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Livongo CEO Glen Tullman’s Advice for Startups

By JESSICA DA MASSA, WTF Health

If you’re a health tech startup, should you be building for your exit? Does that really lead to the greatest possible success for your business…if you know how to get out?

Here’s some advice from someone who should know. Glen Tullman is ‘the guy’ who took Allscripts public via a wildly successful IPO in the late-90s. He’s now the CEO of Livongo, a chronic condition management startup that rang in 2018 with a $105M mega-round raised internally among its current pool of investors – at more than two times the company’s previous valuation.

When I caught up with Glen earlier this year, it was just after his round closed, the company acquired Retrofit, and rumors had started swirling about Livongo going public. Needless to say, our conversation turned toward ‘the exit’ and I had the chance to ask what he would tell other startup founders about going IPO. What comes next is a passionate discourse about what it takes to not only exit – but raise and scale – a startup in healthcare. For being a money guy, Glen is no sell-out; young startups would be wise to take his two cents and invest them.

Get a glimpse of the future of healthcare by meeting the people who are going to change it. Find more WTF Health interviews here or check out www.wtf.health. Filmed at HLTH in Las Vegas, May 2018.

Disrupting the Cholesterol Test: Finnish Startup Nightingale Health

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By JESSICA DA MASSA, WTF Health

Today’s cholesterol test is about to be disrupted. Nightingale Health, a five-year-old startup based out of Finland, has built a better blood test that – among other things – is about to disrupt the cholesterol test of today.

Their blood test collects 50 times more biomarker data than the standard test – boasting a 20% better prediction rate for diabetes and cardiovascular disease – and they’re offering it at the same price point as the existing industry standard. Why does this matter? Well, for clinicians, researchers, or those working on new drug development, the Nightingale test is not only offering an unprecedented amount of metabolic data, but it’s an unprecedented amount of AFFORDABLE metabolic data that can impact the health care cost curve as far as the eye can see.

What’s more – and this has gotten investors’ blood pumping – they haven’t even fully realized the full potential of their panel. Listen in as Kristiina Tolvanen talks with me about the company’s priorities to build their evidence base and find out what else their biomarker analysis platform can potentially displace. Freshly funded with a $30M round – and a very prestigious partnership with the UK Biobank to analyze 500,000 blood samples – this is one to watch.

Filmed at Upgraded Life Festival in Helsinki, Finland, June 2018. Find more interviews on health and technology here or check out www.wtf.health. 

Why I Tattooed My Health Data Over My Heart | WTF Health with Casey Quinlan

By JESSICA DAMASSA

WTF Health – ‘What’s the Future’ Health? is a new interview series about the future of the health industry and how we love to hate WTF is wrong with it right now. Can’t get enough? Check out more interviews at www.wtf.health. 

How can patients help usher in a better future for healthcare? Start speaking up. LOUDLY.

In this WTF Health interview, meet one of health’s most outspoken patient advocates, Twitter voices (@mightycasey) and podcasters, Casey Quinlan of Mighty Casey Media, who talks about her patient journey as a cancer survivor — and why the awful experience led her to tattoo a QR code linking to her electronic medical record to her chest.

Casey’s ‘physical political protest’ is tied to her passionate views about the lack of data liquidity in healthcare and how patients suffer as a result. She’s launching a new “If-You’re-Selling-My-Health-Data-Cut-Me-In” Movement and weighs in on why more patients aren’t clamoring after their health data to push real change in the healthcare system.

Filmed at Health Datapalooza in Washington DC, April 2018.  

WTF Health | Self-Reported Patient Monitoring Startup from Finland, Kaiku Health

By JESSICA DAMASSA

WTF Health – ‘What’s the Future’ Health? is a new interview series about the future of the health industry and how we love to hate WTF is wrong with it right now. Can’t get enough? Check out more interviews at www.wtf.health. 

Central to the ‘WTF Health’ ethos is the idea that around the world, there is a shared passion for creating a new future for healthcare — and that the less-positive ‘WTF moment’ is a shared experience, regardless of which country’s health system one is standing in.

So, I’m going around the world this year — to 17 different health innovation conferences in 11 different countries — to find out what innovators abroad are doing to tackle the problems in their health systems and what we can learn from one another.

