Category: Startups

Maven Clinic, Suki, Glooko Start Q4 in Style

Posted on by Jason Barry

It isn’t every week we see digital health startups score a hat trick of massive funding rounds – let alone one that rakes in a combined $295M – but Maven Clinic, Suki, and Glooko clearly came to play.

Maven Clinic kicked off the action by closing $125M of Series F funding and vaulting its valuation to $1.7B. The women’s and family health startup also gave us a behind-the-scenes peek at its 10-year roadmap:

  • Fertility Benefits – Maven’s fertility benefits administration product has brought millions of lives under management since launching last year, and it’s leaning in on forming more clinic partnerships to create a seamless experience between Maven’s virtual care model, financial platform, and in-person treatments. 
  • VBC – The maternity program that serves as the bedrock of Maven’s platform is moving past “phase one” by using real-time data to engage members with a broader ecosystem of services, enabling Maven to take on full-risk and align incentives with outcomes.
  • Engagement – Soon-to-be-announced AI capabilities will bolster Maven’s engagement engine with more insights into fertility, maternity, and family building, as well as often-overlooked areas like return-to-work, parenting, and menopause.

Next up we saw ambient AI startup Suki land $70M of Series D financing on the heels of  adding over a dozen new health systems in the past few months.

  • The release highlighted an expanded partnership with MedStar Health that’ll make Suki Assistant available to thousands of clinicians across specialties including primary care, cardiology, and gastroenterology.
  • Suki also teased plans to expand beyond its existing Suki Assistant and Suki Platform offerings, although details were sparse on what that might entail.

Glooko rounded out last week’s top scorers with a $100M Series F round and the appointment of a new CEO to guide the digital diabetes developer through its next chapter.

  • Freshly appointed chief Mike Alvarez will accelerate the global expansion of Glooko’s solution suite that helps diabetics take control of their condition and equips care teams with a unified platform for managing devices, data, and engagement.

The Takeaway

Digital health startups are off to a hot start in Q4, and Maven Clinic, Suki, and Glooko are the ones cranking up the heat. All signs are pointing to more late-stage mega-rounds as companies look to shore up their balance sheets and bridge the gap to a quickly thawing IPO market, unless of course they’re already eager to diveright in.

Huma Acquires eConsult, Launches Huma Workspace for Health Systems

Posted on by Jason Barry

Huma isn’t wasting any time putting its $60M of Series D funding to work, acquiring digital triage and consultation platform eConsult less than a few months after closing the round.

The move aligns with Huma’s vision of becoming the “Shopify for Digital Health” by equipping provider orgs and pharma companies with modular platforms / software development kits for a wide range of use cases.

  • The Huma Cloud Platform is a no-code app builder that enables companies to spin up their own solutions using a combination of GenAI prompts and pre-built templates.
  • The platform includes a library of modules and device connectivity tools for any therapeutic area, APIs and integration capabilities, and a marketplace that creates a flywheel of new features from existing users.

eConsult’s intelligent triage platform adds an entrypoint to Huma’s ecosystem by guiding patients through a series of medical questions before determining an appropriate pathway.

  • From there, eConsult gives physicians a summary of any flags or considerations to review, then connects them to a “comprehensive array of digital health solutions” such as appointment booking, screening tools, or virtual consults.

Those capabilities strengthen the foundation of Huma Workspace for Health Systems, which was announced alongside the acquisition to provide seamless access to Huma’s library of pre-built modules and solution marketplace. Those support:

  • Check-in and Triage: Captures patient symptoms and clinical history to prioritize patients with immediate needs and optimize intake.
  • Communication Suite: Equips clinicians with tools to manage patients remotely, such as a full messaging suite, video, scheduling, and EHR integration.
  • Remote Patient Monitoring: Allows hospitals to quickly scale applications for diabetes, hypertension, CKD, and other conditions.
  • Proactive Engagement: Automates direct patient communication for screening, education, and engagement campaigns across entire populations.

