Tag: digital health

The power trio of Mayo Clinic, Epic, and Abridge are joining forces to bring the magic of generative AI to the “scaffolding of the healthcare system” – nurses.

The new solution will work similar to Abridge’s core ambient documentation tools for physicians, but optimized specifically for the unique complexity of nursing workflows.

• Whereas physician conversations usually involve capturing the medical history and patient’s story, nurses are also performing and documenting tasks like vitals collection or turning patients to avoid bed sores.

• This data all ends up in different places within the EHR, and requires a new user experience to work backwards from.

Mayo Clinic nurses are at the center of the collaboration.

• The development team is engaging with them directly to ensure the new solution meets the needs of all nursing and patient care workflows along with regulatory requirements for ambient solutions.

• Nurses will also help prioritize the workflows where the tool will have the highest impact, and will be “instrumental” in designing and testing the overall solution.

Epic’s involvement will allow the tool to integrate seamlessly into its EHR and inpatient nursing workflows, another sign that the company is all-in on quickly advancing its GenAI roadmap.

• It also represents one of the most significant efforts to stem from the Epic Workshop program announced last year, which features third-party vendors co-developing technology with Epic. 

The combination of Abridge’s AI stack, Epic’s development, and Mayo Clinic’s nursing expertise should help accelerate the development cycle, and the health system is looking to get the tool in the hands of nurses before the end of the year.

The Takeaway

Nurses perform a massive breadth of activities in fast-paced environments, and they’re grappling with the same documentation-driven burnout as the rest of the industry. Toggling between patient duties, documentation, and staff communication is a demanding use case for ambient AI, but this team appears to have all the pieces it needs to make it happen.

There’s a comeback brewing for digital health, with Rock Health’s latest funding report showing that the sector is officially on track to beat last year’s investment total.   

US digital health startups raised $5.7 billion across 266 rounds in the first half of 2024, setting a pace that could surpass 2023’s full-year total of $10.7 billion.

Most of the excitement came from early-stage startups. Seed, Series A, and Series B raises accounted for 84% of labeled rounds in H1. The median size of a Series A was $15M (up $3M from last year), driven by big showings from companies like Hippocratic AI and Fabric. 

• Rock Health pointed out that larger Series As have helped AI startups manage costs for training models and acquiring datasets, while also helping others make well-timed M&A (Ex. Fabric’s acquisition of MeMD from Walmart).

Unlabeled rounds started to wane as fewer companies pushed off a valuation haircut or delayed a labeled raise due to not meeting necessary benchmarks. Just 33% of Q2 2024 rounds were unlabeled, down from 47% in Q1 and 55% in Q4 2023.

• This could mark the beginning of a return to a more normal cadence of labeled raises, which Rock Health predicted would be in the cards for 2024.

The most funded value proposition in H1 went to “treatment of disease,” thanks in part to Foodsmart’s $200M raise feeding the $1.1B total. 

• Mental health retained its usual position as the most funded clinical indication, raising $700M as companies like Talkiatry and Brightside managed to attract more investor attention than the surging weight management segment ($300M).

The first half saw three public exits for digital health companies, ending a 21 month drought with stock market debuts for Nuvo (remote fetal monitoring), Tempus AI (precision diagnostics), and Waystar (revenue cycle management).

• Among players still gearing up for an IPO, fewer companies were rounding out their offerings by acquiring the missing pieces, which was chalked up to companies wanting to be conservative with their runway. H1 2024 clocked in at 34 digital health acquisitions, well below half of 2023’s full-year total (83).  

The Takeaway

Resilience seems to be leading to brilliance for digital health founders, with overall funding momentum and fewer transition measures (AKA unlabeled rounds) suggesting the “new normal” is upon us. Although a presidential election and decisions around telehealth flexibilities will have a huge impact on the rest of the year, most signs are pointing toward H2 playing out just as well as the first half.

