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HLTH 2022: Mental Health IT Infrastructure Proves Highly Fundable – Inside NeuroFlow’s $25M Series C

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By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

At the intersection of two (still) hot areas of health tech investment – IT infrastructure and mental health – sits NeuroFlow, a tech platform that integrates into care management systems and EHRs to help clinicians and care managers identify behavioral health conditions in patients as they are getting their annual check-ups, post-partum exams, and other routine healthcare services. The startup just added another $25 million in growth capital to its coffers in mid-October, bringing their total funding to just under $60 million. We chat with CEO Chris Molaro about how this new funding will be used to continue fueling the company’s scale-up efforts and how provider orgs are responding to the added responsibility that comes with providing this type of mental health care screening across its care teams.

Netflix for Drugs?

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By KIM BELLARD

A relative — obviously overestimating my healthcare expertise — asked my thoughts on The New York Times article Can a Federally Funded ‘Netflix Model’ Fix the Broken Market for Antibiotics? I had previously skimmed the article and was vaguely aware of the Pasteur Act that it discusses, but, honestly, my immediate reaction to the article was, gosh, that may not be a great analogy: do people realize what a tough year Netflix has had?

I have to admit that I tend to stay away from writing about Big Pharma and prescription drugs, mainly because, in a US healthcare system that seems to pride itself on being opaque, frustrating, and yet outrageously expensive, the prescription drug industry takes the cake. It’s too much of a mess.

But a “Netflix model” for drug development? Consider me intrigued.

It’s easy to understand why market forces might not do well with rare diseases that need an “orphan drug,” but the “subscription model” approach that the Pasteur Act seeks to address is something that most of us need: antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance has made many of our front-line antibiotics less effective, but discovering new antibiotics is a slow, expensive process, and many pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to take the risk. The Pasteur Act would essentially pay for their development in return for “free” use of subsequently invented drugs.

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HLTH 2022: Market State-of-Play with Stephanie Davis of SVB Securities

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By JESSICA DAMASSA

“If last year was EUPHORIA…‘We made it! Digital health is relevant!’ This year, it’s a little more panic. More, ‘Are we okay???’” SVB Securities’ Senior Managing Director Stephanie Davis says that she’s been getting asked for a lot of advice this year, so we jump on the bandwagon. Should digital health and health tech be worried? What about exits? What areas of health innovation are still hot? Which are not? And, what the heck is “creative destruction” and why is it her favorite buzz phrase from HLTH 2022?

Stephanie answers all our questions, reassures us of the healthcare market’s resiliency, and offers up some high-level perspective on which “wallet” (payer, pharma, or provider) startups will want to align with to weather the short-term.

Bad Backs & Deductibles

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It’s time again for me to use my bad back as a case study in why American health care has such crazy incentives. 

About a month ago at the HLTH conference in Vegas, over the course of a few hours I developed debilitating leg pain. To quote from my earlier twitter  thread on my time in Vegas,  “After 3 days of excruciating pain, my wife insisted I went to the ER. The public policy person in me was horrified but we had already spent our deductible, so the cost was actually lower than paying cash for an MRI”

What actually happened was that after 3 days of dreadful pain & inability to walk (including getting myself home from Vegas using multiple wheelchairs, and being that guy who crawls off the plane onto a wheelchair), I got in to see my chiropractor. He said, you need an MRI to figure out what’s wrong with you. The alternatives were 

Looking good on the gurney!

1) Get insurance to pre approve the MRI. His guess was that that would take a few days or more. I actually called One Medical‘s urgent care video line and the PA I spoke to told me that usually insurance would only approve an MRI after I had done 6 weeks of physical therapy.

2) Pay $500 cash for a free standing MRI that could probably get me in during the next few days 

3) Go to the ER

Now the “incentives” part of this starts to really matter.

Continue reading…

HLTH 2022: Health Tech Market Check-Up with Lux Capital’s Deena Shakir

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By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Deena Shakir, General Partner at Lux Capital, shares her take on the market state-of-play for healthcare innovation amid these “tumultuous” economic times. As an investor, Deena has been a passionate advocate for women and children’s health and her fund, Lux Capital, invests broadly in health tech – pre-seed to pre-IPO, from virtual-first care delivery businesses like women’s health clinic, Maven, (on whose Board Deena sits after Lux co-led their $110M Series D) to health tech infrastructure businesses like Commure and Tendo and those working in AI, ML, and robotics.

We get into which types of emerging health businesses Deena thinks are still “hot” despite the downturn, specifically talking about what’s changing in women’s health including current care gaps, health IT infrastructure and its “moment” this year, and how the opportunities in mental health investing are starting look more compelling on the diagnostic side of things.

Overall sentiment: Deena says, “As Venture Capital investors we have long time horizons. We want to invest in things and have a 10-year plus outlook, so it’s actually an incredible time to be doing early-stage investing.” But, what if you’ve sailed past your Series A? Well…tune in to find out what Deena has to say about her experience with later-stage startups and those who thought they may have had an exit planned this year.