Put it all together, and Huma is assembling the pieces to an end-to-end platform for delivering virtual care at scale, with over 3,000 hospitals and clinics already using it to power projects for nearly two million active users.

The Takeaway

End-to-end digital health platforms aren’t built in a day, and the acquisition of eConsult confirms that Huma isn’t afraid of using M&A to speed up the process. Huma is full-speed-ahead with adding new capabilities and growing its footprint, so it wouldn’t be surprising if more acquisitions were right around the corner.

Providence Spin-Out Praia Brings Flywheels to Healthcare

Posted on by Jason Barry

The ink is officially dry on Providence-spinout Praia Health’s $20M Series A fundraise, and we couldn’t have asked for a better frame up of the startup’s potential impact than SignalFire’s investment memo on why it co-led the round.

Praia Health is helping hospitals avoid the commoditized care caravan by enabling the creation of consumer profiles that extend beyond the medical record, allowing them to recreate the “digital flywheels” enjoyed by other industries.

  • These flywheels have been hindered by healthcare’s reliance on the legacy architectures and closed-system constraints of the EHR, which fails to incorporate the behaviors happening outside of medical encounters that drive a lion’s share of health outcomes. 

Here’s how Praia enters the picture:

  • The first step is a “lift and shift” to Praia’s Secure Patient Identity Service that enables a single sign-on for all of a system’s digital experiences (branded apps, portals, etc.).
  • Praia’s PersonStore then marries those patient profiles with consumer data, synchronizing the EHR to connect-the-dots between outside data and outcomes. 
  • The SPI and PersonStore capabilities lay the groundwork to link Praia’s growing partner ecosystem into ecommerce-like experiences that emphasize patient satisfaction and loyalty – critical priorities for C-suites grappling with margin pressure and patient attrition.

SignalFire’s history on the patient engagement evolution highlights the leap in Praia’s approach:

  • Gen 1: Unidirectional patient notifications primarily focused on scheduling marked the first step in delivering healthcare info through more accessible channels like SMS.
  • Gen 2: Bidirectional communication transformed medical interactions by giving patients the ability to respond to provider messages.
  • Gen 3: Omnichannel engagement with tech-enabled interactions and seamless integrations let patients perform tasks like rescheduling appointments with options pulled from the provider’s practice management software.
  • Gen 4: Praia Health’s breakthrough – an AI-powered patient engagement suite and automated actions driven by deep EHR integration to connect all data sources and orchestrate the end-to-end patient experience.

The Takeaway

The healthcare industry is at a well-traveled crossroads, facing the same challenges as the banking sector encountered with the rise of online services. Just as fintech companies disrupted banking with fine tuned experiences and lower costs, digital health startups are going after health systems’ lowest hanging service lines with the same promises. Praia gives providers a way to fight back with the tried-and-true digital flywheels that have so-far been out of reach.

Spotlight on Employers, Thatch and Sounder

Posted on by Jason Barry

Help is on the way for employers grappling with rising healthcare costs after two separate startups closed funding to tailor benefits to the needs of employees.

Thatch raised a $38M Series A to dislodge health coverage from employment by providing individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements (ICHRA) that let employees choose their own benefit plans.

  • By blending fin-tech and health-tech tools, Thatch gives employers a way to “abstract away the complexity” of the ICHRA law that passed in 2020, which enabled them to provide a budget to employees for selecting health benefits based on their needs.
  • The Thatch platform streamlines budget setting, plan selection, and lowers costs through pooled purchasing power. If employees spend less than their budget, they receive a Thatch debit card to use for things like prescriptions, copays, and therapy.

Sounder Benefits hatched from the Redesign Health incubator with $7.5M to take a more hands-on approach to benefit design using AI-driven insights and strategic advisory services.

  • Sounder helps employers with <1k employees create a three-year benefit roadmap then guides their transition to level-funded and self-funded plans, providing HR teams with white-glove support and collecting revenue on a per member per month basis.
  • Using employee health data, Sounder identifies when employers have enough of a particular health need (like cancer support), then contracts with companies to provide access to solutions (like Jasper Health).

