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Redesign Health, Hyro Extension, and Kindbody’s Last Resort
December 16, 2024
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Together with
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“I think there’s great problems to solve with incumbents. Big health systems have lots of problems… the payors have large challenges. And so, for as much as there’s this concept of disrupting the system, I think we all like to build with the system.”
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Redesign Health Venture Chair James Quarles
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Launching a healthcare company is hard. Launching dozens of them is even harder, but that’s exactly what Redesign Health plans to do after raising $175M for its largest fund to-date.
Redesign isn’t a venture capital firm, although it’s funded more digital health startups than most VCs. It’s not an accelerator, yet it’s launched more companies in the past six years than most pure startup studios.
Then what is it? Redesign is a “venture builder” that’s cultivated over 60 healthcare companies by supporting founders across three key areas:
- Redesign’s hands-on approach starts with an in-house research lab / analyst team that helps look into sectors, identify challenges, and validate business cases.
- An established network of relationships with health systems, payors, and other health tech companies gives founders an accelerated path to commercial traction.
- Redesign equips startups with operational resources ranging from executive placements to branding services to fine-tune operations throughout every stage of growth.
The new fund will allow Redesign to partner on companies at the intersection of technology and the investment themes where it believes “innovation can drive the greatest impact”:
- Addressing the healthcare labor shortage
- Accelerating value-based and longitudinal care
- Advancing healthcare interoperability
- Preparing for an aging population
- Eliminating barriers to health equity
- Expanding sites of care
- Growing the insured population
- Driving healthcare personalization and consumerization
Since getting its start in 2018, Redesign’s portfolio has reached more than 15M patients and generated over $1B in revenue, producing some big name players like metabolic health startup Calibrate and VBC cardiology company CardioOne (acquired by WindRose earlier this year).
- There’s been a few bumps along the way – including layoffs as Redesign slowed its launch pace to weather the post-pandemic downturn – but the new fund is a good sign that it expects smoother sailing from here.
The Takeaway
Healthcare startups have high upfront capital requirements, steep steps between business stages, and difficulty recruiting the seasoned executives needed to reach scale. Although those problems will never magically disappear, Redesign now has a $175M magic wand to make them a whole lot more manageable.
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Curate, Create, & Share at the Point of Care
It’s hard to find a more unique vantage point on AI than Playback Health co-founder Dr. Langer, whose role as the Chair of Neurosurgery at Lenox Hill allows him to actually use the platform he helped create. Head over to Dr. Langer’s latest blog to see how Playback is helping him spend more time caring for patients and enabling providers to “Curate, Create, & Share” at the point of care.
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Top Systems Scale Primary Care With K Health
Leading health systems are turning to K Health’s AI-driven primary care solution to give their patients access to high-quality care with wait times measured in hours, not months. Find out why K Health is the only clinical AI company partnering with top systems to scale fully integrated primary care experiences.
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Bridging Care Gaps for Underserved Populations
Is your health system, rural health clinic, or federally qualified health center struggling to reach patients with obstacles to receiving in-person care? This Clear Arch Health whitepaper explores how combining RPM with VBC can help facilitate proactive interventions, address social determinants of health, and get the most out of new CMS reimbursement pathways.
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- Hyro Series B Extension: Conversational AI startup Hyro finalized a $15M Series B extension, bumping the round total to $35M. Hyro blends LLMs with its own natural language processing to help providers streamline patient interactions across their call centers, websites, and mobile apps. The company’s AI agents reportedly resolve about 85% of routine queries like appointment scheduling or refills, which has helped its health system partners slash related operational costs by upwards of 30%.
- Payor-Provider Friction: Payor-provider relationships are quickly turning sour, with a survey from Cedar and the HFMA showing that 58% of provider finance leaders feel their payor relations have deteriorated over the past three years. Most respondents attributed the deterioration to payors’ intentional effort to increase denials (80%) and their lack of accountability (75%). Most providers (87%) also believe this friction impacts their ability to deliver optimal care, so they’re adding extra staff just to manage the escalating issues.
