Valentine’s day…is awful. Check out this episode of HealthTechDeals to get Jessica’s and my more in-depth thoughts on the holiday. But let’s see which companies got some financial love this episode: ANDHealth gets $57 million; Ada Health gets another $30m; Minded gets $25 million; Expressable gets $15 million; Curve Health gets $12 million.

-By Matthew Holt

TRANSCRIPT

Jessica DaMassa:

Matthew Holt, was your Valentine’s Day filled with love and kisses and candies and flowers. Uh oh, I take it by the look on your face that’s a big fat no. It’s the February 15th episode of Health Tech Deals. So maybe these startups will feel a little bit more love than you feel right now. What happened?

Matthew Holt:

It’s just that Valentine’s Day in America is stupid, because your kids, I don’t remember this when you were young, because it was a long time ago, but your kids have to take Valentines to everyone in their class. It’s stupid.

Jessica DaMassa:

Why is it stupid?

Matthew Holt:

And then this morning it became apparent that one of our kids hadn’t done his Valentine’s. It was a panic. In England, there’s none of that bullshit. In England, you send an anonymous Valentine’s card to somebody you like, and they don’t know who it is. It’s a big mystery. And the key is you get a few Valentines with question marks and not knowing who it is, and that’s much more fun. It’s an intrigue, a bit of mystery. In America it’s just excessive love and it’s just stupid.

Jessica DaMassa:

I feel like that is very English in the let me bury my emotions behind this question mark, and also let me be curmudgeonly and not give everybody love. Let me just give it to one person. But I’m not going to admit it, I’m going to bury that deep inside and keep calm and carry on. Isn’t that how it goes?

Matthew Holt:

All I want to know is, Jess, is clearly you didn’t get the flowers I sent you. What happened?

Jessica DaMassa:

I don’t know. Where are they? What happened? There was a mysterious bouquet flowers that was delivered with question marks. Was that you?

Matthew Holt:

Me or one of the other [crosstalk 00:01:59].

Jessica DaMassa:

There are no flowers here at the DaMassa house.

Matthew Holt:

I can’t believe one of your admirers didn’t send some

Jessica DaMassa:

I buy myself flowers all the time. I do. I like having them around.

Matthew Holt:

Do you want to see who else got some love, some money love?

Jessica DaMassa:

Some real love. All right, let’s see it. All right, AndHealth gets 57 million Francisco partners, and Health2047 AMAs Fund are both in this one. Matthew Holt, what do you think?

Matthew Holt:

This is the former CEO of CoverMyMeds, which sold for a billion dollars to McKesson, which was doing prior authorization for online pharmacy. And this is supposed to be a virtual center of excellence, which to the rest of us is it’s another full stack clinic. It’s just been going for three months, it has good results for migraine, it’s first deal. It’s going to be doing autoimmune diseases like arthritis and psoriasis and Crohn’s disease. It’s another one of those entries. It’s well funded, but there a lot of people thinking about those spaces.

Jessica DaMassa:

Ada Health. Speaking of crowded spaces, Symptom Checker, they get another $30 million, brings their total up to $189.

Matthew Holt:

They just went back and filled around again. They were talking about coming to the US in a big way, we’ll see if they actually do. They got a big grant from [inaudible 00:03:17] cash from [inaudible 00:03:18] last summer, that was the big round. We’ll see how they do.

Jessica DaMassa:

Minded gets 25 million. This is a mental health play, but they’ve also got the psychedelics in there. Explain.

Matthew Holt:

I don’t understand this one yet. They’re going to go from a few states to most of the states. This is obviously following fast on the footsteps of Cerebral, so they’re going to say they do an online prescribing, get access to a psychiatrist. They also said not only the normal stuff, but they’re going to do genetic testing for more accurate prescribing and they’re going to do psychedelics for treatment resistant depression. But I’m sure they’re just going to be starting with the anxiety and depression like Cerebral.

Jessica DaMassa:

What about Expressable, 15 million, brings their total up to 19.5. What do you think about this one?

Matthew Holt:

Interesting. This is an online speech therapy. This is another wraparound, go to the speech therapist, they’re also doing wraparound with mental health counseling and then stuff for the person while they’re not in the counseling. This is stuff for the speech therapy while they’re not doing speech therapy. Very common for kids. A big problem, a lot of kids have issues with that. So interesting to see how this goes. Like this one.

Jessica DaMassa:

How about Curve Health? They get 12 million. This is a comms platform for nursing homes.