The back-to-back boost for benefits businesses arrives as employer healthcare costs are expected to spike 9% in 2025, surpassing $16k per employee.

  • Employers continue to bear the brunt of rising costs, and are looking for more ways to avoid passing expenses onto employees in a tight labor market.

The Takeaway

Most current health benefits solutions were designed for a workforce that stayed with a single company for most of their careers, and have had a tough time keeping up with today’s dynamic labor market. Thatch and Sounder Benefits are among a new pack of startups building the infrastructure for a modern benefits experience, and it seems like both employers and employees have a lot to look forward to.

CoachCare Locks Growth Capital for RPM Expansion

Posted on by Jason Barry

CoachCare locked in a $48M growth investment to advance its mission of becoming the go-to virtual care management platform for providers, and it has a clear blueprint for how it plans to get there.

After digging into CoachCare for the funding coverage, one of the things that jumped out the most was how well the company seems to be executing on the M&A front:

  • January 2017: CoachCare got its start as a virtual coaching platform for weight and lifestyle management programs.
  • January 2020: The pandemic era emergence of new RPM and CCM reimbursement pathways prompts CoachCare to lean in on commercializing the technologies it built to use internally, with a platform combining connected devices and outreach / monitoring services to give providers everything needed to spin up their own virtual care programs.
  • January 2023: CoachCare kicks off its acquisition spree with NVOLVE, a remote patient monitoring startup focused on MSK, pain management, and orthopedics.
  • April 2023: CoachCare scoops up Carbon Health’s cardiology and nephrology-focused healthcare platform – Alertive.
  • September 2023: WebCareHealth gets brought on to add new RPM, video conferencing, and real-time messaging expertise to the CoachCare platform.
  • December 2023: Verustat joins the portfolio to bolster CoachCare’s presence in primary care and cardiology.
  • June 2024: CoachCare also closed on another soon-to-be-announced acquisition just last month, which saw Dedica Health round out the solution suite with one-to-one care management and navigation.

The end result of all that M&A is that CoachCare now has a platform that can deliver specialized RPM and virtual health services for everything from hypertension and behavioral disorders to stroke recovery and high-risk pregnancies.

  • Along with $48M in newly raised capital, CoachCare just took a step up to the RPM big leagues, and will now be competing for many of the same customers as the established leaders in the space.

The Takeaway

CoachCare is pedal to the metal with its M&A playbook, and an extra $48M pretty much guarantees that more acquisitions are right around the corner. As long as CoachCare continues finding attractive targets for reasonable costs, its next arc of growth will be defined by its ability to execute, hire, and integrate new capabilities into a cohesive offering.

Commure Acquires Augmedix As Ambient AI Race Heats Up

Posted on by Jason Barry

Commure is buying the dip in Augmedix, and it isn’t leaving a single share behind.

The take-private transaction will see Commure acquire Augmedix for $139M, which means shareholders are set to receive $2.35 per share – a 150% premium above their last close.

  • Not bad for an overnight return, but then again Augmedix was trading at nearly $6 back in January.

Commure provides a healthcare-focused operating system that connects patient care, clinical operations, and administrative functions into a single interface powered by AI.

  • Since merging with Athelas late last year, Commure’s solution suite has grown to include everything from patient engagement and RPM to revenue cycle management and staff safety.
  • Commure also recently announced its own Commure Scribe documentation solution, which it made available at no cost to providers and will continue to offer alongside Augmedix’s product portfolio.

Augmedix got its start as a tech-focused VC darling before leaning in on scribing, and it took an interesting path to its current position near the front of the ambient AI pack.

  • October 2020: Augmedix hits the OTC market through a SPAC merger
  • October 2021: Augmedix gets uplisted to the NASDAQ with a $40M public offering
  • July 2024: Augmedix gets taken private once again by Commure 

The acquisition makes Commure a newfound powerhouse in the healthcare AI arena, with a strong foothold in one of the hottest corners of the market. 