HLTH 2022: Health Gorilla & Interoperability’s New TEFCA-Fueled Future

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Health Gorilla is in the business of health data interoperability and the double-backflip this startup is doing to both make clinical data an easily accessible commodity – while also making sure that access to that data adheres to the privacy rules established by the US government – takes a minute to understand, but is critically important for the future of many health tech businesses.

CEO Steve Yaskin takes on the tough job giving us a brief overview of TEFCA (the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement) which is meant to establish once-and-for-all a common ground for data interoperability. Then, we get into QHINs – a specially designated group of “qualified health information networks – and how his business is applying for this certification to further build “the bridge” between the public sector and the private sector and what’s needed to achieve compliance for data exchange.

Phew! No wonder this startup has landed nearly $80 million dollars in funding! We talk about the basis for the business model – but, more importantly, the real market need – and find out what’s in store for all of us in the next chapter of data interoperability.

HLTH 2022: Turquoise Health CEO Talks Future of Healthcare Price Transparency

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By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Along with the implementation of CMS’s hospital price transparency rules in 2021 came a market opportunity for savvy health tech startups able to not only aggregate the massive amount of data coming in from providers and payers, but to actually make it usable for shopping healthcare services or large-scale market analysis for those without a computer engineering degree or background in healthcare economics. Turquoise Health is one of those startups, but what makes the Andreessen Horowitz-backed biz a stand-out from the pack is the extra SAS platform of services it’s building on top of those analytics and compliance products that will, ultimately, offer payers and providers a way to use all that pricing data to better negotiate their contracts with one another. Turquoise Health’s CEO Chris Severn explains the business model and how he plans to ‘platform out’ price transparency to a next-gen rev cycle state that gets us to the holy grail of “upfront, ubiquitous pricing in healthcare.”

HLTH 2022: Komodo Health Says “Big Pharma Needs to Kick Its Consulting Addiction”

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By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Komodo Health’s co-founder & President, Web Sun, has a big challenge for Big Pharma: Kick your “addiction” to the laborious, time-consuming, consultant-led process it takes to get the answers you need to your big data questions.

Komodo itself works with a lot of Big Pharma clients to use its full-stack approach to deliver insights on patient costs and outcomes at-scale – so, what’s up with the tough love??

The answer may have more to do with the news Web shares about how Komodo is starting to evolve its business model from working with Pharma on “applications” that leverage its platform to a model that lets third-party developers access that platform and its capabilities DIRECTLY. Web unpacks what this shift means, and how his team hopes it helps Pharma more cost-effectively invest in research for everything from clinical development and real-world evidence projects to health economics studies and patient outcomes research.

Still not sure how Komodo does its data magic? Web talks us through a great example — a synthetic control arm project (!!!) — Komodo is doing with AppliedVR, and, OF COURSE, what WTF Health interview would be complete without a follow-up on IPO gossip.

HLTH 2022: Thirty Madison and The Expanding Definition of Women’s Health – and Its Revenue Model!

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By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

The definition of women’s health keeps expanding beyond sexual and reproductive health (finally!) and among those leading the way toward more holistic health for women is virtual pharmacy startup, Thirty Madison, which acquired “Uber-for-birth control” biz, Nurx, at the beginning of this year.

Thirty Madison’s President Michelle Carnahan gives us an update on the integration of the two companies around women’s health, and talks about Thirty Madison’s brand-new mental health offering which will address “mild to moderate” mental health care needs including medication management.

More interesting for those interested in the business of health tech, however, is how Thirty Madison’s business model is starting to evolve from its direct-to-consumer beginnings. Michelle says that just a year ago, 95% of revenue was generated from their D2C efforts. Now, it’s more of a 70/30 split, with enterprise earnings coming in through a variety of mechanisms including accepting insurance on their site, partnering with PBMs, and some special partnerships with incumbents like UnitedHealthcare and CVS Health. Interesting evolution AND interesting partners there…watch to hear more!

HLTH 2022: “Build-Mode” Glen Tullman Talks Transcarent Clients, Charts Comparison With Livongo

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By JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Lesson learned: Don’t bet against Glen Tullman. Transcarent’s CEO brings his legendary “paper schedule packet” to our interview to prove the point that he carries Livongo’s first growth chart around with him everyday as a reminder of the number of overnights it takes to build a “overnight success” of a business. As Glen puts it, “When you’re building these companies, everybody remembers where you ended…they don’t remember where you started.”

So, how in the world did we get to this public prove-you-wrong? Catch the conversation that led us there as we talk about Transcarent’s growth two-years in and address the elephant in the room about why there have been so few customer announcements from the employer-focused health and care company. We get a few name-drops here, and also assurance that publicity around some new Fortune 50 and Fortune 100 clients is imminent. Lots of other interesting “build-mode” talk about what else is starting to come together at Transcarent including the “first independent provider network in the country” and more details on the recent Prescryptive partnership which is aiming to rewrite the script on how employers source pharmacy benefits.

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