- Kindbody Explores Its Options: Kindbody is reportedly on the hunt for an acquirer and seeking $10M of bridge financing to hold it over until it can find one. The fertility care provider recently failed to close a larger round due to concerns over its burnrate, and Bloomberg estimates that its valuation has fallen to $400M from a high of $1.8B in 2023. Shortly after the story broke, Kindbody revealed that its founder-CEO is once-again leaving the company after returning to get it back on track just seven months ago.
- Primary Care in 2030: Bain’s report on The Future of Primary Care predicts that “nontraditional providers” will account for a third of the market by 2030. Traditional fee-for-service providers currently deliver about 60% of all primary care (down from 90% in 2010), and Bain expects that figure to fall to under 40% by the end of the decade. Bain’s updated 2030 estimates have payor-owned providers capturing about a quarter of the primary care market, versus ~8% today.
- Eli Lilly Partners With Ro: Ro inked an agreement with Eli Lilly to let patients order delivery of single-dose Zepbound vials at reduced prices previously only available through LillyDirect. Ro patients with an on-label prescription for the GLP-1 (obese with at least one weight-related comorbidity) can access the delivery option through the new LillyDirect integration in the Ro app. The “keep your enemies close” approach keeps costs down for Ro patients while turning one of Lilly’s biggest D2C competitors into its newest distribution channel.
- Comparing Mental Health App Design: A Lancet study compared three types of mental health apps (emotional competence, cognitive behavioral therapy, self-monitoring) to investigate which was most effective at promoting mental wellbeing. The study of over 2.5k healthy young adults determined that all three apps delivered “limited benefit” at 3- and 12-month followups, with no difference in mental wellbeing between the groups. The authors said the findings reflect the difficulty of improving mental wellbeing in low-risk populations, especially with universal digital approaches.
- athenahealth RCM Updates: athenahealth introduced new AI capabilities to streamline revenue cycle management for thousands of physician practices using its cloud-based athenaOne platform. AI Insurance Package Selection automatically reads insurance card images and recommends the correct package for future claims filing (which has already delivered a 36% reduction in claim holds), while the aptly named Auto Claim Create feature automatically creates claims after patient encounters.
- Early Innings for Virtual Nursing: An AvaSure survey found that just 10% of hospital clinical leaders and 14% of hospital IT execs have made virtual care a standard part of care delivery in acute settings. Across both groups, a surprisingly high 30% reported zero virtual nursing, despite 74% believing that it will become an integral component of their care delivery model. The top use cases for virtual inpatient care were virtual sitting (39%), patient discharge (33%), admissions (32%), high-acuity monitoring (18%), and remote consults (18%).
- PerfectServe + Five9: PerfectServe is joining forces with Five9 to rearchitect hospital contact centers by launching a joint solution. By combining PerfectServe’s Operator Console (a cloud-based replacement for legacy switchboard systems) with Five9’s CX platform and Intelligent Virtual Agents, the duo’s integrated solution can automate routine inquiries, enable bidirectional communication that plays nice with the EHR / paging systems, and provide a single-pane interface to manage clinical directories and patient transfers.
- Cala Closes $50M: Hot on the heels of securing Medicare coverage for its wearable neurostimulator that helps control hand tremors, Cala Health closed a $50M growth round to lean in on commercialization. Cala’s kIQ wrist-worn device senses patients’ tremor signatures to counteract them by delivering personalized stimulation patterns. Over 7M Americans are impacted by essential tremors that make daily activities difficult, and Cala seems like a promising non-pharmacological solution.
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Simplify RPM & Maximize Patient Engagement
Engaging patients at critical moments is essential for success. With Withings Health Nudges feature, care teams can send tailored messages to the screen of the blood pressure monitor— offering personalized support when they need it most.
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Reinforce Your Cybersecurity Defensive Line
Cybersecurity threats aren’t letting up, but an effective defense takes more than just firewalls and encryption. Check out Medallion’s recent Elevate session for expert insights into creating resilient systems and rebuilding trust after a breach.
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Join the Nabla Team!
Nabla is scaling up, and it’s looking for a Head of Marketing to lead its next phase of growth. This role will help broaden Nabla’s footprint and showcase the proven impact of ambient AI with a company dedicated to bringing joy back to the practice of medicine. Learn more and apply here.
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