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Meet Teen Mental Health App BeMe Health & Their “TikTok” Type Approach to Behavioral Health Care

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Teen mental health has hit crisis-level concern these days, and seed-funded startup BeMe Health is hoping to help with a digital mental health app purpose-built just for teens. Fast Company labeled the app as “TikTok for teen mental health,” which is a spot-on description of its exciting, social-media-like look and feel, but a bit of an undersell of the evidence-backed behavioral health care the app is actually providing.

Co-founders Nicki Tessler and Mandeep Dhillon introduce us to BeMe, and tell us why they believe the TikTok-like approach they’re taking – with its emphasis on short, engaging video content that’s “served up” rather than “sought out” thanks to smart algorithms that link mental health goals with in-app behavior and engagement patterns – is key to winning the buy-in of digitally-native teens.

While apps like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have lately received criticism for their role in harming teens’ mental health with algorithms that drive content consumption to increase ad revenue, BeMe is hoping to use those same tactics to drive content consumption that will increase a teen’s ability to manage stress, learn coping skills, build resilience, identify their emotions, and even help coach one another.

Beyond product design and market fit (winning teens is not enough, parents need a place in this too) Nicki and Mandeep also talk us through BeMe’s business model, which is evolving along with the app’s development. The startup’s $7 million dollar seed funding is “connected” to payers – nine of the top 10 health plans, says Nicki – and so the initial strategy is based on a per-member-per-month model and will be launching in coordination with pediatricians and therapists, as well as with schools, before it goes direct-to-consumer. Still the question remains: If mom, dad, or the doc recommends it, will a discerning teen really will want to do? Listen in to find out if BeMe’s sticky videos, teen advisory board, and algorithms sound like they’ll bridge the generation gap and start shaping a different kind of mental health care for this important phase of life.

After the Crash

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By JEFF GOLDSMITH

These are grim days for innovative healthcare companies.  The health tech and care innovation firms mature enough to make it to public markets have been eviscerated in the ongoing market correction. As of January 29, 2022, high fliers like One Medical (down 83% from peak), Oscar (down 83%), Bright Healthcare (down 85%), Teladoc (down 77% but still selling at 6X revenues!), and AmWell (down 90%) are the tip of a much larger melting iceberg.    The dozens of digital health unicorns (e.g. pre-public companies valued at more than $1 billion) and their less mythical brethren, into which investors poured more than $45 billion during 2020-2021, are sheltering in the comparative safety of VC/Private Equity balance sheets. They are protected from investor wrath until those firms’ limited partners force a revaluation of their portfolios based on the market value of their publicly traded comparables.   

Yet it is the next moves that these innovative firms and their equity holders make that will determine whether these firms realize their full transformative potential or fade into insignificance. The Gartner Group, which tracks the technology industry generally, popularized the notion of the Hype Cycle- a seemingly universal trajectory that tech innovations and the firms that produce them follow (see below).   

                                                    The Gartner Hype Cycle

Everyone seems to focus on the colorful first phase of this cycle- the inflating and deflating part- where an innovation rises on a wave of the adulatory press (and breathless futurist punditry), then crashes ignominiously into the Slough of Despond.  A classic example was the Apple iPhone’s ill-starred great uncle, the Apple Newton, which launched in 1993 and crashed shortly thereafter.

For founders and investors, as well as customers, however, it is the less visible succeeding phases that determine if the innovation survives and the firms that produce them become ubiquitous and indispensable parts of our lives.  The rising initial phase of Gartner’s Hype Cycle is driven by the question “Is it cool”?, mediated by hyperactive media and Internet buzz.    The inevitable crash, on the other hand, is almost always driven by the troublesome real-world question,  “Does the product actually work as advertised?” Analysts, writers, and, most importantly, customers press uncomfortable questions about not only functionality, but also reliability, affordability, stickiness, and “value for money”.

