News roundup 2: RFK Jr. confirmed as HHS Secretary, new MAHA commission formed; Amwell narrows loss by 68%; HEALWELL (CA) nears close of Orion Health (NZ) buy; Summer Health buys Caraway; Spectrum.Life (IE) plans to double users; 2025 NY Digital Health 100 announced

February 14, 2025 | by

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was confirmed this morning as US Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. The Senate vote was fairly standard for President Trump’s appointees, along party lines (with one exception) in a 52-48 vote. Secretary Kennedy survived bare-knuckle committee hearings (and a family ‘diss’ from cousins) to put into place measures to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) as promised during the 2024 presidential campaign. Today’s presidential Executive Order also makes Secretary Kennedy the leader of the MAHA Committee, which, according to a White House statement will be “tasked with investigating and addressing the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis, with an initial focus on childhood chronic diseases.” such as autism and fatty liver disease, plus adult asthma and the causes of the low US life expectancy.  The EO’s four policy directives focus on reversing chronic disease through:

  1. transparency on health data to “avoid conflicts of interest in all federally funded health research
  2. prioritizing “gold-standard research on why Americans are getting sick” in all federally-funded health research
  3. working with farmers to ensure food is healthy as well as affordable
  4. expanding health coverage and treatment options “for beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.”

The timeframe is short: 100 days to produce an initial assessment, and 180 days to produce a strategy to improve child health. All this and learn HHS too. Next up in hearings: Mehmet Oz, MD as CMS Administrator, expected to face far less flak.  FoxNewsDigital

Amwell straining to get weller, financially. Still in the red but improving by about 68%, Amwell’s full year 2024 net loss was $212.6 million on $254 million in revenue versus 2023’s net loss of $679.2 million, which included a non-cash goodwill impairment charges of $436.5 million. Taking away the one-time charge though, the loss improvement was $31 million.

Q4 had a strong 36% improvement in subscription revenue versus prior year, driven by the implementation of a 22-month joint contract with technology firm Leidos to digitize the Military Health System (MHS). However, this contract expires in July and given cost-cutting in Washington, is not assured of renewal. Leidos is already in negotiation with the Department of Defense for a three-year extension. In cost reduction, Amwell reduced R&D expenses by 29% and looks at further cuts for 2025 of 10%.

For 2025, Amwell forecasts revenue in the range of $250 to $260 million, including the previously announced divestiture of Amwell
Psychiatric Care, about $30 million) with adjusted EBITDA loss between $55 to $45 million. Positive cash flow is not forecast until 2026. But Amwell’s share price, in such a hole that the NYSE threatened delisting a year ago, has bounced from below $8 in January to closing at $11.73 today (13 February).  Amwell 2024 financial report, Healthcare Dive

HEALWELL AI one step closer to closing its purchase of Orion Health. HEALWELL needed consent from New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Office of New Zealand (OIO) to proceed with the purchase announced in December [TTA 19 Dec 2024]. HEALWELL is an artificial intelligence company focused on preventative care through the early identification and detection of disease while Orion’s products–Orchestral, Amadeus, and Virtuoso–are data exchange, patient record, and analytics platforms that benefit clinicians and patients. The complex buy totaled NZ$200 million/CA$165 million (US$115 million) for 100% of Orion’s private shares. CA$86 million will be paid in cash and the balance will be paid in HEALWELL stock plus CA$20.5 million in a 3-year performance-based arrangement. The companies are now on track to complete the sale by 1 April. Newsfile release

Summer Health buys Caraway. Summer is a text service that connects parents with pediatricians for urgent care through texting and converts doctor’s and clinical notes into lay language via generative AI. Caraway served a different market–Generation Z women between 18-29 for mental and reproductive health. What they did share was one investor: the powerful 7Wire Ventures. Was this another Shotgun Merger? While Caraway enjoyed an initial funding of over $10 million plus $16 million during the 2023 slump, apparently it had ceased business in December and took its website offline. How Summer positions it is that it now can serve children, teens, and young adults. In addition to its 50-state DTC direct pay service, it will pick up Caraway’s insurance contracts. There are no references to purchase price or workforce transitions. Other than the release, there’s no reference to Caraway services on the Summer website. Summer had a Series A raise of $11 million last April.    Summer release, Behavioral Health Business  Hat tip to Mario Aguilar of STAT Health Tech’s newsletter.

Following up on Ireland’s Spectrum.Life.  They ended their 2024 serving 1.5 million users and project 3 million in 2025 in Ireland and the UK. Spectrum.Life now has 300 employees in Dublin and Manchester delivering digital health, mental health, and wellbeing for employers and employees in the workplace, insurers, and educators. Last year it was listed as #41st in Deloitte Ireland’s 2024 Technology Fast 50 Awards. Release.

And a bit closer to the Editor’s home is the latest New York Digital Health 100. Named by Digital Health New York (DHNY) and in its sixth year (oh, the changes!), the list has 48 new startups (which is illustrative of the churn in the NY digital health scene) these 100 companies raised about $4 billion, with over half going to biotech (26%), care delivery (24%), and mental health (13%) companies. A download of the full report and lists is available at the above link.

