Atropos Health CEO Brigham Hyde

Startups

Atropos Series B Bridges Evidence Gaps

It’s a bad day to be an evidence gap, with Atropos Health closing $33M in Series B funding to transmute real-world data into real-world evidence.

Atropos accomplishes this alchemy by quickly producing retroactive observational studies using an evidence platform of 200M+ patient records, as well as a partner network packed with big names like Mayo Clinic and Clarify.

• These publication-grade “Prognostograms” are used by both providers (e.g. to answer clinical questions using individually tailored RWE) and life science orgs (e.g. to emulate clinical trials that otherwise would have taken a lot longer).

• Forbes has a solid write-up of the secret sauce on the backend – plus a nice Greek mythology lesson on the three fates whose scissors can either end or extend the lives of mortals, one of which is named Atropos.

The fresh funding will fuel a trio of initiatives centered around new ways to democratize access to RWE, which naturally includes a healthy dose of generative AI.

• Atropos plans to “further its stake” in value-based care by continuing to invest in tailored evidence to guide clinical decisions (see its recent partnership with Arcadia), notable given that “the low hanging fruit” of VBC is mostly gone and providers are now looking for more support with complicated patients to succeed in risk-based contracts.

• The Atropos Evidence Network is pushing into oncology and specialty care through new partnerships with McKesson and Cencora (formerly AmerisourceBergen), and Atropos intends to “double down” on life sciences collaborations after finding traction with everything from R&D to commercial use cases.

• The full launch of ChatRWD is now slated for this summer, which is an LLM-independent framework built to eliminate hallucination risk while slashing the time needed to produce reports using a chat-based interface. A pending publication will back the great branding with some actual data in the coming months.

The Takeaway

Healthcare doesn’t have any problem generating data, but it’s proven to be a massive challenge to turn these troves of data into actionable evidence. Bridging that gap isn’t exactly a small undertaking, but Atropos now has $33M to make it happen.

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The Wire

• Veradigm Explores Its Options: Veradigm is replacing its interim CEO as it starts exploring possibilities “that may include, but are not limited to” a strategic merger or a transaction involving the entire business. The company formerly known as Allscripts recently hit choppy waters due to reporting irregularities that caused heads to roll in the boardroom, but started laying the groundwork for a turnaround – or strategic merger – with the acquisitions of ScienceIO (to help build out GenAI capabilities) and Koha Health (to improve revenue cycle management functions).

• Rising Cost of Medical Care: The Labor Department reported that prices for medical care rose 2.7% year-over-year in April, driven by a 7.7% spike in hospital services. Since 2020, the cost of medical care has increased an alarming 119.2%, outpacing the already-roaring inflation seen for all goods and services (up 85%). Although the initial pandemic shock cooled off throughout 2023, costs resumed their march upward last September, which was pinned on the usual suspects of hospitals’ high supply / labor expenses and inadequate reimbursement.

• Ro GLP-1 Supply Tracker: The path to global domination is riddled with supply shortages, and Ro’s new GLP-1 Supply Tracker gives patients and providers real-time insights into local availability for the white-hot drug class. The public tool leverages Ro’s nationwide supply data alongside user-generated reports to provide granular availability by drug, dose, and location. On a related note, the AHA published its view on how GLP-1s are poised to impact hospitals, including downstream volume implications (particularly for cardiology) and the need for a cohesive data strategy.

• Click Makes A Better Acquisition: Click Therapeutics is also jumping on the GLP-1 train with the acquisition of Better Therapeutics, which feels like a nice “strategic alternative” after Better’s Nasdaq delisting. Better received FDA clearance for its prescription app that delivers CBT to diabetics, and Click now intends to reposition the app as a way to amplify GLP-1 treatments through behavior change. The strategy seems sound, and Click’s other recent moves have done a nice job separating it from the DTx pack (i.e. partnering with Otsuka to commercialize the first FDA-approved digital therapeutic for depression). 

• Interoperability by the Numbers: An in-depth ONC report shows that 70% of hospitals engaged in all four domains of interoperability last year (send, receive, find, integrate), up from 46% in 2018. The share of hospitals that regularly engage in that exchange rose from 28% to 43%, with system-affiliated hospitals far more likely to do so than their independent counterparts (53% vs. 22%). Another interesting tidbit was that 71% of hospitals have electronic access to clinical data from other providers, yet only 42% of clinicians regularly use that information.

• Kyruus Expands to Behavioral Health: Care access platform Kyruus Health expanded its network through virtual behavioral health partnerships encompassing over 30k providers from the likes of Brightside and Talkspace. The network expansion makes it easier for payors and hospitals to integrate behavioral health providers into their online directories with click-to-schedule functionality. Payors get to close care gaps and help members find care, while hospitals get more appointment availability data and better patient acquisition.

• Digital Pathology Breakthrough: A collaborative effort between Providence, Microsoft, and the University of Washington reportedly yielded a breakthrough in cancer diagnostics with a new AI-powered pathology model, dubbed Prov-GigaPath. Unlike current models that analyze small portions of slides, Prov-GigaPath could mark a leap forward in cancer care by analyzing entire pathology slides to identify both local and global patterns, leading to more effective mutation predictions and cancer subtyping. This beautiful study in Nature details the developments.

• Karoo & Heartbeat Health’s VBC Alliance: Virtual cardiology practice Heartbeat Health and cardiology value-based care enablement company Karoo Health announced their partnership to launch “the first truly nationwide, end-to-end cardiac VBC solution.” The companies’ new value-based enterprise combines Karoo’s VBC-enabling AI technology and care model with Heartbeat’s virtual cardiac clinical services (clinicians, testing, and telehealth), and will be offered to payers, at-risk entities, and provider networks.

• Independent Voters Favor Biden: Independent voters trust Biden more than Trump when it comes to issues like the Affordable Care Act and protecting people with preexisting conditions. While voters affiliated with a political party obviously favor their own candidates, the latest KFF data shows independents lean toward Biden on policies surrounding Medicare and Medicare, as well as drug costs (although only 48% of seniors were aware of new provisions for Medicare drug negotiations). An evergreen concern for 3 in 4 voters was that health benefits won’t be at the same level in the future as they are today.

• Tuesday Raises $60M: End-of-life care startup Tuesday Health raised $60M in unlabeled funding to help Medicare Advantage plans and ACOs fill the blind spot for the one service that over half of Medicare enrollees can’t access: hospice. Tuesday identifies plan members at high risk of death in the next 18-24 months and offers them and their families palliative care services such as hospice referrals, medication management, and virtual nursing support.

• Avel eSync Launch: Avel eCare announced the launch of its new Avel eSync platform to enable more healthcare organizations to seamlessly integrate clinician-to-clinician telemedicine into their operations. Avel eSync allows organizations to quickly design clinical workflows for use cases ranging from the ED and ICU to behavioral health and senior care. The platform also extends Avel’s scheduling module to support nationwide coverage of its virtual clinical workforce.

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