How do firms survive the crash and climb Gartner’s “Slope of Enlightenment”?  This is the unglamorous “pick and shovel” part.  If the sticky “product integrity” issues (does the product actually work?) are resolved, then a host of important questions challenge the firm, its founders, and owners, which answers the crucial question:  whether it is a real business:   

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THCB Gang Episode 81, Thursday Feb 3

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Joining Matthew Holt (@boltyboy) on #THCBGang at 1pm PT 4pm ET Thursday for an hour of topical and sometime combative conversation on what’s happening in health care and beyond will be: Suntra Modern Recovery CEO JL Neptune (@JeanLucNeptune);  the double trouble of vaunted futurists Ian Morrison (@seccurve) & Jeff Goldsmith, WTF Health host & Health IT girl Jessica DaMassa (@jessdamassa). Today’s special guest returning to #THCBGang is the “I make unicorns” King Bill Taranto from Merck GHIF (@BillTaranto).

You can surmise that there will be some discussion around #DigitalHealth valuations!

The video will be below. If you’d rather listen to the episode, the audio is preserved from Friday as a weekly podcast available on our iTunes & Spotify channels

#HealthTechDeals Episode 7: League, Reimagine Care, Resilience, Mantra Health, Physician Partners

It’s Groundhog Day and I have emerged from my little hole in the ground to let you know my predictions for funding this year for Health Tech companies! League raises $95 million; Reimagine Care raises $25 million; Resilience raises 40 euros; Mantra Health raises $22 million, and Physician Partners raises $500 million. Oh and Akili is going to SPAC, maybe -Matthew Holt

Transcript:

Jessica DaMassa:

Well, it’s Groundhog Day, and that can only mean one thing. Matthew Holt has emerged from his little hole in the ground to let us know what his prediction is for more funding in this next year for health tech companies. Will he see his shadow and be scared back into the hall? It looks like it. It’s the February 2nd episode of Health Tech Deals.

Matthew Holt:

All right. Jessica, Jessica, Jess. I know I’ve seen the movie, but I don’t understand it. If the groundhog sees his shadow because the sun is up, there’s more winter?

Jessica DaMassa:

Yes.

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#HealthTechDeals Episode 6: Alto Pharmacy, Althelas, A Place for Mom, And Summus Global

In Episode 6 of Health Tech Deals, Jess and I might be two new characters and Sesame Street! Keep watching to find out which ones. Some new deals, brought to you by the letter A: Alto Pharmacy raises $200 million; Athelas raises $132 million; A Place for Mom raises $175 million; and Summus Global raises $22 million. -Matthew Holt

Jessica DaMassa:              Well, hello, Matthew Holt. I have an important question for you. It looks like all of the deals we have to talk about today start with the letter ‘a’, which leads me to believe that we might be two new characters on Sesame Street. Now, are we more like Ernie and Bert or Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird? Those are the important questions that we’re asking here on the February 2nd episode of “Health Tech Deals”.

Matthew Holt:                   So Jessica. I’m very tall, so I must be Big Bird, and you must be Oscar the Grouch.

Jessica DaMassa:              Don’t think so.

Matthew Holt:                   All right? Maybe the other way. Anyway, it’s all brought to you by the letter ‘a’.

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New Cancer Care Navigator Thyme Care Starts Out with $22M Series A & Big Name Backing

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Thyme Care is a cancer navigation platform that is looking to use technology to make the kind of high-touch care coordination usually only found at Centers of Excellence available to oncology practices across the country. The navigation we’re talking about is typically quarterbacked by experienced oncology nurse navigators, and is known to have a direct impact on a patient’s experience and their health outcomes. Thyme Care’s platform not only scale-ups this expertise, but also augments it with analysis of claims data and EMR data to help those navigators quickly detect which patients might be at higher risk for poor outcomes and which interventions might help mitigate those risks – whether that be addressing social determinants of health issues like transportation to appointments, or just more quickly spotting gaps in care.

Thyme Care’s President & Chief Medical Officer Bobby Green (an oncologist himself) introduces us to the tech platform and explains how, among a competitive field of tech-enabled care navigators, it’s managed to stand apart enough to win Medicare Advantage plan Clover Health as an early client and to gain a $22 million dollar Series A investment from platform-savvy investors like Andreessen Horowitz and AlleyCorp. (Frist Cressey Ventures, Casdin Capital and Bessemer also participated in the round, which was announced in October 2021.)

As the business looks to scale, what’s to make of all its connections to Flatiron Health, arguably health tech’s best-known cancer care platform? Lots of alumni on the cap table and in the biz, including Bobby himself! Find out more about expansion plans and points of differentiation in this quick get-to-know-you chat.