White flags are flying left and right, with Walmart announcing its retreat from care delivery less than a full week after Optum made a similar surrender.

Walmart’s five-year foray into primary care is ending with the closure of 51 health centers, the shuttering of its telehealth service, and the cancellation of any active ambitions in the space.

• The press release chalked up the “difficult decision” to a challenging reimbursement environment and high operating costs, which ultimately made the business unsustainable.

The abrupt finale arrives shortly after Walmart laid out plans to nearly double its footprint to 75+ health centers by the end of 2024, as well as several other marquee announcements.

• As recently as November, Walmart was inking health system partnerships with the likes of Orlando Health, and Bloomberg was even reporting on a potential acquisition of ChenMed that would have opened the doors to the Medicare Advantage market.

So what happened, and why couldn’t the nation’s largest retailer succeed in delivering care to the millions of underserved patients where it already has a presence? Mainly because retail clinics aren’t set up to succeed.

• Scaling brick-and-mortar clinics is simply a low margin endeavor. Reimbursement is low, provider costs are high, and the telehealth piece looks more commoditized every day.

• Even with Walmart’s economies of scale and armies of foot traffic, the system it was operating in doesn’t incentivize preventative care, but rather expensive procedures that it didn’t offer in-house.

The perfect storm of inflating costs and shiny technology that fails to actually reduce those costs is proving too much for retailers and telehealth companies alike. The only ones succeeding seem to have an edge that makes it possible:

• They have access to better rates (One Medical’s health system relationships)
• They have boosted margins from marking up generics (Hims & Hers)
• They control premium through value-based care arrangements
• They have some form of subscription revenue

The Takeaway

The moral of Walmart’s story is that even if you have all the best ingredients, the meal is still only going to be as good as the recipe. Having groceries and doctors under one roof doesn’t lead to more health visits if people don’t want to see a doctor where they get their groceries.

A new viewpoint in the Harvard Business Review made the case that health systems and retailers are only scratching the surface of their partnership potential.

The authors – a trio of professors out of Harvard and UNC – outline four actions they believe health systems and retailers should take to better coordinate their complementary services.

Move Beyond Convenience. Retailers like CVS and Walmart are beginning to add services such as primary care, mental health counseling, and home care, yet even more robust solutions like Amazon Clinic still fall short of integrated care. 

• Things like cancer treatments and surgeries remain well outside the realm of retail health, yet a close partnership between a retailer and a health system could help integrate the many elements involved in treating more-serious conditions.

Move Care Into the Home. Although retail clinics are more convenient and accessible than hospitals, patient homes have them beat on both metrics. Hospitals have begun offering more care in the home, but often lack the logistical prowess to supply patients with the monitoring tech needed for larger programs.

• Efficiently equipping patients’ homes with RPM devices is right in the retailer wheelhouse, and a partnership could fill the gap. Look no further than Best Buy and Geisinger for proof.

Leverage Data to Improve Care. The data held by retailers and health systems largely remains in separate databases, with some notable exceptions like Target-Kaiser Permanente.

• The authors point out that better integration could help with everything from flu outbreak prediction (grocery carts filled with tissues = sick people) to food-as-medicine programs (well-timed nudges and incentives).

Change Who Delivers Care. Labor shortages are one of healthcare’s biggest immediate obstacles, and few employers have a larger workforce than retailers. The article gives the example of Walmart, which subsidizes education for its employees to train for roles like pharmacy technician and medical assistant.

• Health systems could ensure these training programs meet quality standards and help graduates find jobs, creating a model where retailers attract more ambitious candidates and providers have a new talent pool to tap into.

The Takeaway

One way or the other, retailers are moving past the Retail Care 1.0 era, and it’s hard to argue against the case for tighter retailer-provider partnerships. Even if consumers might not jump at the idea of sharing their grocery list with their physician, the ideas outlined in this article are good food-for-thought for combining the complementary strengths of retailers and providers to improve the system as a whole.