defense and security agencies in those countries and with Israel. Palantir contracted with NHS England starting in 2023. The Commons committees objecting to Palantir to Health Innovation Minister Preet Kaur Gill are the Health and Social Care Committee and the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. They are urging using a contractual break in February 2027 to term the contract, seek another contractor, or develop one in the UK. The concerned Members cross parties and are joined by the trade unions and 100 NHS data and technology specialists, who have separately objected to the FDP in a letter to Health Secretary James Murray.

The FDP is a key part of NHS digital transformation to facilitate storage and analysis of health datasets to improve planning, patient care and hospital operations. But the concerns apparently are more political, targeting Palantir and alleging that its defense and security contracts will discourage patients from allowing their medical information to be used. If we in the US shared similar concerns, Microsoft, Meta, AWS, and Oracle wouldn’t have a single healthcare contract. Computing UK

IKS Health wrapped up its TruBridge buy last Thursday for $557 million. The acquisition, announced last April, closed a quarter earlier than expected. IKS is a healthcare software company for administration and documentation, with TruBridge an EHR and revenue cycle management (RCM) provider to primarily rural hospitals. The combined company now has a US customer base of 150,000 clinicians and 2,000 healthcare organizations. IKS Health is traded in India with US operations in Dallas. The TruBridge acquisition is their third this year, financed with $600 million over five years in debt sourced from Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. TruBridge shareholders received $26.25 in cash per share as offered in April. The release is singularly unrevealing on whether TruBridge will continue as a separate product line, nor on any operational/management continuity. It is another example of consolidation and ‘line extension’ between similar companies. MedCityNews

If it’s midyear, it’s time for a preliminary CMS Physician Fee Schedule draft. ATA ACTION has an early review of its telehealth and technology changes proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that affect physicians serving Medicare beneficiaries. From the release (PDF):

  • Telehealth: In addition to changes to extend existing telehealth flexibilities, CMS proposes adding five codes to the Medicare Telehealth List, clarifying critical care consultation code descriptors, creating two new telehealth modifiers, and allowing physicians to bill for telehealth services involving residents when either the teaching physician or resident is in the room with the beneficiary.
  • Remote Patient Monitoring: CMS proposes tightening guardrails and recalculating payment for remote patient monitoring (RPM) and remote treatment monitoring (RTM) services. Key changes include restricting RTM billing to patients with an established relationship with the billing practitioner, requiring a separately reportable initiating visit tied to the start of monitoring services, prohibiting use of third-party remote monitoring companies, lowering monitoring valuations, and potentially consolidating current CPT codes into four new G-codes (two RPM, two RTM) covering initial setup and monthly monitoring/management.
  • Technology-Enabled Care: CMS is seeking broad feedback on modernizing Medicare reimbursement for technology-enabled care, with particular interest in primary care, care management, capitated payment models, and AI.
  • New–Software as a Medical Service (SaMS): Aligning with the OPPS proposed rule, CMS introduces a new category – Software as a Medical Service – defined as algorithm-based clinical decision-support software with clinical or diagnostic functionality (excluding remote monitoring and prescription digital therapeutics). SaMS providing secondary analysis of lab data would shift from the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule to the Physician Fee Schedule.
  • Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Improvement Activities: CMS proposes two new technology-focused improvement activities: clinician use of AI to improve patient care, and use of interoperable clinical decision support.

Whether these survive to the Final PFS is dependent on comments, Congress, and budgets.

And now we have AI for our electronic toothbrush. Philips goes AI in its latest model, the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean 9900 Prestige. It uses built-in, on-device AI and spatially aware guidance to track brushing. There’s a 12-segment “Mouth Map” on the handle, with a light ring that gives real-time visual feedback on your coverage, pressure, and scrubbing habits. For those of us who like to press down, the SenseIQ sensor automatically adjusts intensity so we aren’t so bad. It has eight modes and three intensities, a bit more than their top-of-the-line existing Sonicares. And it comes in five premium colors! Well, well…as a faithful user of my Philips Sonicare toothbrush since a rather extensive dental  ‘remodeling’ a few years ago, and guilty of sometimes being a bit sketchy about my completeness, I am somewhat dismayed that to be au courant, I will need to acquire this new model…but it won’t be available till this fall in the US and Europe. Release, Mobihealthnews

Short takes: FDA seeks feedback on home care tech; Japan care homes piloting AI; Author Health’s $115M bet on senior mental health; Alertacall’s Batchelor on ‘right fit’ finance support; Headspace in the wrong (layoff) space again

July 7, 2023 | by

Short takes for a short (US) week

FDA seeks public comment on home care tech–an opportunity for developers and home care. The US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) has a request for public comment on technologies that could improve home care, both in the traditional sense and in hospital-to-home transitional care. Their two key questions of nine are: “How can the FDA support the development of medical technologies, including digital health technologies and diagnostics, for use in non-clinical care settings, such as at home?” and “What factors should be considered to effectively institute patient care that includes home-based care?” The FDA’s language around this is anodyne as couched in ‘health equity’ but it’s seriously around increasing access to all, supporting innovation, reducing barriers to care, and empowering people to make better decisions around their health. All public comments must be submitted to FDA’s docket (FDA-2023-N-1956), available at Regulations.gov. Important–the public comment period will end on 30 August 2023. Healthcare Dive