Spotify, Joe Rogan, and Health Care

By KIM BELLARD

Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to write: the most interesting discussion in healthcare in the past week has been about Neil Young versus Spotify.  

For those of you who have not been following the controversy, Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum: it could have his music or Joe Rogan, but not both.  “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”  Spotify chose Rogan.

Mr. Young was not the first to express alarm at some of the Covid “information” promoted on Mr. Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE); in December, for example, several hundred scientists from around the world issued an open letter to Spotify specifically about JRE, warning:

By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals.

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Matthew’s health care tidbits: #What is insurance again?

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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 my health care tidbits this week, I was reminded on Twitter that many Americans really don’t understand health insurance. A spine surgeon no less in this thread (no jokes about arrogance please) was telling me that he was paying ~$8,000 a year ($4,000 in insurance and $4,000 in deductible) before he got to “use” his insurance–which, as his medical costs were low, he never did. Others were complaining that the cost of employee premiums were over $20K. They all said they should keep the money and (presumably) pay cash when they do use the system. It’s true that most people don’t use their insurance. That’s the whole point. When you buy house insurance, you don’t expect your house to burn down. You are paying into a pool for the people whose house does burn down.

In the US we are on average spending $12k per person on health care each year. But spending on most people is way under that and for a few it’s way, way over. If you take the rough rule that 50% of the spending is on 10% of the people then 35 million people account for $2 trillion in spending–that’s ballpark $60,000 each. They are the ones with cancer, heart disease, complex trauma, etc, etc. The rest of us are “paying” our $4,000, $8,000 whatever, into the pool to cover that $60,000.

There are only two ways to lower that cost for the healthy who aren’t “using” their insurance. One is to exclude unhealthy people from that insurance pool, which makes the costs for everyone else much less. We did that for years with medical underwriting and it was nuts because it screws over the unhealthy. Fixing the pre-existing condition exclusions was the only bit of Obamacare everyone agrees on–even Trump. But now we are ten plus years into this new reality, some people have forgotten how bad it was before.

The other way is to reduce the costs in the system and lower that $4 trillion overall. How to do that is a much longer question. But it isn’t much connected to the concept of insurance.

The Social Science of Covid

By MIKE MAGEE

As we enter the third year of the Covid pandemic, with perhaps a partial end in sight, the weight of the debate shows signs of shifting away from genetically engineered therapies, and toward a social science search for historic context.

Renowned historian, Charles E. Rosenberg, envisioned a similar transition for the AIDS epidemic in 1989. He described its likely future course then as a “social phenomenon” with these words, “Epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, follow a plot line of increasing and revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, then drift toward closure.”

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Inside Wheel’s $150M Series C: CEO Talks “Long Game” for Stealthy Virtual Care Infrastructure Biz

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Wheel’s CEO Michelle Davey says the white-label virtual care startup’s $150M Series C – led by notable health tech mega-funders Lightspeed Venture Partners & Tiger Global – is “really about the long-game.” We get into the details of this purposeful funding round and what it means for the future of Wheel, as well as the play-by-play analysis of what happened over the past 9 months, since the company closed its $50M Series B. (FYI: Wheel’s total funding is at $216 million to-date.)

Wheel is currently running behind-the-scenes for an undisclosed client list of brands, facilitating 1.6 million virtual visits a year for digital health companies, digital pharmacies, retailers, and, now, even traditional healthcare providers. That number is expected to triple by the end of 2022, and we get into what’s fueling that growth and whether or not Michelle believes that this institutional push toward online care will persist as the pandemic wans and the world continues re-opening.

Armed with this fresh funding, how will three-year-old Wheel continue to differentiate its offering from legacy telehealth infrastructure providers like Amwell and Teladoc? How will it win against their legacy relationships with legacy healthcare providers? Or, is Wheel’s big bet on the continued scaling of what Michelle calls “next generation healthcare”? Wheel has added A LOT of tech to its own infrastructure recently, providing asynchronous options, better clinician matching, more triaging and navigating, and, with this funding, are is now talking about adding “diagnostic services” to round out their service line. What, exactly are we talking about here in terms of business model evolution? Tune in and find out what this stealthy startup is up to!

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