AmWell is a now veteran telehealth platform. It used its IPO money to re-architect its entire platform and add companies like Conversa AI chat service and mental health service Silvercloud, as well as integrating deeply with EMRs & more. That change hit its earnings….so can they recover? Roy Schoenberg, CEO, tells you why this is good for AmWell and what happens next.–-Matthew Holt
#Healthin2Point00, Episode 225 | Amwell acquires SilverCloud & Conversa – plus more deals
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we have a deal so big it’s brought me out of vacation just for this episode! Amwell acquires not one, but TWO companies – DTx mental health company SilverCloud Health and chatbot company Conversa Health for a combined $320 million. In other news, mental health company Sondermind raises $150 million, bringing their total to $188 million, and femtech company Elvie raises $80 million, bringing their total to $133.9 million. —Matthew Holt
Healthcare’s New “Operating System”: Amwell’s CEO Says Incumbents are Re-Thinking Telehealth
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
“We have to look at telehealth as an operating system.” Amwell ($AMWL) President & CEO Roy Schoenberg has a way with analogies, and some of his best land in this interview as we get a highly detailed, insider’s perspective about how payers and health systems are rethinking telehealth as a result of their experiences during the pandemic.
Bottom line: The pandemic taught us that telehealth can be used to deliver a much wider variety of healthcare services than just urgent care and, so the whole idea of ‘telehealth’ is changing from healthcare product to healthcare infrastructure. Mental health care, physical therapy, medication management, primary care, and more have all moved to telehealth and, along with that shift, the “rules of engagement” around those services have started to change.
Payers are looking to become the “digital front door” for their members – providing primary care and navigation. Health Systems are increasingly looking to use their own docs for urgent care, rather than outsource that relationship and miss the potential to build trust with local patients. And, in all this, Roy argues that healthcare’s biggest buyers have stopped looking at telehealth as a “product” and, instead, are starting to see the opportunity to “rewrite their future” around a view of telehealth as infrastructure, as one of healthcare’s “foundational systems” intertwined with (and as mission-critical as) their EHRs or claims and eligibility systems.
My favorite analogy starts around the 20-minute mark, when Roy explains this operating system idea by drawing comparison to how individual Microsoft programs (think Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint) would be infinitely less powerful if they were not running on the same operating system and able to easily transfer information. Another good one? How both the buying and provisioning of healthcare is being re-thought digitally, just as online shopping not only changed buying habits but also changed supply chain for retailers. If you’re looking to hear the latest on what’s happening in telehealth post-Covid, learn how things have changed for payers and health systems, AND also want to dip into Amwell’s market positioning a bit, you’ll love this deep-dive.
Amwell’s CEO Roy Schoenberg on Telehealth as “Healthcare Infrastructure”
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
“Telehealth has a much bigger role to play than just carrying out transactions,” says Amwell’s President & CEO, Roy Schoenberg, who joins Jess DaMassa for a sweeping philosophical discussion about how telehealth’s role will continue to evolve through the covid19 pandemic and the changes its forced on the healthcare market. Conversations about telehealth that were once about the value of improving “access to care” are now about the technology’s potential to drive “quality of care.” And Amwell – which says it is a “technology infrastructure company” focused on helping traditional healthcare players transition into digital distribution – is pushing past the old notion that virtual care is merely a “product to get a Z-pak.”
Roy gives us updates on Amwell’s much-buzzed-about partnerships with United Healthcare and Google, the later being focused on how the telehealth co is looking at integrating some of those famous Google technologies (think natural language processing, translation, and geolocation-ala-Maps) into virtual care delivery in a way that sounds like a lot more than just a “switchboard.”
Two other colorful Roy Schoenberg soundbites to tease you into this conversation about the immediate future of telehealth from the leader of one its biggest players: 1) “the notion that we are no longer looking at the home as an illegitimate place of care is drama in in every sense” and 2) “I think the next war-zone, the next place where there’s going to be a lot of heated confrontations and conversations, is state licensure.”
