Category: Health Tech

Some Discord Could Be Good for Health Care

Apr 6, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

By the time you read this, Microsoft may have already struck a deal with the messaging service Discord. VentureBeat reported two weeks ago that Discord was in an “exclusive acquisition discussion” with an interested party, for a deal that could reach at least $10b. Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal each quickly revealed that the interested party was Microsoft (and also confirmed the likely price).

Me, I’m wishing that a healthcare company – hey, TelaDoc and UnitedHealth Group, I’m looking at you! – was in the mix.

Let’s back up. If you are not a gamer, you may not know about Discord. It was launched in 2015, primarily as a community for gamers. Originally it focused on texting/chat, but has widened its capabilities to include audio and video. The Verge described it: “Discord is a great mix of Slack messaging and Zoom video, combined together with a unique ability to just drop into audio calls freely.”

Zoom meets Slack meets Clubhouse.

As you might infer from the potential asking price, Discord has done quite well. It has over 140 million monthly users, and, despite having no advertising and offering a free service, generated $130 million in revenues last year (through its “enhanced Discord experience” subscription service Nitro). OK, it still isn’t profitable, but a December funding round gave it a $7b valuation.

The Medicaid Plan of the Future: Sean Lane on Building Circulo on Top of Olive’s AI Platform

Apr 1, 2021• 1

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

What’s better than being the CEO of one blazing-hot disruptive health tech company that’s raised $450M to build “the internet of healthcare”? How about becoming the CEO of a second company – a new managed Medicaid health plan company – that’s to be built on top of your first company’s machine learning platform, which is chock-full of hospital data and learning how to automate healthcare admin expertise? So is the fate of Sean Lane, CEO of Olive and now, also CEO of Circulo.

What does a built-from-scratch, tech-first Medicaid plan look like? Sean talks through the strategy behind the new health insurance co, which is aiming to use Olive’s tech to automate every aspect of the way a payer functions in effort to 1) strip away health plan admin costs and 2) create a never-before-seen relationship between patient, payer, and provider. On this latter point, it’s the fresh approach to payer-provider relations that seems to really have Sean excited. With Olive already built into hundreds of health systems, and conveniently located on the desktops of those providers, Sean says Circulo will be poised to take advantage of that network’s data and distribution to forever alter the healthcare payment model. Submitting claims goes away. Denials go away. Costs drop. Care improves.

Backed by a fresh $50M from Olive’s investors (Drive Capital and General Catalyst led Circulo’s Series A with participation from Oak HC/FT and SVB Capital) the new plan is currently building team and tech and aiming “to cover one life, bring on one provider, and earn one dollar of revenue by the end of the year.” It’s early days, but we dive into the details behind the strategy and also explore how this fits into the “health assurance thesis” that’s lurking behind General Catalyst’s latest investments, particularly those spearheaded by Hemant Taneja, who literally co-wrote the book on the subject with Jefferson Health’s Steve Klasko, and is the CEO of the Health Assurance Acquisition Corporation ($HAACU) SPAC that’s just out there waiting to take a health tech business public.

THCB Gang Episode 49, Thursday April 1, 1pm PT /4pm ET

Apr 1, 2021

The April Fools joining me on THCB Gang today will be policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1), futurist Jeff Goldsmith, policy & tech expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis), and patient safety expert & all around wit Michael Millenson (@MLMillenson). There’s vaccines, a 4th wave, Texas reopening, Florida never having closed, and a whole mess of health policy. It’ll be fun — so come join us

You can see the video below live and the audio will be on our podcast channel (Apple/Spotify) from Friday

Digital Therapeutics, Megan & Me!

Mar 31, 2021

Anyone who follows me knows that I’ve been questioning whether digital therapeutics are real and more importantly whether the people building and trying to sell them are simply trying to replicate the American drug pricing model–patent, protect, prescribe & price gouge. So who better to have this conversation with than the person in charge of explaining and selling the notion of digital therapeutics to the world? Megan Coder is Executive Director of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance. She graciously and bravely agreed to talk to me. Who won the argument? You’ll have to watch to decide, but I found our discussion to be a lot of fun and very interesting and I hope you will too – Matthew Holt

The transcript is below

Matthew Holt:

Hi, it’s Matthew Holt with a THCB spotlight. I’m here with Megan Coder. Megan is the executive director of the Digital Therapeutics Alliance. And we’re here to talk about this thing called digital therapeutics, as to what they are, what the alliance does and whether they really exist and how we should treat them. Megan, thanks for coming on. I know we’ve done a little bit of sparring online and in-person, but I’ve never interviewed you. So I’m looking forward to this. So how are you doing?

Megan Coder:

Good. It’s more fun to spar in-person, but I miss the in-person aspect.

Meet Rightway: The Little-Known $1.1B Care Navigator PBM Startup That Just Scored $100M

Mar 30, 2021

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Despite nearly 900 employer clients (including big brands like Burger King, Kroger, and DoorDash), a net promoter score of 84, and a new pharmacy benefits management (PBM) program launched mid-pandemic, healthcare navigator startup, Rightway, seems to have come out of left field with its $100M Series C fundraise and $1.1B valuation. CEO Jordan Feldman introduces us to the company he’s built and its pretty impressive ability to achieve double-digit decreases in the cost of healthcare for mid- and large self-insured employers.

We walk through the business model, talk about the well-funded competition in both the care navigation and PBM spaces, and get acquainted with Rightway’s plans for scaling up and attracting new clients. An added little point of intrigue? As Rightway looks to gain a foothold working with health plans, Jordan mentions some interesting ties via its Series C investors. While the round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation by Tiger Global and existing investors, it’s Thrive Capital, also an investor in the health insurance startup Oscar Health, that sounds like it might help Rightway make its way into the payer market.

