Short takes: 2022’s big kickoff with Babylon-Higi, Vera-Castlight buys; will funding slow down in ’22, eye-tracking telehealth for MS, vital signs tracking lightbulbs at CES 2022, and three catchups!

January 7, 2022 | by

Babylon Health closed out 2021 by acquiring health kiosk Higi for an undisclosed amount. Babylon had earlier invested in Higi’s Series B [TTA 30 May 20] and was reported in October to be exercising its $30 million option to buy Higi after closing their SPAC. Release

Vera Whole Health, an advanced primary care provider and clinic group based in Seattle, is acquiring Castlight Health, a data and care navigation platform. Vera will acquire Castlight in a $370 million all-cash deal. Strategic partners and investors include Anthem, Morgan Health (the JP Morgan Chase & Co business for the transformation of employee healthcare), Central Ohio Primary Care, and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice funds. Former Aetna chairman and CEO Ron Williams will become chairman. Release.

Which leads to the usual question…will funding in 2022 continue the hot streak of 2021? It’s one opinion, but Lee Shapiro of 7wireVentures, formerly with Livongo, is sensing a slowdown, citing increased interest rates (money), the US midterm elections (which don’t affect the rest of the world), less new money, and investors wising up on the length of time any healthcare or health tech investment takes to pay off. 2021 with 79 digital health M&As plus an abundance of SPACs that tailed off by end of year will be hard to match. Mobihealthnews

XRHealth, a telehealth clinic that provides treatments in patients’ homes based on virtual reality treatment, has integrated Tobii‘s eye-tracking technology into the XR platform and the Pico Neo 3 Pro Eye VR headset. XR Health provides rehabilitative and pain management therapies via VR. The Tobii system will enable treatment using the headset for multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s, and other neurological conditions. According to the release published in Multiple Sclerosis News Today, “detecting subtle changes in eye movement can help diagnose these diseases at an early stage, as well as assess disease progression and response to treatment. Tobii‘s eye-tracking technology is able to detect those changes in real time, providing data and insights to clinicians during therapy sessions.” Hat tip to Editor Emeritus Steve Hards

CES 2022 is on this week, far less splashy than before as an in-person/virtual hybrid event. Debuting at CES is the Sengled Smart Health Monitoring Light. Looking like a standard LED lamp bulb, it contains sensors that network and can take passive vital signs measurements of sleep quality, breathing, heart rate, and motion of occupants in the home. The more bulbs the better, of course. Whether or not they can detect falls, as the article touts, is likely an inference on motion. They feed into either Alexa or Google Assistant, plus Sengled’s app, using Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar operating in the 2.4 GHz range. Expect it to be coming out towards the end of the year and probably twice the price of conventional LED smart bulbs. TechRadar Hat tip to Adrian Scaife via LinkedIn

Catching up…

Walgreens and VillageMD continue on the ‘go big or go home’ highway with nine more Village Medicals at Walgreens in San Antonio, Texas. Plans are to build 600 Village Medicals at Walgreens in more than 30 markets by 2025, growing to 1,000 by 2027. HealthcareFinance

Centene, the health payer conglomerate, finalized its $2.2 billion acquisition of Magellan Health, a major behavioral health management company. It will likely be CEO Michael Neidorff’s swan song, as an activist investor forced his retirement (at age 78 after over 25 years at the helm) this year and significant board changes. Magellan’s former COO and president Jim Murray will become Centene’s chief transformation officer, a new position, lead what they term the Value Creation Office as well as the Centene Advanced Behavioral Health division. Forbes, Centene release

And suitors with a spare billion or so may be lining up to buy IBM Watson Health. The first offers came in on 4 January with the winner to be announced possibly by end of the month. IBM spent over $4 billion over time to build up Watson Health, but now wants out, badly. Axios

News and funding roundup: patient outreachers Relatient, Radix merge; health apps top 350,000; Morgan’s $50M in Vera Health; Communicare247, Doro, TeleAlarm join Scottish Digital Telecare’s list

August 11, 2021 | by

Patient engagement meets…patient engagement. Two relatively small players in patient outreach, Relatient and Radix Health, are merging. By no coincidence, the former announced that they received $100 million in growth equity capital from Brighton Park Capital and its affiliates. Brighton Park led an undetermined investment round for Relatient in November 2019. No valuation or management transitions were announced.

Tennessee-based Relatient sends text messages to patients as appointment reminders, patient chat, and broadcast messaging. It is a 2020 Best in KLAS winner for Patient Outreach. Relatient claims that in 2020 it sent 200 million messages and integrates with over 85 practice management systems and electronic health databases. Atlanta-based Radix Health has a somewhat different software set for patient scheduling, contactless check-in, appointment reminders, and reminders for medical groups, health centers, and hospitals prior to procedures. Earlier this year, Radix rolled out a Covid-19 vaccine location and scheduling system for their mid-sized and large provider clients, which by February scheduled 200,000 appointments and about 100,000 vaccinations. Both companies were founded in 2014. The merged organization will be headquartered in Franklin, Tennessee, with offices in Cookeville TN, Atlanta, and Pune, India. Release, Mobihealthnews

Consumer health apps top 350,000. The IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science latest report on digital health trends tracked over 90,000 released last year alone. Managing health conditions makes up nearly half (47%, up from 28% in 2015) of apps. About two-thirds of digital therapeutics and 40% of digital care products treat either neurologic or mental health conditions. At this point, who’s counting? And are all of them working? Mobihealthnews, link to IQVIA report (registration and download required).

JP Morgan Chase’s new Morgan Health invested $50 million in Vera Whole Health, a western US primary practice group. Vera Whole Health operates on a membership flat-fee model and is fully at risk in a value-based, technology-enabled coordinated care model. Morgan Health adds to Vera’s coffers after the majority sale of the company to CD&R for an undisclosed amount and a valuation at $400 million. JP Morgan sunsetted its unsuccessful three-year joint venture, Haven, in January, but remains interested in health for profit and for employees, who will be given the opportunity to join Vera. Healthcare Dive, Mobihealthnews

Communicare247, Doro, and TeleAlarm receive Scottish Digital Telecare nod for digital alarms. Communicare247’s Archangel Care Cloud, Doro’s CareIP Mobile, Eliza 4G, and the icareonline platform, and the TeleAlarm TA74 GSM and TeleAlarm Cloud Services have been added to the Scottish Digital Telecare Security-Assessed Suppliers Scheme. They join Alcuris and Enovation, as reported in the past two weeks. Communicare247, Doro, and TeleAlarm releases.