#Healthin2Point00, Episode 160 | Lawsuits galore, and a faux IPO
The thing to do in health tech this week? Trademark infringement. Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we try to make sense of all the lawsuits right now with Teladoc suing Amwell, Allscripts suing CarePortMD, and whose side are we on for Zocdoc suing Zocdoc? On Episode 160, Jess asks me to make sense of Augmedix’s faux IPO in a reverse merger and publicly traded company Newtopia arising $7 million. Twentyeight Health raises $5.1 million in a Series C and TestCard raises $5.8 million for at-home mobile urine testing. —Matthew Holt
#Healthin2Point00, Episode 157 | The phrase is “Takeout Speculation”!
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I gossip about the wild rumor that UnitedHealthcare is acquiring Amwell. On Episode 157, we discuss Lark raising $55 million in a Series C along with a deal with Anthem to be their preferred DPP provider, Medicare Advantage plan Clover going public with a valuation of $3.7 billion, NOCD raising $12 million in a Series A providing specialized CBT and virtual OCD treatment, Cerebral raising $35 million in a Series A for its comprehensive digital mental health offerings, and Express Scripts adding to their digital health formulary with offerings targeting things like women’s health, tobacco cessation, muscle and joint pain, and more. —Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 152 | 2 IPOs, At-Home Care, & Youtube for Employees?
With 2 IPOs this week, On Episode 152 of Health in 2 Point 00, Jess asks me about Amwell’s IPO with a market cap at $5B for its telehealth solutions, Outset Medical’s IPO with a market cap of $1.5B for its kidney dialysis technology, Ready raising $54M for its care at- home platform, Lifespeak getting $42M for its “YouTube” like platform for employee mental health and wellness training program. – Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 146 | Can We Call it Digital Health Anymore?
Can we call this digital health anymore? What do we call it? On Episode 146 of Health in 2 Point 00, Jessica DaMassa asks me about Amwell filing for their S1, Lyra Health getting $110M to develop their mental health platform, PatientPop raising $50M to improve SEO for doctors and patients (they also brought Johnathan Bush on their board!), Brightline closing $20M for their behavioral health platform for kids, and Science 37 getting $40M for their site-less clinical trials — Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 145 | Amwell, OneDrop, Outset Medical & Podimetrics
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess asks me about the big news that Google Cloud has entered into a partnership with Amwell and invested $100 million into the company—looks like their IPO is really a thing! OneDrop gets $98.7 million in a partnership with Bayer, following at $40 million partnership last November, in a funding and development agreement. Outset Medical files their S1 and is going to go public, looking for $100 million for their portable dialysis system, and finally Podimetrics raises another $8 million for their foot ulcer detection platform for diabetics. —Matthew Holt
Amwell’s Roy Schoenberg: Telehealth Post-Pandemic is “Entrenched Inside” Traditional Health Care
By JESSICA DaMASSA
There are few better positioned to speculate on what’s next for telehealth than Roy Schoenberg, co-CEO & President, of Amwell. After 15 years, more than $710M in total funding, and probably the best analogies out there for describing telehealth’s potential as a disruptive technology, Roy weighs in on just how unprecedented COVID19 has been for the uptake and evolution of virtual care.
“Historically, people thought, could telehealth be as good as a physical visit? The reality of COVID,” says Roy, “has literally opened the door to the question, can telehealth be better?”
From the near-term “new wave” of telehealth that has already begun to “eclipse the urgent care telehealth” to how Amwell’s clientele of clinicians, healthcare delivery systems, and payers are shifting to accept the idea of the technology as “the start of healthcare,” Roy talks of a future of telehealth that is “entrenched inside the system.” And how Amwell is meant to act as “facilitator.”
“When we start thinking about telehealth as a switchboard — not as a product, but as an infrastructure for the redistribution of healthcare — we’re talking about a completely different experience for us as Americans on what healthcare is available to us and how we can consume it.”
“To me, and I’ll fast forward to the end here, we want to get to the point that telehealth changes our expectation when we grow old as to where we can grow old. We want to be in a place where we can stay at home…where we don’t have to be in the ‘belly of the beast’ to get healthcare.”
How far away is this future that Roy describes, midway through telehealth’s biggest year yet? Is the appetite there among incumbents? And what of those Amwell IPO rumors? How might that kind of funding help rush things along? Tune in to this episode of ‘WTF Health – What’s the Future, Health?’ with Jessica DaMassa to find out.