THCB Gang Episode 48, Friday March 26

Mar 26, 2021

This week (for one week only) #THCB Gang was on Friday. Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) was joined by regulars medical historian Mike Magee (@drmikemagee), Fard Johnmar (@fardj), from digital health consultancy Enspektos, THCB regular writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), and employer health expert Jennifer Benz (@jenbenz). Sadly Casey Quinlan was ill and couldn’t join last minute.

It was an extraordinary week, especially in terms of digital health investment. We talked a bit about that and a lot more about high deductible health plans, whether the filibuster will be busted, and what that might mean for Medicare for all. A wide ranging and big picture conversation!

The video is below but if you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.

The Drive To Standardize Records: Progress or Chaos?

Mar 26, 2021• 1

By MERLE BUSHKIN

I recently asked my Primary Care Physician’s Medical Records Department for copies of my records covering the last eight months during which I had four office visits, five blood draws, and nine brief email exchanges. I should add that my PCP uses one of the two most popular EMR systems.

To my astonishment, I received 274 pages of digital records (PDFs). I’ve heard of “record bloat” but this was an explosion!

When I analyzed their contents, I found that 59 pages were legitimate documents containing “original” information and data. 22 Pages were Office Notes — or what are often called Progress Notes —applicable to my four visits; 14 were reports of my five blood draws; 23 included my nine email exchanges. In short, they were “normal” — what you’d expect from the number of contacts I had with my doctor and his lab.

But the remaining 212 pages shocked me. They were totally unexpected and, in my opinion, completely unnecessary! They were a slicing, dicing and recasting of the contents of the basic 59 pages! They included 82 pages of “Ambulatory Visit Instructions” (which I was never given), and 62 pages listing my immunizations, meds, problems, procedures, orders, and past medical, social and family histories — all of which are covered in my providers’ Office Notes!

Nanoparticles On My Mind

Mar 23, 2021

By KIM BELLARD

Nanoparticles are everywhere! By that I mean, of course, that there seems to be a lot of news about them lately, particularly in regard to health and healthcare. But, of course, literally they could be anywhere and everywhere, which helps account for their potential, and their potential danger.

Let’s start with one of the more startling developments: a team at the University of Miami’s College of Engineering, led by Professor ****@***mi.edu“>Sakhrat Khizroev, believes it has figured out a way to use nanoparticles to “talk” to the brain without wires or implants. They use “a novel class of ultrafine units called magnetoelectric nanoparticles (MENPs)” to penetrate the blood-brain barrier.

“Once the MENPs are inside the brain and positioned next to neurons, we can stimulate them with an external magnetic field, and they in turn produce an electric field we can speak to, without having to use wires,” Professor Khizroev explained. A special magnetic helmet would communicate with the MENPs, in real-time.

Other efforts, such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink, have been looking at using implants to achieve the brain-computer interface, but Dr. Khizroev is skeptical of this kind of approach:

Other efforts have used external instruments like microelectrodes to try to solve the mysteries of the brain, but because of its complexity and difficulty in accessing, such methods can only go so far. There are 80 billion neurons in the human brain, so imagine how difficult it would be to attach 80 billion microelectrodes to access every single neuron. The only way to truly tap in is wirelessly—through nanotechnology.

THCB Gang Episode 47, Thursday March 18

Mar 18, 2021

Joining me , Matthew Holt (@boltyboy), on THCB Gang this week were fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey), consumer advocate & CTO of Carium, Lygeia Ricciardi (@Lygeia), THCB regular authors radiologist Saurabh Jha (@roguerad) & cardiologist Anish Koka (@anish_koka), with futurist Jeff Goldsmith on hand to keep us all honest. We started with Casey’s current health journey and Anish’s inability to get vaccines for his clinic — and this moved to a really fun and raucous discussion about whether the public sector can work in health care, whether we need to mandate the vaccine and if America is becoming a failed state! Great stuff!

If you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels

Glen Tullman’s Return to Digital Health: In-Depth Chat on New CEO Role at Transcarent

Mar 18, 2021

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

As if one consumer digital health company with an $18.5B exit wasn’t enough, Livongo founder Glen Tullman has decided to give the transformation of healthcare another go – this time as Executive Chairman & CEO of Transcarent. Matthew Holt and I sit down with Glen to hear about the “new kind of experience” that Transcarent is offering self-insured employers and their employees: one focused on providing unbiased information, guidance for accessing high-value healthcare, and an at-risk model that promises to share back the financial benefits associated with better healthcare decision-making.

Could you consider Transcarent an aggregator, a healthcare navigator-PLUS, or is it more like a next-gen health plan that does everything but process claims? Glen talks about how his team was “asked” to jump into providing a better experience for this kind of healthcare service, details what the company needs next, and explains the role of Bridge Health, which merged with Transcarent in October 2020 when the company closed its $44M Series A. Familiar investors, General Catalyst and Glen’s own 7Wire Ventures, have led the funding for Transcarent and we find out if there will be any additional support from the Health Assurance Acquisition Corporation (the SPAC that Glen launched in partnership with General Catalyst’s Hemant Taneja and others) that could potentially provide a vehicle for taking the business public. And, what about Teladoc Health? With a seat on TDOC’s Board, does Transcarent’s commitment to offering “unbiased” direction to the best possible healthcare put Glen into a conflict of interest? This is one catch-up chat you’re not going to want to miss!