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Tag: Jessica DaMassa

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 160 | Lawsuits galore, and a faux IPO

The thing to do in health tech this week? Trademark infringement. Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we try to make sense of all the lawsuits right now with Teladoc suing Amwell, Allscripts suing CarePortMD, and whose side are we on for Zocdoc suing Zocdoc? On Episode 160, Jess asks me to make sense of Augmedix’s faux IPO in a reverse merger and publicly traded company Newtopia arising $7 million. Twentyeight Health raises $5.1 million in a Series C and TestCard raises $5.8 million for at-home mobile urine testing. —Matthew Holt

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 159 | A quiet period?

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we might be seeing a quiet period in health tech investing with the election coming up. On Episode 159, Jess and I talk about TigerConnect raising $45 million in a Series D, offering a HIPAA-compliant texting service for doctors; UK-based startup Numan getting £10 million, which is another online male health clinic. Next, Nym gets $16.5 million—lots of good investors in this round, this company uses natural language processing to automate hospital billing. Finally, Press Ganey acquires Doctor.com and a company called Binary Fountain. —Matthew Holt

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 158 | Datavant, Mira, Avail & more

On Episode 158 of Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I talk about Datavant raising $40 million in a Series B for their open health data exchange platform, Mira raising $2.7 million for it’s Costco-esque health insurance alternative, Avail raising $100 million providing telehealth for the OR, ScriptDrop raising $15 million for prescription drug delivery, and Abridge raising $15 million to help patients transcribe doctor’s appointments. —Matthew Holt

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 157 | The phrase is “Takeout Speculation”!

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I gossip about the wild rumor that UnitedHealthcare is acquiring Amwell. On Episode 157, we discuss Lark raising $55 million in a Series C along with a deal with Anthem to be their preferred DPP provider, Medicare Advantage plan Clover going public with a valuation of $3.7 billion, NOCD raising $12 million in a Series A providing specialized CBT and virtual OCD treatment, Cerebral raising $35 million in a Series A for its comprehensive digital mental health offerings, and Express Scripts adding to their digital health formulary with offerings targeting things like women’s health, tobacco cessation, muscle and joint pain, and more. —Matthew Holt

THCB Gang Episode 27, 10/8

Episode 27 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, October 8th! Watch it below!

Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) was joined by some of our regulars: health futurist Ian Morrison (@seccurve), WTF Health Host Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa), writer Kim Bellard (@kimbbellard), patient & entrepreneur Robin Farmanfarmaian (@Robinff3), health economist Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@healthythinker), and fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey)! We covered the recent presidential & vice-presidential debates, Trump on steroids, what the future of the ACA looks like, how will virtual care change public health, and more.

If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Zoya Khan (@zoykskhan)

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 156 | Garage Sale Edition

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess can’t figure out what’s going on with health tech investors. Episode 156 feels like rummaging through a garage sale… First up is mirrors, mirrors, mirrors, with a total of $225 million invested: Tonal gets $110 million, Tempo gets $60 million, and Fiture gets $65 million. Next up is socks; Siren, which makes socks, added $9 million to their B round, which already has $11 million. Our next category is doctors, aka startups from Europe with “doctor” in the name: DrDoctor gets £3 million in an A, HomeDoctor scored €3.7 million, and Your.MD gets $30 million. Finally, we have raccoons! Raccoon.World closes a $900 million seed round to provide physiotherapy in a video game platform. —Matthew Holt

KidsX to Unite Children’s Hospitals & Boost Innovation Investment in Pediatric Digital Health