Matthew Holt:

This is, I think, interesting. Highly specialized. You’ve got the whole issue of people in nursing homes who don’t get very adequately service.. A lot of them get called and go to the ER. There was a bunch of these. There was one, I can’t remember the name of it, but it went bankrupt trying to fix this problem about three or four years ago. Somebody having another go at it. Can you get telehealth into the room managed by the nursing home staff with the physicians at a distance providing care and therefore preventing them having to go to the ER?

Matthew Holt:

It’s a good idea. We have poorly, and since COVID totally, poorly treated people in nursing homes. So hopefully this kind of thing will work out. I don’t know whether this is going to be the answer, but it’s certainly the right interesting area that Curve Health is going after.

Jessica DaMassa:

Is this the same kind of space that Signify Health is in? But they’re actually doing much more in that space. Is this just a virtual care piece of that?

Matthew Holt:

I think this is just nursing homes only, and just a telehealth solution only. But I think, my impression, Signify is actually delivering people as well as technology. I don’t know how much, you know more about it than I do, how much are they doing in nursing homes versus in the home care itself? Think it’s more in the home care.

But you are also seeing a ton. I spoke to a couple of them, Nice Healthcare, there’s obviously Dispatch Health doing it, a whole bunch of people who are doing services to the home to wrap around virtual care. Some people are looking at complex senior care, there’s that part as well, Devoted and Clover both have little sub-medical groups doing that was well.

Jessica DaMassa:

CareCentrix too, right?

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. A whole bunch of people are trying to figure out that, how do we move care to the home? And of course, Medically Home Dispatch and others are doing hospital at home. So yeah, this to me looks like one little piece of it, but it is a very poorly served place. During the pandemic people who were in nursing homes were almost semi-abandoned because they couldn’t get the staff, and so getting care to those rest homes hopefully is something that should be more often.

Jessica DaMassa:

Interesting.

Matthew Holt:

I think a bunch of interesting stuff today, because everything is the same, with the exception of Minded, which is like an add on competitor to Cerebral and others, everyone else in there is getting at some interesting things like, can you do a better job for psoriasis or migraines? Can you do a better job with symptom checking? Can you do a better job with speech therapy? A lot of areas where you don’t have great communication between the professional staff and the patient, especially when they’re not in that physical visit.

Jessica DaMassa:

Do these businesses scale, Matthew, as their own standalones here? Are these prime acquisition targets?

Matthew Holt:

If they all work, they ought to be prime acquisition targets, because you’re going to end up… I mean, even people like Dispatch and Heal and also the big health plans and Optum, who are doing more and more of this stuff, they’re all going to be acquiring these companies when they figure out how to make the model work.

I spoke, as I mentioned, to the CEO of Nice Healthcare, which is out, I believe they’re raising a round now, which is a nurse practitioner led, it’s mostly virtual care, but they do get into the home. Whole bunch of similar plays. We will see how it all plays out.

Jessica DaMassa:

We’re getting a phone in question, huh?

Matthew Holt:

I hung up on them. It was probably another of my gambling debts trying to collect

Jessica DaMassa:

Probably much more important than here, us, on this show, so we’ll just wrap it up for you. How about that?

Matthew Holt:

I have to go and pay off my gambling debts from the Super Bowl. What are you going to do?

Jessica DaMassa:

Is that what happened?

Matthew Holt:

Bound to be.

Jessica DaMassa:

The expensive bouquet of flowers you bought your wife, got to pay for that now, for Valentine’s day?

Matthew Holt:

Maybe would’ve bought her a bigger one had I won some money in the Super Bowl, but what are you going to do?

Jessica DaMassa:

Next year.

Matthew Holt:

Between that and my stock trading.

Jessica DaMassa:

Things are dire here. Send some love to the man who needs it the most. Hit him up over there @boltyboy on Twitter. I am @jessdamassa. And to sign up for the email newsletters from thehealthcareblog.com, which will contain these cute little Health Tech Deals episodes in addition to the best of the blog for the week, sign up over there at thehealthcareblog.com.

Matthew Holt:

Are we prepping for the big announcement with the WTF Health podcast or not?

Jessica DaMassa:

We’ve been ramping it up to much. We’re so close. So close.

Matthew Holt:

We’re dialing it down. It’s somewhere in the process. It’s somewhere in the process.

Jessica DaMassa:

The problem is RSS feeds, but I’m learning a lot and it will be there. I’m so excited. Finally. All right, Matthew, we’ll see you soon. Take care. Bye guys.