Russ Johannesson has been CEO of Glooko since 2018. In that time the diabetes data platform has expanded internationally, made a couple of acquisitions, and added support for digital therapeutics and distributed clinical trials. He brought me up to date with the latest–Matthew Holt
THCB Gang Episode 93, Thursday May 26 1pm PT, 4pm ET

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday May 26 were medical historian Mike Magee (@drmikemagee); Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune); and fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey). Plenty of conversation about guns as a public health crisis, and also much about data use, data reidentification and controversy there.
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.
#HealthTechDeals Episode 31| Homethrive, Greater Good, Parallel Learning, Cayaba Care, Miga Health
You know what Jess just realized? We haven’t heard my opinion on Cerebral! Scandal! Firings! Intrigue! Legal Issues! Risk! Skyrocketing! Dying! Cerebral offers quite some food for thought. Check out the episode for my opinion on this incredibly fast-brewing story as well as more multi-million deals: Homethrive raises $20 million; Greater Good raises $10 million; Parallel Learning raises $20 million; Cayaba Care raises $12 million; Miga Health raises $12 million.
-Matthew Holt
Matthew’s health care tidbits: Digital Health is dead (well, not quite)
Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt
For today’s health care tidbits, the elephant in the room has truely come home to roost, and now it’s landed on the phone wire, it’s close to breaking it. OK, I have stretched that metaphor to death but you’ll get my point. Writing on THCB earlier this month Jeff Goldsmith and Eric Larsen picked up on something I’ve been saying for a while –the fall in valuation of publicly traded digital health companies will have a knock effect on private companies.
It took a while–those public companies stock prices started falling from their heights 14 months ago–but in the last month the venture capital scene has gone quiet. The days of sub $20m ARR companies getting mutli-hundred million dollar valuations are over for now. They will be back at some point in the future, as that’s how Silicon Valley has always worked, but it’ll be a while and in the meantime everyone is going to have to figure out what to do in the new world.
The “What to do?” question is getting harder as the data starts to come in, and it’s getting ugly. On the one hand the two fastest growing digital health companies ever have both had their comeuppance. Livongo was a tremendous exit for its investors and ended up trading at 20 times future revenue before it got acquired by Teladoc for $18bn mostly in stock. This quarter Teladoc wrote off much of its investment in Livongo and the whole company is now only worth $5bn. Clearly those “synergies” between telehealth and chronic care management didn’t work. The other rocket ship was Cerebral, which went from nothing in Jan 2020 to by Jan 2022 having over 100,000 patients and thousands of providers on its system as it raised over $300m from Softbank et al. Its aggressive & expensive customer acquisition costs, with its controversial controlled medication prescribing patterns, brought it way too much controversy. Its young CEO is gone, and it’ll be a slow climb back with bankruptcy and collapse the likeliest of outcomes.
But the part of digital health that’s trying to replace the incumbents is not the only place showing ugliness. The technologies and services being rolled out are often not working. Exhibit A is a randomized controlled trial conducted a Univ of Pennsylvania. One set of heart patients was set up with connected blood pressure cuffs, a pillbox that tracked their Rx adherence and lots of coaching help. The others were sent home with the proverbial leaflet and told to call if they had problems. You’d assume many more deaths and hospital readmissions in the second group. You’d be wrong. There were no differences.
So digital health needs to see if it can produce services companies that move the needle on costs and outcomes. The advantage is that they are eventually competing with hospital systems whose DNA doesn’t allow them the ability to let them cross the chasm to the new world. The bad news is that those systems have huge reserves which they can use to subsidize their old world activities.
I’m hoping digital health’s impact in the next 2 years will be as big as it was in the past 2, It’s by no means dead or over, but I am pessimistic.
THCB Gang Episode 92, Thursday May 19 1pm PT, 4pm ET

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang on Thursday May 19 are delivery & platform expert Vince Kuraitis (@VinceKuraitis); policy expert consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1); & back after a long absence dangerous radiologist Saurabh Jha (@roguerad). Some great conversation about digital health, Roe v Wade, rural care and a deep dive into Saurabh’s trip to Nepal to deliver radiology tech to Everest Base Camp!
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
#HealthTechDeals Episode 29 | Osmind; Turquoise Health; Mahmee; Simplifed
In this episode of #healthTechDeals Jess DaMassa is hoping Matthew Holt disappears, possibly on Elon Musk’s rocket to Mars. Matthew just wants him to buy Chelsea FC. And then there’s actual funding deals for Osmind ($40m), Turquoise Health ($20), Mahmee ($9) & Simplifed which got $6m despite having Matthew help!
#HealthTechDeals Episode 28 | Alan; HealthMap Solutions; Sidekick Health; Dialogue & Tictrac
It’s Friday 13th, the unluckiest day and many on the stock market were feeling it. But there were some deals. Alan in France raises 183m Euros, HealthMap Solutions gets $25m for kidney care, Icelandic Sidekick Health gets $55m for DTx & Dialogue buys Tictrac for $43m US.
–Matthew Holt
THCB Gang Episode 91, Thursday May 12
Following last week’s extraordinary special on cancer & navigation, this week’s #THCBGang on May 12 was a deep dive into digital health. Including data, education, business models and the knowledge gap; and of course quite a bit of discussion about the future of the data and digital health around abortion.

Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) were WTF Health host & Health IT girl Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa), privacy regulation expert Deven McGraw (@HealthPrivacy); & surgeon & startup guy Raj Aggarwal (@docaggarwal). Special guest this week is Olympic rower for 2 countries and all around dynamo Jennifer Goldsack, (@GoldsackJen), CEO at the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe).
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
THCB Gang Episode 90, Thursday May 5 – Cancer Special

#THCBGang on May 5 was an extraordinary special on cancer & navigation. Everyone on this gang has been touched by cancer as a patient or caregiver.
Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) will be fierce patient activist Casey Quinlan (@MightyCasey); Jennifer Benz (@Jenbenz); Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune); patient advocate Grace Cordovano (@GraceCordovano); policy consultant/author Rosemarie Day (@Rosemarie_Day1); Jeff Goldsmith; Jennifer Benz (@Jenbenz); PLUS Adam Pellegini (@adampellegrini) from cancer navigation company Jasper Health. It really was a great conversation about what to do (and what is being done) to make the experience better for people with cancer and those that love them.
You can see the video below & if you’d rather listen than watch, the audio is preserved as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels.
#HealthTechDeals Episode 27: Levels, Waltz Health, Safety Wing & Implicity
In this episode of #HealthTechDeals, Jess is enjoying Cinqo de Mayo in an Addams Family-themed hotel where she is playing “the mummy” introducing health tech companies coming back from the dead. There’s gossip about Amazon’s pharmacy operation over supplying insulin, and there’s deals for Levels ($38m) in CGM analysis, Waltz Health ($35m) in pharmacy search, Safety Wing ($25m) for health insurance for nomads & Implicity ($23m) doing cardiac implantable monitoring in France.