News roundup: (breaking) IKS Health finalizes TruBridge buy, Hims shares rise on independent Rx fills, Cala Health scores $50M, Joyful Health $22M, Tava Health $40M, actor Jeremy Renner partners with RapidSOS

April 24, 2026 | by | No Comments

Breaking: IKS Health finalized their acquisition agreement with TruBridge, Inc. Today’s (23 Apr) announcement did not contain an acquisition price, but IKS is offering shareholders $26.25 per share, a small premium above today’s close at $25.27. Both are revenue cycle management (RCM) companies and will strengthen capabilities in the rural and community hospital markets. Since TruBridge is publicly traded on Nasdaq with 14.91 million shares outstanding, the deal is a minimum of $391.4 million, considerably less than the rumored $675 million [TTA 15 Apr]. TruBridge’s largest shareholders (27%) have agreed to terms, but it is subject to the usual regulatory reviews with an expected closing in Q3. Otherwise, the press release is short on details, but IKS will finance the TruBridge buy with debt financed by Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.

The unstoppable Hims & Hers notches another rise with wider GLP-1 med access. Hims announced a deal with Eli Lilly to fulfill Zepbound prescriptions via Lilly Direct. It also permits its providers to prescribe medications that are fulfilled by independent pharmacies, which essentially opens Hims up to all GLP-1 drugs, with restrictions of course.

Once largely wedded to compounded weight loss drugs, to the point of running commercials on 2025’s Super Bowl that their obesity drugs are priced “for profits, not patients”, Hims & Hers has flipped the script in less than a year to be the online prescriber of nearly all brand name weight loss drugs. This started about five months after the Super Bowl when FDA finalized the ban on compounding those drugs. Pretty soon Hims was inking deals, starting with Novo Nordisk in May 2025 to prescribe Wegovy and fulfill through NovoCare Pharmacy. In March, they settled their long-running legal tiff with Novo when they agreed to drop their just-debuted compounded pill to sell Novo’s Wegovy and Ozempic in both pill and injectable versions.  (The newest Lilly weight loss med, Foundayo, is only available DTC from them and commercial insurance/cash pay only.) Hims is up to $28/share. Sherwood News

News of raises for some interesting companies came thick and fast the latter part of the week

Wearable neuromodulator developer Cala Health gained $50 million in an unlettered raise. Unusually, it had a sole funder, Trinity Capital. Cala has developed the only FDA-cleared 510(k) wearable for action hand tremor in people with essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease. The funding will be used to scale commercial distribution and product development. The kIQ device uses transcutaneous afferent patterned stimulation (TAPS), which reduces hand tremors by measuring a patient’s tremor pattern and delivering individualized nerve stimulation. Prior rounds were in 2024 ($50 million), $77 million in 2021, and a $55 million Series B in 2019. Trinity Capital release, Mobihealthnews

Joyful Health, a financial operating system for providers, raised a $17 million Series A for a total of $22 million. It is designed as a claims denial intelligence and recovery infrastructure to work within an existing revenue cycle management system and connect claims data. The round was led by CRV with participation from seed investors XYZ Venture Capital, Designer Fund, Inflect Capital (the healthcare investment arm of Vituity, the largest physician-owned partnership in the United States), and Go Global Ventures (led by Commure founder Diede van Lamoen). Providers lose over $125 billion annually in lost revenue from unpaid or denied claims.  Joyful Health blog, Yahoo Finance

Back in the popular stomping grounds of telemental health, Tava Health raised a $40 million Series C. Tava, based in Salt Lake City, markets a  behavioral health platform to providers, employers, and health plans. It also announced three new products: Symphony for providers, TavaCare for the employer market, and Tava Guide for health plans, health systems, and care coordinators. Approximately 5,000 mental health providers are a part of the Tava Health network. Investors were led by Centana Growth Partners with participation from Catalyst Investors, Blue Heron Ventures, Peterson Ventures, and Springtide Ventures. Tava has raised $73 million since 2020 with its last raise in 2024. Yahoo Finance (release), Behavioral Health Business, Mobihealthnews

And an interesting partnership

Popular actor Jeremy Renner is partnering with public safety and first responder platform RapidSOS.  NYC (!)-based RapidSOS originally specialized in the technical aspects of public 911 systems and then developed integrations to link data from over 350 million connected devices, apps, and sensors directly to 911 centers and first responders. Increasingly, these integrations are AI-powered and even incorporate drones. Mr. Renner relates very well to first responders, having his own near-death experience on New Year’s Day 2023 where his snowcat machine rolled over and crushed him, breaking 38 bones along with blunt chest trauma. He is the focus of a 30-second documentary leading up to next Wednesday’s (29 April) premiere of Behind the Emergency. He is not only helping to tell their development story from his experience, but also as a partner plus investor. Mobihealthnews 

A spooky ‘good news’ roundup: AtlantiCare rolling out Orbita AI, Health Wildcatters Pitch Day, RapidSOS, HealthJoy fundings and more

November 1, 2022 | by

This Editor has noticed the gloomy tone of the past few weeks’ postings. She has decided to ‘accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative” (in Johnny Mercer’s words) using the last few hours of Halloween (boo!) with nothing but Good News.

