FemTec Health CEO Dr. Kimon Angelides

Startups

FemTec Health Emerges From Stealth, Acquires Birchbox

Former Livongo executive Dr. Kimon Angelides announced that FemTec Health, a technology-focused women’s health sciences company, is emerging from stealth with $38m in funding and the acquisition of subscription box pioneer Birchbox.

FemTec was originally formed in May 2020 with the aim of using technology to personalize care for women across the health continuum, from specialty and reproductive care to mental health and chronic condition management.

• At launch, FemTec has over 10m members, two in-progress clinical trials, and 150 employees. Using a combination of AI and predictive analytics, it is looking to create a unified experience for its products and services across multiple channels, including D2C, B2B (employers, health plans), and subscriptions.

• BiomeAI is the data analytics platform around which most of FemTec’s solutions revolve, which customizes care by using machine learning to transform data (consumer, genetic, microbiome, biometric) into personalized product and treatment recommendations.

• Key acquisitions have helped FemTec launch with an established member base, such as digital cosmetics store Mira Beauty, social marketing platform Liquid Grid, and beauty box early mover Birchbox. FemTec announced plans to re-launch Birchbox later this year with a focus on BiomeAI-curated skin and healthcare products as opposed to beauty supplies.

The Takeaway

While FemTec is first and foremost a female health company, its acquisition history and BiomeAI recommendation platform show that it will likely focus more on consumer products than other competitors in the space. Female health is a giant market and one that’s been historically underserved, opening up plenty of runway for FemTec to meet unmet demand for personalized care.

ExplainThisPaper: New Research, Explained Simply

If you enjoy getting the latest digital health news with Digital Health Wire, you’ll love ExplainThisPaper.

Scientific papers are hard reads. So ExplainThisPaper’s team of doctors and data scientists summarize new research into bitesized emails. Subscribe for a paper summary in your inbox every week.

Telehealth

Mental Healthcare Demand Pressures Psychologists

Following a pandemic-driven surge in demand for mental healthcare, a new American Psychological Association survey is indicating an even greater demand increase in 2021, with psychologists reporting heavier workloads, longer waitlists, and low capacity for new patients.

The APA surveyed 1,141 doctoral-level active psychologists in the US between August 30 and September 17, providing insights into the evolving mental health landscape in 2021.

Psychologist capacity highlights:

• 43% reported an increase in overall number of patients (up from 29% last year)
• 65% reported no capacity for new patients due to current caseload
• 46% reported feeling burned out (up from 41% last year)

Psychologist telehealth adoption:

• 96% reported treating patients remotely (slight decrease from 97% last year)
• 50% reported hybrid in-person / remote treatment (up from 33% hybrid last year)
• 46% reported seeing all patients remotely (down 64% all remote last year)

Changes in treatment areas:

• 82% reported an increase in demand for anxiety disorder (up from 72% last year)
• 70% reported an increase in demand for depression(up from 58% last year)
• 2021 demand increases for: trauma (58%), substances (27%), sleep (38%)

The Takeaway

More psychologists reported increased demand across all treatment areas than before the pandemic, a trend that has accelerated since last year. While nearly all psychologists are providing remote services to meet rising patient volumes, a growing number of them are still reporting no capacity for new appointments, highlighting a continued need for digital health solutions that address the supply and demand imbalance for the specialty.

Explore Nuance’s Personalized Patient Experience

Personalized digital experiences drive better outcomes for patients and providers. Explore how Nuance is using AI automation to advance the quality of service across the care journey here.

The Wire

• CMS Extends Telehealth Coverage: According to the CMS’ recently published final rule for 2022, the agency is extending Medicare coverage of telehealth for behavioral health visits, removing geographic restrictions around virtual appointments for mental health diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment. Medicare would also cover audio-only visits for services such as therapy and substance use treatment, a large victory for the organizations that advocated for expanding coverage of remote healthcare at a time when patients need it most.

• DTx SPAC: Better Therapeutics recently went public on the Nasdaq (ticker symbol BTTX) after raising approximately $110m through its merger with a SPAC, which it will use to fund the development of CBT-based digital therapeutics for cardiometabolic conditions. The company is creating therapies to address the patient behaviors that cause diseases such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension, with its lead diabetes therapeutic currently entering clinical trials ahead of a projected 2023 launch.

• Wearables to Detect Depression: A JMIR mHealth and uHealth study had 267 participants wear Fitbits for two weeks before taking a survey to examine the predictive ability of wearables data in detecting risk of depression, finding that depressive symptoms were associated with greater variation of nighttime heart rate and lower regularity of weekday circadian rhythms. The model achieved an accuracy of 80% in detecting a high risk of depression, suggesting that wearables could be used for unobtrusive and scalable behavioral health screening.

• Upcoding Mothers: KHN recently published a story that humanized the impact of upcoding, which features a $2,755 charge for level 5 ED services (the highest tier) for an expectant mother that entered the hospital through the ED doors because it was the only open entrance. Although she received no ED services outside of using the entrance, she eventually caved to the hospital’s request, which is about as far away from value-based care as you can get.

• Alzheimer’s Detection: Winterlight Labs published a study investigating whether a digital speech assessment test could detect early signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), finding that patients with no previous MCI symptoms had better performance than those with symptoms on tasks for language coherence and syntactic complexity, as well as slower decline in scores at a 6-month follow-up. The results suggest that speech assessments have potential to detect MCI and monitor progression over time.

• Northwell and Aegis AI: Northwell Health and startup studio Aegis Ventures announced a joint venture that will launch and scale AI-driven companies to address quality and equity problems in healthcare. Aegis plans to invest over $100m through the partnership, using its medical technology and business resources to create a company creation platform that leverages data from Northwell’s diverse patient population to drive innovation.

• Regional Behavioral Health Demand: The latest research from Trilliant Health forecasts inpatient behavioral health demand to increase nationally at an average annual growth rate of 0.7% through 2029, with regional demand in the Southwest more than 3x higher than the Midwest. Trilliant CRO Dr. Sanjula Jain writes that understanding regional differences in behavioral health demand will help “match” supply over the next decade, given that patient volumes are expected to outpace provider bandwidth even with the growth of virtual care solutions.

• Blue Shield + Headspace: Blue Shield of California is introducing behavioral health support to its lifestyle medicine Wellvolution program by adding access to Headspace, which offers hundreds of exercises to improve overall wellbeing. Headspace’s guided meditations have been found to reduce stress and anxiety for users, while having the advantage of being scalable solutions in a time when demand for mental healthcare is rising quickly.

• Vitable Health Funding: Primary care provider Vitable Health recently raised $7.2m ($8.8m total funding) to assist with launching mental health services and hire new physicians as it expands its presence in the Northeast. Vitable specifically caters to hourly employees lacking access to preventative care, with a monthly $50 per employee structure that includes primary, chronic, and sexual health services through either in-person or virtual visits.

• A Case for Online Scheduling: A study out of Denmark found that the majority of cancer patients and their relatives (n = 555 & 115) want to use online scheduling systems to book their outpatient CT imaging exams (54% & 65%), while fewer were interested in reserving specific radiographers (37% & 56%). This is far from the first study supporting online scheduling, a patient-friendly option that’s already widely adopted in many regions, but not in Danish oncology pathways.