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Even though kids make up 20% of the total national patient population, investments in startups that use tech to improve their care is, at best, a dismal 1% of the total investments made in digital health and health tech each year. Why is there such a lack of innovation (and investment in innovation) in Pediatrics? Omkar Kulkarni, Chief Innovation Officer at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, talks us through the challenges that have so-far stymied a health tech takeover of the pediatric care market and how KidsX is out to change all that. Already, Omkar’s recruited several dozen of the world’s leading Children’s Hospitals and Pediatric care units into KidsX, bringing with them supportive payers and investors who want to add to the collaborative consortium’s ability to drive change into this stretch of the healthcare continuum. These “champions” aim to create more targeted opportunities for startups who want to pilot or co-develop peds-focused solutions with the leading pediatric care providers who will ultimately use them, the payers who will ultimately reimburse for them, and the investors who ultimately will fund scaling them. Startups are currently being recruited until October 7, 2020 to participate in the KidsX accelerator’s first cohort and it’s a pretty sweet deal. The bottom line: Lots of support, no equity take; this is NOT just for early-stage startups and it’s NOT just for health tech. Healthcare incumbents in care delivery orgs, health plans, and pharma companies are also invited to join in, along with those healthcare investors who want early-access to emerging pediatric startups and solutions, or a seat at the table as KidsX plans for its own investment fund.

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 155 | Is UnitedHealth Group taking over the world?

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I discuss UnitedHealth Group acquiring DivvyDose for $300 million, which is a knock off of PillPack. Is there anything left for them to buy? We cover many more deals in Episode 155—Noyo raises $12 million in a series A, helping health plans exchange data, Medigate raises $30 million working on cybersecurity for connected devices in hospitals, OnCall raises $6 million helping health systems launch their own virtual care platforms, RapidAI raises $25 million to improve MRI and CT quality using AI to layer those images, and Medefer raises £10 million offering telehealth and referrals to patients within the NHS. —Matthew Holt

Telehealth Reality Check: Who’s Really Going to “Win” the Race to Virtual Care Market Leadership?

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

It’s the telehealth market reality check you’ve been waiting for! “Rogue” digital health consultant Dr. Lyle Berkowitz unpacks the numbers and the market potential for virtual care from the unique vantage point of a primary-care-physician-turned-health-tech-entrepreneur with nothing to lose. Having been 1) a clinician, 2) the Director of Innovation at Northwestern Medicine, 3) the founder of a health tech startup (Health Finch) that successfully exited to Health Catalyst, and 4) the former Chief Medical Officer at one of telemedicine’s biggest players, MDLive, few can boast such a wide-reaching, deep understanding of the inner workings of both the innovation and incumbent sides of the virtual care market — AND have a willingness to talk about it all with complete candor!

This is an analyst’s perspective on the telehealth market — with a twist of insider expertise — so expect to hear some good rationale behind predictions about how much care will remain virtual once hospitals and doctor’s offices return to normal, how “real” health system enthusiasm is for building out telehealth capacity to execute on the “digital front door” idea, and whether or not all these well-funded telehealth startups will have what it takes to win market share from traditional care providers.

BONUS on Primary Care: Is this the area of medicine that’s going to be the “battleground” where digital health and virtual care companies will be going head-to-head with incumbents for market share? Lyle says 50-plus percent of primary care “can and should be automated, delegated, virtualized, etc.” and boldly predicts that in 10-20 years we won’t even have primary care physicians anymore. Tune in to find out why starting at the 8:00 minute mark, where we shout out Crossover Health, Oak Street Health, Iora Health, and more.

Telehealth die-hards, don’t think for a second I’d miss this chance to also get some input on Teladoc-Livongo, Amwell, Doctor On Demand, SOC Telemed, the impending IPOs there, digital first health plans, virtual primary care, health systems (who Lyle hopes “don’t shoot themselves in the foot” with their opportunity to jump into the space) and, ultimately, who’s really going to ”WIN” in virtual care moving forward. For this, jump in at 17:00 minutes and hold on!

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 153 | GoodRx’s massive IPO, Olive, Bright Health & more

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess is in Jacksonville hanging out with Jackson the dog and trying to replace me with @barkyboy. On Episode 153, we cover the biggest IPO we’ve seen yet—GoodRx—with a valuation of $18 billion, which is more than Teladoc, Livongo, and even Cardinal Health. In other news, Olive gets $106 million bringing their total to $220 million; Olive is a back office automation system using AI for hospitals and this round is practically financed by royalty. Bright Health gets $500 million for their health plan; they’ve raised about $1.5 billion and are planning to expand into more markets. Finally Osso VR raised $14 million in a series A, helping surgeons practice performing surgeries through their VR platform. —Matthew Holt