Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess helps me celebrate my birthday Kylie Jenner-style. On Episode 140, Jess and I discuss Humana investing $100 million in Heal, Lemonaid raising $33 million in a Series B, CVS Caremark announcing 5 new companies in their digital health platform—4 of which are about weight loss, and perplexing health intelligence company Sema4 raising $121 million in a seed round. —Matthew Holt
PBM Startup Capital Rx Starts Prescription Drug Pricing Shake-Up with Walmart Partnership
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
A startup PBM? Partnered up with Walmart to bring “everyday low prices” to prescription drug pricing? Is this too good to be true? A.J. Loiacono, founder & CEO at Capital Rx, gives us a quick primer on “Pharmacy Benefit Managers” (PBMs) and why they’ve become known for the element of mystery they bring to prescription drug pricing. With three big PBMs (CVS’s Caremark, Express Scripts, and UnitedHealth’s OptumRx) controlling three quarters of the total market, it’s no surprise that VC-backed challenger companies in this space are rare. So, how does A.J. believe Capital Rx will shake things up? Learning about this new kind of tech-enabled, customer-focused PBM not only inspires hope for a clear future of prescription drug price transparency, but also makes one wonder about the new vision for American healthcare unfolding at Walmart.
Amwell’s Roy Schoenberg: Telehealth Post-Pandemic is “Entrenched Inside” Traditional Health Care
By JESSICA DaMASSA
There are few better positioned to speculate on what’s next for telehealth than Roy Schoenberg, co-CEO & President, of Amwell. After 15 years, more than $710M in total funding, and probably the best analogies out there for describing telehealth’s potential as a disruptive technology, Roy weighs in on just how unprecedented COVID19 has been for the uptake and evolution of virtual care.
“Historically, people thought, could telehealth be as good as a physical visit? The reality of COVID,” says Roy, “has literally opened the door to the question, can telehealth be better?”
From the near-term “new wave” of telehealth that has already begun to “eclipse the urgent care telehealth” to how Amwell’s clientele of clinicians, healthcare delivery systems, and payers are shifting to accept the idea of the technology as “the start of healthcare,” Roy talks of a future of telehealth that is “entrenched inside the system.” And how Amwell is meant to act as “facilitator.”
“When we start thinking about telehealth as a switchboard — not as a product, but as an infrastructure for the redistribution of healthcare — we’re talking about a completely different experience for us as Americans on what healthcare is available to us and how we can consume it.”
“To me, and I’ll fast forward to the end here, we want to get to the point that telehealth changes our expectation when we grow old as to where we can grow old. We want to be in a place where we can stay at home…where we don’t have to be in the ‘belly of the beast’ to get healthcare.”
How far away is this future that Roy describes, midway through telehealth’s biggest year yet? Is the appetite there among incumbents? And what of those Amwell IPO rumors? How might that kind of funding help rush things along? Tune in to this episode of ‘WTF Health – What’s the Future, Health?’ with Jessica DaMassa to find out.
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 136 | Telepharmacy, a Mega-Merger, & DoorDash’s Deal with Walgreens
On Episode 136 of Health in 2 Point 00, Jess has 15 new deals to talk about (and its only been a day since the last episode!). Jess asks me about CityBlock getting $54M for their Series B round to provide primary care services to dual-eligible Medicare and Medicaid members in New York, Medly raising $100M & NowRx crowdsourcing $20M to grow their telepharmacy platforms, the mega-merger of Curavi, Carepointe, and U.S. Health Systems (now called Arkos Health) to develop out a care coordination platform, and DoorDash partnering with Walgreen to distribute non-prescription drugs. —Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 135 | Amazon’s primary care entry, UnitedHealth’s digital DPP & more
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, it’s the 4th shoe! On Episode 135, we’ve got Amazon’s entry into primary care through its pilot program with Crossover Health, UnitedHealth Group launching Level2, their own digital health diabetes prevention program, Health Catalyst acquiring healthfinch, Truepill raising $25 million and then investing in Ahead, a company which matches psychiatrists to patients. —Matthew Holt
THCB Gang Episode 17, LIVE 7/9 1PM PT/4PM ET
Episode 17 of “The THCB Gang” was live-streamed on Thursday, July 9th! Watch it below!
Joining me were some of our regulars: patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano), health economist Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@healthythinker), WTF Health Host Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa), and guests: Tina Park, partner at Diagram (@diagramoffice) & Shannon Brownlee, Senior VP at the Lown Institute (@ShannonBrownlee). The conversation focused on asynchronous care, the gap between patients & technology, and the Supreme Court ruling on employers’ ability to limit women’s access to birth control coverage. It was a great and engaging conversation with some of the top health care experts in the field.
If you’d rather listen, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels — Zoya Khan
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 133 | PBMs galore, Genome Medical, & the FCC’s Rural Health Program
Episode 133 of Health in 2 Point 00 is brought to you by the letter P — that’s P for PBMs, of course. In this episode, Jess and I talk about Genome Medical extending their series B and getting another $14 million on top of the $23 million they already raised for their remote genetic counseling services, the FCC adding another $198 million to their rural health program, bringing the funding to a whopping total of $802 million, Anthem’s PBM IngenioRx acquiring pharmacy startup Zipdrug, and Capital Rx, a startup PBM, announced a deal with Walmart. —Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 132 | Accolade IPO, Somatus, NexHealth, Tatch & more
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I cover some big news! Accolade has filed its IPO, so on Episode 132 I give my take on this health care navigation service. We also cover Somatus getting $64 million for chronic kidney disease care, NexHealth raising $15 million, Tatch raising $4.25 million for sleep apnea diagnosis, Simply Speak raising a $1.1 million seed round, and optimize.health raising $3.5 million for its remote monitoring platform. —Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 131 | Tele-everything! Oscar, Evidation, Lululemon, Calibrate, & more
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I talk about Oscar raising $225 million, Evidation Health raising $45 million doing digital clinical trials, Lululemon buying fitness startup Mirror for $500 million, Calibrate raising a $5.1 million seed round bringing telehealth to weight loss and metabolic health, at-home urine analysis startup Healthy.io buying Inui Health for $9 million, and Airvet raising $14 million for veterinary telemedicine. —Matthew Holt
COVID-19 & Fertility Care: Remote Monitoring Meets Fertility Benefits for Better At-Home Option
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
Trying to achieve pregnancy with fertility treatments can be challenging, stressful, and expensive in the best of times — let alone a global pandemic. Since the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., fertility care has been basically “paused,” and women attempting to conceive have been left with a very different set of decisions and options for care than were available pre-pandemic. So, how does fertility care shift from the clinic to the home? Tammy Sun, co-founder & CEO of fertility benefits startup Carrot Fertility, and Lea Von Bidder, co-founder & CEO of Ava, a women’s health tech startup best-known for its ovulation tracking bracelet, stop by to talk about how they are redefining the how, when, and where of fertility care for greater success outside the doctor’s office.
What’s smart about this partnership? How the two companies are working together to build off the biometric data collected by Ava’s tracker, basically adopting a remote monitoring approach to collecting and analyzing data in the home in effort to either help optimize the chances of getting pregnant naturally, or better inform the IVF or other medically-assisted procedures that will return as options as the pandemic wanes. From the impact on would-be-parents and their employers to the sentiment of women’s health investors, we talk through the opportunities and challenges of expanding fertility care in the home.
