Here’s a selection of stories we gathered on healthcarehandout.com this week.
Things That Happened
Healthcare Handouts. HHS carved up relief funds, routing $10B to rural hospitals, $10B to hospitals hit hard by COVID-19 cases, and $20B to providers based on net patient revenues (across all payers) from 2018. This is following a touch of controversy as their first round of distributions was based entirely on Medicare billing volumes.
Under pressure. A new app for the Samsung Galaxy Watch Active2, called Samsung Health Monitor, was approved by South Korean regulators to take blood pressure readings. The app utilizes the built-in sensors on the smartwatch, and requires calibration before use and every four weeks using a traditional blood pressure cuff. It’s not an FDA approval, but continuous blood pressure monitoring is now a reality.
Getting the leads out. With hospitals facing equipment shortages, some physicians have begun using consumer-grade ECG monitors, specifically the AliveCor KardiaMobile 6 lead, to track patient telemetry. "I don't think this is a complete possible replacement for telemetry, but it can help out in certain situations," one of the doctors said.
</protest> EHR vendor Epic has officially rescinded their protest over new ONC third-party data sharing rules, remarking that the final versions of the rules satisfy their concerns about patient privacy. Epic stood in fierce opposition to the rules, which compel EHR vendors to make it possible for patients to access their claims and clinical data through third-party applications, even going so far as to recruit their customers to issue a joint statement against the rules. Enforcement of the new rules has been pushed back 6 months into 2021 amid the COVID crisis.
No Zoom for you. Amwell has launched a new telehealth offering specifically targeted at small to medium sized practices. The platform, Amwell Private Practice, enables physicians to interact with existing patients virtually. Amwell has waived some fees associated with the platform through June.
Cart before the horse. Major pharmaceutical companies are readying their manufacturing and supply chains to spin up production of COVID treatments. Regeneron is readying its Rensselaer, NY plant for production by moving other drugs to different manufacturing facilities, Moderna is hiring 150 employees to ramp manufacturing, and J&J is planning to produce 1 billion doses of its experimental vaccine before it’s clinically validated. All of this activity poses serious financial risks for these companies in the event their treatments prove ineffective.
Rise of the machines. Microsoft launched a ‘plasmabot’ chatbot to help recruit former COVID patients to donate their convalescent plasma. Meanwhile, Verily and Google Cloud teamed up to build a white-labeled chatbot, COVID-19 Pathfinder, for hospitals to utilize to educate their patients about COVID.
Re-producer. Nvidia has released an AI framework targeted specifically at helping healthcare researchers reproduce machine learning studies. Producing repeated results is a critical step in proving the value of new models, and has been a perennial issue in medical AI research.
ADH-free. Akili has released their digital therapeutic for children with ADHD following the FDA’s decision to temporarily relax regulations around digital products indicated for psychiatric disorders during the pandemic. It’ll be available for free to children between the ages of 8 - 12, and while Akili has their own vetting process to ensure enrollees are worthy candidates for therapy, there is no physician sign-off required to download the app.
Video on demand. Novartis acquired digital therapeutics firm Amblyotech, who are developing a video-based approach to treating lazy eye. With some digital therapeutics being operated directly by pharma, and others (like Akili above) going direct to consumer, it’d seem we’re still well awayf from settling on a standard distribution model for these novel digital treatments.
Survey says. Carnegie Mellon researchers found that self-reported COVID symptoms reported via surveys on Facebook and Google correlated by location to cases confirmed via testing.
Bad money after good. Envision Healthcare is reportedly considering a bankruptcy filing as reduced payment volumes are making it harder to service the $7B of debt incurred as part of their recent leveraged buyout. Perhaps Envision should be more thrifty with their advertising dollars. ProPublica uncovered that Envision and fellow staffing firm Team Health were behind at least $2.2M in spending since February on advertising rallying against legislation that would control surprise medical billing.
Things That Started Up
Aledade raised a $64M Series C. They help independent physicians build and participate in ACOs. They currently partner with 550 practices, representing 7,300 providers across 27 states.
Paige added $5M to their Series B. This makes their total Series B worth $50M. They’re developing computer vision based cancer diagnostics.
H1 Insights raised a $12.9M Series A. They’re aggregating public and private data sources to build a comprehensive database of medical professionals, allowing doctors to communicate with each other, and businesses to find doctors for advertising and clinical trials (but mostly advertising, we can assume).
XRHealth raised $7M. They’re developing a VR health platform that is at least initially helping patients rehab from back, shoulder, and neck injuries; relieve stress; and do cognitive training.
RDMD raised a $14M Series A. They’re building a platform for patients with rare diseases to access their medical records and participate in research, and in turn helping drug developers identify those patients with rare diseases.
Unlearn.AI raised a $12M Series A. They’re utilizing machine learning to identify similar patients - ‘digital twins’ - to help run tests and controls in drug clinical trials.
Clever Care Health Plan raised a $20M Series A. They’re planning to create a Medicare Advantage plan that includes holistic and Eastern Medicine.
Biobot Analytics raised $4.2M. They’re building technology to monitor wastewater for public health concerns like opioids, but recently pivoted to measure community levels of COVID-19.
Things To Read
Lisa Suennen breaks the world of digital health into two epochs: Before Coronavirus and After the Disease. She argues that while funding was plenty in the BC world, profitable digital health ventures were few and far between. This new AD world is their opportunity to become mainstream, successful businesses.
Soleil Shah and Bob Kocher argue that part of the reason our hospitals were so ill-prepared for this pandemic is the complete lack of structural incentives for them to do so. They argue there should be payment incentives to have flexible capacity, as well as the creation of new insurance lines for business interruptions related to pandemics.
Toyin Ajayi and Iyah Romm, the cofounders of Cityblock Health, wrote a blog post describing how they’ve experienced the pandemic as a startup catering to the health needs of marginalized communities.
Russell Max Simon, author of the HealthPolity newsletter, wrote a reaction to Marc Andreessen’s “It’s Time To Build” essay, contemplating the question of how Andreessen’s imperative can be applied to healthcare.
Thanks for reading the Healthcare Handout, a weekly roundup of everything that’s happened in healthcare technology and business.
Want more regular updates on what’s happening in the industry? Visit healthcarehandout.com for all the top stories right now.
We also offer a daily update email with all the top stories from the day, every evening at 8pm EST. Sign up at healthcarehandout.com