News and deal roundup: Amazon Care lands Hilton, Lightbeam buys CareSignal RPM; aptihealth’s $50M, MedArrive’s $25M, Ribbon Health’s $43.5M

Amazon Care nabs a big one in Hilton Hotels (US). Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. will now offer Amazon Care to its US employees on a corporate health plan starting in 2022.  Text chats will be free, with virtual or home visits with providers available for a small fee. Availability will depend on where the employee is. Care Medical will provide national virtual visits, while house calls are in limited metro areas: greater Seattle and the Washington-Baltimore metro area at present, with expansion plans to Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Boston. Hilton is only the second company (after Precor) disclosed by Amazon. At the end of 2020, Hilton had 141,000 employees, but that includes worldwide properties so the US number remains in Amazon style–opaque. Amazon’s Kristen Helton announced it at Reuters Total Health on Monday. FierceHealthcare

Lightbeam Health buys CareSignal. Lightbeam, a population health analytics and management platform, closed its acquisition of CareSignal, a ‘deviceless’ remote patient monitoring (RPM) system that uses phones for patient reporting via SMS and (hold your beer or wine!) interactive voice response (IVR). CareSignal adds direct RPM reporting data for chronic conditions, behavioral health, social determinants of health, maternal health, and additional monitoring to the Lightbeam platform used by ACOs, payers, provider groups, health systems, and other healthcare organizations. Financial and organizational terms were not disclosed. Lightbeam’s backers are Hearst Health Ventures and 7wire Ventures through a Series A and undisclosed venture round five years ago (!), with CareSignal barely out of seed with $7.5 million invested. Release

And Series A and B raises continue… 

Behavioral health tech continues to attract substantial investment. Boston-based aptihealth’s (not a typo) $50 million Series B will be expanding its clinical science, technology, and services for higher acuity behavioral health conditions. Funding was from Takeda Digital Ventures, Pivotal Life Sciences, Vista Credit Partners, Olive Tree Ventures, Claritas Capital, and What If Ventures for total funding of $65 million. aptihealth coordinates patient access to care teams from any point of care. The company has signed 27 health plans, health systems, and physician practice customers to date. Release

MedArrive’s $25 million Series A continues home care’s hot streak. Section 32 led the round with participation from new investors, 7wireVentures and Leaps by Bayer, and existing investors Define Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and Redesign Health. MedArrive connects telehealth from payers and providers to a network of EMTs, paramedics, and other skilled healthcare workers for hands-on care. The New York-based company currently operates in California, Florida, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Texas, partnering with SCAN Health Plan, Clover Health, Bright HealthCare, Molina Healthcare as well as ACOs and government entities such as the LA Department of Health. Release, FierceHealthcare  Hat tip to HISTalk for this and aptihealth

Ribbon Health’s Series B funding of $43.5 million will be used to further develop team expansion and technology investments around their API layer, using data on doctors, insurance plans, costs, and quality of care for predictive care decisions. The raise was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), BoxGroup, Rock Health, and Sachin Jain. Since 2016, the company has raised $53.8 million. Release, FierceHealthcare