  • Not only does Augmedix advance Commure’s strategy of using LLMs to consolidate various point solutions into a unified platform, but it also brings along over 20 health system partners – including a marquee collaboration with HCA.

The Takeaway

The ambient AI consolidation has begun, and Commure just fast-tracked its way to a leadership position. Commure has its work cut out for it to prove that its operating system approach makes Augmedix more valuable than the market gave it credit for, but this could mark the start of a new wave of consolidation if it can pull it off.

Huma Raises $80M to Shopify Healthcare

Posted on by Jason Barry

Our readers know better than anyone that building scalable digital health solutions can be a years-long voyage, which is why Huma Therapeutics closed $80M in Series D funding “to help cut that time down to days.”

Huma will be the first one to let you know that it’s the “Shopify for Digital Health,” offering modular platforms / software development kits that help provider orgs and pharmaceutical companies with use cases such as:

  • multi-channel patient engagement across entire populations
  • scalable remote patient monitoring programs
  • companion apps to support patients through treatment and drug therapies
  • digital clinical trials, including de-centralised trials to accelerate research

That technology has powered projects in over 3,000 hospitals and clinics, with 1.8M active users across its products in 70+ countries.

  • Huma’s partners include providers like the NHS and Johns Hopkins University, as well as pharma giants like Bayer and AstraZeneca – which also participated in the round.
  • The Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) behind Huma’s products also recently became the only configurable, disease-agnostic solution fully cleared by regulators in the U.S., E.U., and Saudi Arabia.

Up next is the Huma Cloud Platform, a no-code app builder that enables other companies to spin up their own solutions using a combination of GenAI prompts and pre-built templates.

  • The platform includes a library of modules and device connectivity tools for any therapeutic area, APIs and integration capabilities, and a marketplace that creates a flywheel of new features from existing users.
  • The best part? Huma’s SaMD clearance “solves all of the regulatory hurdles that developers usually face, freeing up their time and energy” to scale their apps.

Put it all together, and Huma’s tech infrastructure, partner roster, and regulatory grounding make a compelling case that we’re closer to a “Shopify for Digital Health” than we’ve ever been.

The Takeaway

Shopify brought an online presence within arms reach of millions of vendors that wouldn’t have had the resources to pull it off without them, and Huma is looking to make that same experience possible in digital health. Although healthcare is a far cry from slinging t-shirts and cookies, enabling people to focus on their craft instead of technical potholes seems like an end-goal worth striving for in any industry.

K Health Closes $50M to Bring AI to Primary Care

Posted on by Jason Barry

Momentum begets momentum, and K Health is building on the recent debut of its AI Knowledge Agent with the close of $50M in equity funding led by Claure Group.

K Health is on a mission to provide access to high-quality medical care at scale by using AI to turn patient smartphones into the first stop along their care journey.

  • K’s clinical-grade AI for primary care takes patients through a personalized chat to walk through their symptoms, develops an assessment grounded in the EHR, then delivers insights to providers to inform their diagnoses and treatments.
  • This allows providers to practice at the top of their license and engage with their patients instead of spending valuable time manually piecing together relevant information.

We unpacked K’s AI Knowledge Agent when it was first unveiled, but the short-and-sweet version is that it’s composed of an array of LLMs enhanced by K’s own algorithms, with a few key differentiators from today’s standard AI applications:

  • It incorporates the patient’s medical history to provide highly tailored responses, enabling a higher level of personalization than standalone models.
  • It’s optimized for accuracy by using curated sources, then leverages multiple specialized agents to verify the answer matches the sources and the EHR data is appropriate.

A core component of K’s blueprint is partnering with health systems to serve as an entry point to their larger care ecosystem, and Cedars-Sinai has been helping co-develop a longitudinal care program that integrates virtual care with in-person services.

  • By combining K’s AI with the patient’s EHR and Cedars-Sinai’s brick-and-mortar assets, patients can be intelligently routed to the right place to resolve their needs, reaching everything from primary care and specialists to labs and tests within the same interface.

