Amazon Care, which has compiled a history of playing their news quite close to the vest, coyly dropped another hankie on their website today with a blog post that confirmed that their virtual care platform is now available nationwide. In 2022 they will be adding in-person services to 20 more cities, including San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, and New York City. Companies offering Amazon Care as an employee benefit include Silicon Labs, TrueBlue, and Whole Foods Market (an Amazon company). Back in October, TTA outlined our thoughts on Amazon Care’s structure, offerings, cheap pricing, and our opinion that Amazon’s real aim is to accumulate and own national healthcare data on the service’s users. Then they will monetize it by selling it to pharmaceutical companies, payers, developers, and other commercial third parties in and ex-US. Patients may want to think twice.

On a lighter note, Australia’s Eucalyptus telehealth scored a tidy Series C of A$60 million ($42 million), led by Airbnb and Canva’s early investor, BOND, plus previous investors. Eucalyptus’ telehealth platform markets five services: men’s health-focused Pilot, women’s fertility brand Kin, skincare site Software, sexual health business Normal, and menopause service Juniper. The fresh funds will go towards software development and expanding into the UK. Mobihealthnews

Withings is also on a bit of an acquisition tear, buying Berlin-based nutrition app 8fit on top of last month’s Impeto Medical, which developed a tool for monitoring peripheral neuropathies. 8fit offers efficient workouts, customized meal plans, and self-care
guidance in six languages. While the acquisition cost was not disclosed in the release, Withings plans to invest $30 million to integrate 8fit features into their products. Impeto, a R&D company, developed an FDA cleared technology that measures the ability of sweat glands to release chloride ions in response to electrical stimulus. For those with neuropathy, that sweat gland innervation is reduced and sudomotor function is impaired. Impeto’s tool has already been integrated into Withings’ smart scale, the Body Scan, to be released in the second half of 2022 after FDA clearance. Release, Mobihealthnews

Another Berlin-based company in AI that’s been acquired is xbird. The buyer is Glooko, a diabetes and chronic condition monitoring platform. xbird captures data generated by devices and processes it through algorithms and machine learning models, and will expand expands Glooko’s advanced analytics capabilities and tools. The management and staff will join Glooko GmbH. Glooko release

Closing our update is a Cumbria catchup. Nurses at Kendal Care Home are wearing Microsoft’s mixed-reality HoloLens 2 headset to call GPs through Microsoft Teams. Using the HoloLens, doctors can talk to both the nurses and patients. Kendal Care Home has been working with local GPs, Kendal Integrated Care Community, and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust to train staff in the use of the headset, which started use at Kendal in October 2020 and has largely replaced their tablets and smartphones for telehealth consults. In addition to Kendal, the Heart Centre at Alder Hey and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust used HoloLens 2 during the pandemic. DigitalHealth.net