A health system is actually implementing an AI platform! AtlantiCare, which is based in southern New Jersey, will be rolling out the Orbita virtual artificial intelligence platform across its system, which includes more than 100 locations across Southern New Jersey. Orbita’s capabilities can link patients with virtual assistants and AI to streamline routine tasks such as scheduling, patient reporting, medication adherence, and care management. It also recognizes and translates more than 100 languages. According to Becker’s, Orbita’s functions will be rolled out in stages with the digital ‘front door’ going live in September and patient outbound communication capabilities in 2023.

Dallas’ Health Wildcatters finishes up its 2022 cohort with an evening Pitch Day at their new HQ on Thursday 10 November. Their 11 startups will present starting at 4pm in two sessions. With two networking sessions, the festivities start at 3:30 and go to 8pm. Health Wildcatters has relocated to a 23 acre campus, Pegasus Park, targeted to entrepreneurs and startups in biotech and healthcare to encourage development and collaboration. More information and registration links

And fundings are actually happening–for companies with an established success story + track record–and those at a very early stage where there’s promise, the risk is shared, and the investment is modest. 

  • RapidSOS raised $75 million in a venture round. It developed an emergency response platform that provides first responders with real-time health and location data from connected devices, apps and sensors. It supports 5,200 Emergency Communications Centers, protecting 95%+ of people in the US, across 150 million emergencies annually. Night Dragon Security led 11 other investors. Funding to date is over $280 million.
  • HealthJoy, a digital employee benefits platform for healthcare, raised $60 million in Series D funding from nine investors led by Valspring Capital. Their app bundles telemedicine, wellness, dental, advocacy, medical bill review, EAP, prescription savings, behavioral health, price transparency, MSK, chronic care, mental health, and others. FierceHealthcare
  • Pediatric telehealth provider Hazel Health closed a Series C1 of $51.5 million led by Bain Capital. Hazel partners with school districts to offer virtual care clinics inside the school nurse’s office. It claims to be the only company in school-based telehealth.
  • Others: Navina (AI, $22 million), Galen Robotics ($15 million), Midi Health (menopause virtual clinic, $14 million), and Lumata Health (virtual practice management for ophthalmology, $4 million seed)  Mobihealthnews

Also:

  • Valera Health raised $44.5 million in a growth equity financing round led by Heritage Group. Additional participants are Horizon Healthcare Services and Cigna Ventures, joined by seven previous investors. Total funding is over $71 million. Valera is a specialized virtual mental health platform for high-acuity patients with serious mental illness and severe depression with live health coaches to find a therapist or doctor, and creates a team with multiple clinicians. Their services can be used by adults (18+) and children, adolescents, and teens (6-18)  Mobihealthnews

News and deal roundup: Signify Health’s $564M IPO, RapidSOS’ $85M Series C, Poland’s Telemedico raise, Livongo’s Zane Burke to Bardavon

February 13, 2021 | by

The Big Deal of the Week is Signify Health‘s IPO which on 11 February raised $564 million on a sale of 23.5 million shares on the NYSE. Signify provides comprehensive care and management services such as complex care management, SDOH, episodes of care/bundled care programs, and specialized medical services in the home, utilizing technology and data analytics. Signify now has a market capitalization of $7.12 bn. FierceHealthcare, MarketWatch, Signify release.

RapidSOS, an emergency response data platform that provides Next Generation 911 and Emergency Services Network services to Emergency Communication Centers, had a Series C raise of $85 million led by Insight Partners and Global Venture Capital. The RapidSOS technology in global use links 350 million connected devices to first responders and 4,800 data centers. They have raised $205.7 million over 14 rounds since 2016. Crunchbase, release

On the other side of the deal continuum, Poland’s Telemedico, a telemedicine provider in multiple European and Middle Eastern countries, raised a modest €5.5 million (~$6.6 million) in a Series A round. The round is led by Flashpoint Venture Capital, Uniqa Ventures, PKO VC, Black Pearls VC, and Adamed. Mobihealthnews, TechCrunch

And in a coda to the Telavongo story (Teladoc and Livongo), former CEO Zane Burke joined as a director of workers compensation digital health company Bardavon Health Innovations. Mr. Burke led the $18.5 billion merger with Teladoc in his two years as CEO, after 20 years at Cerner. Becker’s Health IT, release (DigitalJournal)