K’s competitive advantage is its ability to do more with less. An AI-led model that eliminates the need to build clinics allows K to achieve better outcomes at lower costs than traditional primary care, and profitability looks like it’s in the forecast for next year.

  • The fresh funds will be used to fuel more health system partnerships and continue sharpening K’s AI, which should in turn allow it to keep improving the unit economics that separate it from the likes of Walmart Health (RIP) and VillageMD.

The Takeaway

Primary care is the gateway to the healthcare system, but that gateway is rusting away from the demands of an aging population and a shortage of providers. K Health is setting out to prove that AI can repair the situation, and it now has $50M to help it make its case.

Foodsmart Loads Its Plate With $200M

Posted on by Jason Barry

The headliner of this week’s funding-heavy news lineup was Foodsmart, which loaded its plate with over $200 million to expand the reach of its virtual nutrition services.

Foodsmart supports patients facing chronic disease and food insecurity by partnering with health plans and providers to improve access to personalized healthy eating options.

  • The FoodSMART telenutrition platform delivers virtual nutrition counseling from the largest standalone network of Registered Dietitians in the US, with integrated benefits management to help with things like applying for SNAP/EBT benefits.
  • The FoodsMART marketplace then bridges the gap between the visit and the table, allowing patients to order quality food and have it delivered to their doorstep.

The combination of Foodsmart’s dietitian network and food marketplace sets it apart from most of its competitors, which either focus on supporting specific conditions or avoid tackling the logistics of grocery delivery.

  • That versatility has led to Foodsmart serving over 2.2M members, as well as numerous peer-reviewed studies highlighting the cost reductions and health improvements resulting from the approach.

The food-as-medicine movement has provided fertile ground for startups since the pandemic, with shifting consumer behaviors and regulatory changes planting the seeds for growth.

  • Investors are taking notice, and Foodsmart’s mega-round follows close behind other raises from Season Health ($7M), Fay ($25M), and Nourish ($35M).

The Takeaway

At a time when weight management medications are getting all the attention, Foodsmart is paving its own non-pharmacological path to preventing diet-related issues. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, then $200M should be heavy enough to help Foodsmart improve the lives of plenty of patients.

Talkiatry Hauls in $130M Series C

Posted on by Jason Barry

Times are tough, which means business is booming for virtual behavioral health providers like Talkiatry – a telepsychiatry startup that just hauled in $130M in Series C funding.

Since launching in 2020, Talkiatry has built a network of over 320 psychiatrists, who serve patients with conditions ranging from anxiety and depression to OCD and PTSD.

  • Talkiatry operates in 43 states, and is in-network with more than 60 payors, reportedly covering 70% of commercial lives in the US.
  • It’s also begun leaning in on partnerships with health systems, and recently scored a major contract with HCA Healthcare.

Unlike most behavioral telehealth companies that got their start at the onset of the pandemic, Talkiatry’s physicians are W-2 employees, rather than contractors.

  • This allows Talkiatry to standardize the quality of physician care and influence patient outcomes over time, crucial ingredients to any recipe for value-based care success.
  • That model also makes Talkiatry one of the few companies that can demonstrate superior outcomes to major payors. A recent cohort study showed that Talkiatry led to a 68% reduction in hospitalizations, 32% fewer ED visits, and $700 lower monthly care costs.

The benefits of Talkiatry’s model compound with scale: as its full-time psychiatrists continue demonstrating superior outcomes, it can sign more partnerships with payors and reach more patients. That puts it in a solid position to take on additional risk.

  • Talkiatry earmarked the fresh funds to scale up its VBC offerings and begin taking on more downside risk, a move that few behavioral health companies have been willing to make given the difficulty of proving performance. “There’s no blood test for depression.”

The Takeaway

Demand for behavioral health resources only continues to climb, yet there are still significant barriers to delivering the care that’s being called for – particularly a shortage of providers and a lack of technology to help fill the gap. Talkiatry overcomes both of these hurdles by offering virtual treatment from in-house psychiatrists, and it now has $130M to continue scaling its model for patients in need.

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