John Zutter is the CEO of Lantern which is a company managing specialty care. It has evolved from a centers of excellence model, and changed its name from Employer Direct Healthcare earlier this year. The trick is product expansion into the expensive stuff, especially cancer care, infusion and specialty surgery. John has thought a lot about where there is money to be saved–and how health care can be structured, and how cost and quality can be managed. This is a fascinating and in-depth conversation about how employers can save money, and how that might make the overall market evolve–Matthew Holt
Brad Kittredge, Brightside Health
Brad Kittredge is CEO of Brightside Health, which he co-founded with CMO Mimi Winsberg. They are a large online mental health group that aims a providing more access with higher quality. They have built their own technology stack and medical group, and are in network for about 135m lives. They also take patients from the emergency departments of health systems–as well as direct patient outreach for “standard” mental health conditions. Brad talked to me about measurement, quality and care improvement, including how they are using their algorithms to improve their clinicians’ prescribing accuracy. I also asked him where Brightside were in the process to, err, return at least some of the $150m they’ve raised back to their investors. Matthew Holt
PatientsUseAI: Hugo, Gilles and e-Patient Dave on the race to patient autonomy — THCB Gang Special Episode 149, Thursday December 19
Joining Matthew Holt on #THCBGang on Thursday December 19 at 1pm PST 4pm EST are three leaders in the patient movement Hugo Campos (@HugoCampos); Gilles Frydman (@GillesFrydman); and ePatient Dave deBronkart (@DavedeBronkart). They will be bring us up to speed on the very latest in patients using AI.
You can see the video below live (and later archived) & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Danielle Vaeth, Qbtech
Danielle Vaeth is Head of Growth and Strategic Development at Qbtech, a company that helps diagnose ADHD, working mostly with virtual providers. They use facial recognition and tracking to do this. Qbtech can diagnose 50% more patients than self-reporting and has approval from a big NHS study, the FDA and many peer-reviewed studies. They raised $6.8m in 2022 & have just tested their millionth patient. Plenty more to go!–Matthew Holt
Sara Ratner, Nomi Health
Sara Ratner is President of integrated Programs at Nomi Health. They work with employers and health plans to connect them to a network of providers (both telehealth and physical) who accept steep discounts in return for immediate payment. The employees in turn get no co-pay/no coinsurance. In addition they have an analytics company called Artemis which recommends care paths and a PBM to lower drug prices. Sara is trying hard to integrate mental health into their program too. Nomi raised $110m in 2022 and also made a decent amount in covid testing earlier in its life before pivoting.
THCB Gang Episode 148, Monday December 16
Joining Matthew Holt on #THCBGang on Monday December 16 at 1pm PST 4pm EST are patient safety expert Michael Millenson, physician, entrepreneur and technologist Shantanu Nundy; and Digital Health and Emerging Med-Tech Practice Co-Founder at Marsh & McLennan, Beracah Stortvedt.
You can see the video below live (and later archived) & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
Kris Engskov, Rippl
Kris Engskov is CEO of Rippl, a General Catalyst-funded company developing a wrap around care model around the primary care doctor for people with dementia. Their process is to help the family caregiver who is looking after the dementia patient and gives a ton of support to those caregivers which helps them be successful taking care of the patient at home. They start with diagnosis and use care navigators to build a care model face to face with patients. They’ve raised $52m and are nearly 2 years into serving a very neglected group of patients and caregivers–Matthew Holt
Colby Takeda, Pear Suite
Colby Takeda is CEO of Pear Suite which has developed a system that helps organizations employing community health workers to track and pay for their work. These community health workers are in multiple social and health organizations. Increasingly states Medicaid and health plans are paying directly to community organizations and Pear Suite is building the capacity for those organizations to contract and bill the plans and states. The community health workers are now out helping engage patients, particularly around preventative services, housing, food access and much more. This includes those people in the health system and is saving health care organizations money, and is improving HEDIA and Star scores. Pear Suite has been doing this since 2023 and has over 100 clients already, and has even built its own network of community health workers. A niche, but a very impactful one-Matthew Holt
Mental Health’s Unfinished Digital Revolution
By TREVOR VAN MIERLO
In 2021, digital mental health and substance use startups attracted a record-breaking $5.1 billion in funding. Despite the surge, the promise of scalable, transformative digital health platforms remains unfulfilled.
Following the surge, investment plummeted. Unlike other industries that have been revolutionized by digital-first solutions, digital health struggles with models that fail to address cost, complexity, and access.
What we’re left with entering into 2025 are a smorgasbord of solutions clamoring to attach themselves to traditional enterprise incumbents (Health Insurance Providers, Electronic Health Records, Hospital Systems). These incumbents have achieved scale – but not the type of scale that digital health needs to flourish.
Incumbents Build Deep, Startups Go Wide
Incumbent scale is infrastructure-heavy, slow, and linear, and focuses on deep integration within their established markets.
In contrast, startups aim for technology-driven, exponential, and global scale, leveraging digital platforms to serve millions of users quickly. While startups have the speed advantage, achieving scale similar to incumbents requires win-win partnerships and fundamental shifts away from established business models.
The investment market does see the tremendous opportunity: a massive, growing global customer-base proactively demanding help as social stigma decreases. And as time passes, this customer-base grows exponentially with technology pervasiveness.
What investors see is unmet demand for mental health and substance use treatment, and a historic opportunity for digital health to step up and deliver solutions that are scalable, accessible, and affordable.
However, the delivery mechanism to these populations, though digital, is obfuscated through the blurred lens of incumbent purchasing power. We can’t get past incumbents’ size, their reach, and their connection to patients. In this common view, incumbents are the customer. This view is promoted by both industry and academia.
Continue reading…Shama Rathi, Co-Founder, LunaJoy
Shama Rathi MD is the co-founder of LunaJoy, a mental health company that works exclusively for women. It started with pregnancy (pre- and post- partum) and now is working with women in midlife for nearly a third of its cases. Shama believes that women have been ignored and LunaJoy has built out specific care pathways for women. They are moving into the market starting with Medicaid, the payer responsible for a large number of births, mostly doing it in conjunction with OBGYN clinics. It’s an interesting and necessary niche play for a large underserved group–Matthew Holt