News roundup: VA’s 2025 EHR budget + vendor breach, Neuralink robot arm study, linking mood prediction to sleep, CoachCare buys Revolution Health RPM/CCM, Seen Health’s $22M launch, Spectrum.Life in Deloitte Ireland’s Fast 50

December 5, 2024 | by

It’s $869 million for the EHR budget. The total budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs for FY2025, which started back on 1 October but is still unapproved by Congress, is $369 billion.

  • The overall EHR budget of $869 million includes current operations of VistA, Oracle Health, and exchange with the DOD/MHS system
  • Drilling down, the budget section for Oracle Cerner for the EHRM (EHR Modernization) has $375 million earmarked for the federal EHR contract. This addresses clinicians’ issues and supports healthcare deployment strategies that optimize resources throughout procedures.

VA decided in FY2023 that there would be no further deployments of Oracle Health’s EHR until the current multiple issues present at the existing six facilities using the Oracle Cerner EHR as well as the James Lovell joint MHS/VA implementation completed earlier this year were at least on a pathway to resolution. However, VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in April during early House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearings on FY 2025 and 2026 budgets that there was the possibility that implementation may resume before the end of FY2025 using carryover funding, not FY2025 allocated funding. Whether Secretary McDonough will be remaining under the Trump Administration is, of course, subject to change.

In June, VA extended its contract with Oracle Health for another 11 months, not having much of a choice. In July, VA was sued by Laurette Santos, a VA clinical social worker in the White City, Oregon facility, over worker accessibility standards and lack of Federally mandated assistive technology in the Oracle EHR.

Additional funds are on request for IT–$6.2 billion for IT systems–and $10 million for AI research and development. ExecutiveGov

VA’s breach problem. It’s located with a vendor for medical transcription, DBP, Inc. According to the Veterans Health Administration release, the attack on DBP’s server encrypted files that were then potentially copied by the hacker. DBP shut down the server and disconnected it from the internet, preventing additional attacks. The vendor purchased new hardware and implemented new security controls. 2,302 veterans were affected with some or all the following information exposed: full name, medical record information, or Social Security number. It was also geographically wide: Maine, Boston, Connecticut, Baltimore Amarillo TX, and Minneapolis MN.

Neuralink moves forward with feasibility study with a robotic arm. Four months after Elon Musk proposed the N1 implant be capable of moving an Optimus (Tesla Bot) robotic arm or leg, Neuralink has an approved feasibility study, code named CONVOY, to investigate whether the N1 implant can move an Optimus robotic arm. Start date is not disclosed. This follows on the announcement of the clinical trial with Health Canada for the “Canadian Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface” (CAN-PRIME) for N1 brain implant and its R1 robot, which is used to place the 64-thread implant into the brain, and approval last month for Blindsight, an implant for sight restoration. [TTA 27 Nov]. Mobihealthnews

Quantifying the link between sleep and predicting moods. This relatively lean bit of research from South Korea uses machine learning (ML) to predict mood episodes in mood disorder patients using only sleep and circadian rhythm data from wearable devices including smartphones used by 168 patients generating 267 days of data. The researchers derived 36 sleep and circadian rhythm features to enable accurate next-day predictions for depressive, manic, and hypomanic episodes. A key finding that daily circadian phase shifts were the most significant predictors: delays were linked to depressive episodes, advances to manic episodes. The study has implications for symptom evaluation and for treatment effectiveness. Mobihealthnews, NPJ Digital Medicine

Acquisitions and funding:

CoachCare acquires Revolution Health Solutions in the busy RPM/CCM space. Both companies offer chronic care management (CCM) services enhanced by remote patient monitoring (RPM) and outsourced teams. CoachCare’s acquisition cost and staff transitions were not disclosed. CoachCare, based in NYC, has raised about $49 million over five rounds in an unusual way–four under $1 million, then in July a private equity round of $48 million from Topmark Partners and Integrity Growth Partners. They claim 150,000 patients and hundreds of healthcare organizations along with five other acquisitions. Revolution Health Solutions, based in Dallas, had no funding rounds listed on Crunchbase. They were founded and led by Jenn Gillette Tompkins who positions it as a partnership (her LinkedIn post).  Release

Seen Health comes out of stealth with $22 million. The Series A has five investors: Virtue, 8VC, Basis Set Ventures, Prime Time Partners, and Astrana Health. Seen is leveraging off the PACE model (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) that helps chronically ill and infirm older adults remain in their homes and out of a nursing home by constructing a care team containing a social worker, nurse, dietician, primary care provider, and others. PACE models that started in San Francisco’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities in the 1970s have also been supplemented with digital health telemonitoring, such as QuietCare in 2006-9 (Editor’s note). Despite their advantages, PACE programs only cover 5% of older adults. Twin brothers Xing and Yang Su decided to build on PACE, creating culturally apt physical centers and equipping them with technology such as an EHR and geofencing that prevents wandering. Their programs will also include care at home coordinated with local agencies to provide low or no-cost care. The financing will be used to build out their first center in Los Angeles County’s San Gabriel Valley that focuses on the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) communities along with the needed technology and to build out their team. MedCityNews

Some nice recognition for Ireland’s Spectrum.Life. It ranked #41st in Deloitte Ireland’s 2024 Technology Fast 50 Awards, which recognize the fastest growing Irish tech companies. Spectrum.Life’s digital platform supports digital health, mental health, and wellbeing for employers and employees in the workplace, insurers, and educators. Their services are used by 9.8 million insurance members, 3,000 corporate clients, 60+ universities and 650,000 university students. WireNews