In Japan, a nursing home operator/insurer is adopting analytics to track residents and reduce caregiver workload. The operator/insurer is Sompo Holdings (LinkedIn) and the analytics company is Palantir. The jointly designed software platform, egaku, integrates artificial intelligence and analytics with proprietary data on sleep, diet, medical treatment, and exercise. Sompo Care uses minimally intrusive devices such as sensor-equipped beds to evaluate sleep conditions via tracking of body movements, respiration, and heart rate. They are claiming a 15% reduction of caregiver workload in a typical 60-person capacity care facility, saving as much as $60,000 annually. Unfortunately, the FT article is paywalled but a partial citation is available on ACM TechNews   On the Palantir website, there is a fragmentary article on how Sompo used the Palantir Foundry platform to streamline gathering information for care plans by linking local resident data t0 additional care data to create ‘a single source of truth’. Sompo press release

Speaking of seniors, Boston-based Author Health launched at the end of June with a unique mission–reaching out to older adults with serious mental illness and substance use disorders–and with a tidy startup kitty. The company provides specialized physicians, nurses, therapists, and community health workers to deliver a mix of virtual and in-person care. Their first partnership is with Humana Medicare Advantage (MA) plans in Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Florida metros in conjunction with CenterWell Senior Primary Care. Author Health helps to treat conditions such as depression and anxiety, schizophrenia and psychosis, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias, and substance use disorders. Author is led by CEO Dr. Katherine Hobbs, a psychiatrist and former health insurance executive. The $115 million in initial financing was led by General Atlantic and included participation from Flare Capital Partners. Author Health release, FierceHealthcare, MedCityNews

TTA has previously profiled James Batchelor, CEO and founder of Alertacall. He is an old friend of TTA from early days with Editor Steve and Alertacall is one of the pioneering companies in UK telecare. Most recently (May 2022) Alertacall achieved the Queen’s Award For Enterprise: Innovation. This short interview with him in New Business UK discusses the importance of finding the right fit in long-term funding. If your buyers are in a sector with lengthy, complex sales cycles, it’s vital to find a backer that understands the selling space, which for Alertacall is ‘property management’. Even more important now!

Apparently in the wrong space is Headspace Health. The Los Angeles-based telemental health company is laying off 181 additional employees, or 15% of its current workforce. This follows on their December layoff of 5% or 50 employees. In the palmy days of mid-2021, Headspace acquired Ginger for a $3 billion valuation at that time [TTA 27 Aug 2021] to enter the enterprise market and acquired Sayana and Shine in 2022. It’s been a struggle ever since though they did not go the SPAC route, stayed private, and now claim 70 million members (actually downloads of their app), both individual and enterprise. Headspace expanded to the UK in January. Too much lookalike/soundalike competition and now a very hard road to that cliché, ‘a path to profitability’. LA Times, Mobihealthnews

Babylon Health’s SPAC closing later this month at $4.2 billion value, buys California medical practices

October 7, 2021 | by

Ali Parsa, CEO of Babylon Health, confirmed to FierceHealthcare yesterday that Babylon Health will be going public later this month via a SPAC. This is proceeding as closed in June with blank-check Alkuri Global Acquisition Corp., led by former Groupon CEO Rich Williams [TTA 1 June].

The pro-forma equity valuation is estimated as $4.2 billion, with Alkuri providing $575 million in gross proceeds to Babylon, including $230 million in a private placement from investors such as AMF Pensionsförsäkring and Palantir Technologies. The new Babylon Holdings Limited will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BBLN.

After developing its GP in Hand triage service with the NHS starting in 2017, now claiming 102, 000 users, it has weathered controversies from clinical commissioning group (CCG) reservations to gender bias in its chatbot (‘Heart Sister’ Carolyn Thomas) to a litany from @DrMurphy11 to the BBC Two’s Newsnight treatment [TTA 9 Jan 20, 27 Feb 20]. However, Mr. Parsa believes that their value proposition (technically, a written document) is sound and that they are now poised for growth.

Newly developed products include Babylon 360, a digital-first value-based care service that includes the option for telehealth visits, and Babylon Cloud Services, a suite of digital self-care tools for patients and doctors, including an AI-enabled symptom checker. Expansion has been as far flung as Rwanda and the US, although in the crowded US telehealth market, Babylon has found it difficult to make a strong  impression versus Teladoc and Amwell, though they cover three million lives and has licensed providers in all 50 states.  They recently bought two California-based medical practices, Meritage Medical Network and First Choice Medical Group, opening an office in Palo Alto. Babylon also optioned to buy Higi health kiosks after a $30 million investment [TTA 30 May 20], which may close after the SPAC. Still, Mr. Parsa is staking the future on the US, where over 40% of global healthcare money is spent. 

Babylon has been growing 400% year to year for a few years with $79 million in 2020 unaudited revenue, a 394% year-over-year increase, and a projected $321 million in 2021, $710 million by 2022, and $1.4 billion by 2023. Hampering this sunny picture are Babylon’s continued losses: $76 million first half of 2021, less than their PY net loss of $91 million.