Driving down the cost of care, managing chronic conditions, helping people achieve better health, improving care delivery and patient experience — these goals know no borders. What’s different is the framework around them. So, what if the payment model were different? What if there was a single electronic patient record? What if certain laws and regulations didn’t exist?

Different constraints breed different solutions. What a hopeful and inspiring idea. And, with any luck, food for your thoughts and innovative thinking.

So here is the first interview I’d like to share from abroad! Everyone meet Finnish startup Kaiku Health, fresh off closing a €4.4M Euro series A. Their patient monitoring monitoring platform lets cancer patients (and others with chronic diseases) self-report on how they’re doing, using their hospital’s existing patient portal. Stick around until the end: Bonus insight on the strengths of the health tech startup scene in the Nordics for those who want to go explore.

Filmed at Upgraded Life Festival in Helsinki, early June.  

WTF Health | Oscar’s Schlosser on Consumerizing Health Plans, post-ACA & pre-Amazon/JPM/BH

By JESSICA DAMASSA

WTF Health – ‘What’s the Future’ Health? is a new interview series about the future of the health industry and how we love to hate WTF is wrong with it right now. Can’t get enough? Check out more interviews at www.wtf.health. 

Having formerly worked for a health plan, I geek out over health plan innovation as IMO it’s the underpinning of the true disruption of health care. When the incentives change, everything else will change too…

So when I met Mario Schlosser, co-founder & CEO of Oscar Health at Health Datapalooza, I may or may not have asked him to sign my Oscar insurance card. (Yep, I’m a member.)

Our chat focused his push to continue driving health plan innovation amid the deterioration of the ACA and his plans for Oscar’s latest $165M round. His goal: make the payer “an interface and enabler of new kinds of technologies.” Is that even possible?!

Around 4:15 minute mark we find out if he’s been tapped for advice from the Berkshire Hathaway/Amazon/JP Morgan health alliance as they take on their own challenges disrupting health insurance.

WTF Health | Teladoc’s Gorevic: “We’re feeling A-quisitive”

By JESSICA DAMASSA

WTF Health – ‘What’s the Future’ Health? is a new interview series about the future of the health industry and how we love to hate WTF is wrong with it right now. Can’t get enough? Check out more interviews at www.wtf.health. 

I guess he warned us that Teladoc was feeling ‘A-quisitive’ — the question now is are they done? A few weeks ago I spoke with Jason Gorevic, Teladoc’s CEO at the new HLTH Conference about consolidation in the telehealth space and what’s next for the virtual care giant.

Although he was mum on the company’s $352M mega-buy of Advance Medical, there was a shopping list of other solutions that seem to have caught Teladoc’s eye — everything from tech that turns Alexa into a telemed access point to NLP plug-ins and any number of shiny devices that make remote monitoring easier, less expensive, and more effective.

Perhaps an indicator of where they’ll look next as they continue to sweep up market share? Listen in on some of the details about their CVS partnership (VIRTUAL Minute Clinic, anyone?) and the VERY interesting talks he’s having with the country’s largest payers on redefining benefit designs to push virtual care first.

Health in 2 point 00, Episode 23

In this start your weekend off right edition, Jessica DaMassa asks me about Andy Slavitt’s new Town Hall venture fund announced at HLTH, the ATHN buyout, Novartis paying Michael Cohen, Trump’s drug price speech & Lyra Health’s $45m raise….all in 2 minutes–Matthew Holt

WTF Health | Women in Health Tech, Crashing your ‘Mike Fest’ & Organizing for World Domination

By JESSICA DAMASSA

WTF Health – ‘What’s the Future’ Health? is a new interview series about the future of health and how we love to hate WTF is wrong with it right now. Can’t get enough? Check out more interviews at www.wtf.health. 

Lots of chatter lately about the disparity between men and women in health tech – both in and out of the the start-up space. I’m pulling together new interviews for a WTF Health ‘Special Report’ on women in health tech (stay tuned) but had a chance to have two great conversations on the topic while at #HIMSS18.

VEDA Data Solutions CEO Meghan Gaffney Buck talks about what it’s like to be a female founder in AI – raising millions and pushing new tech in a space usually dominated by guys. Find out what a ‘Mike Fest’ is and be sure to listen until the end for the good news about a trend she’s seeing in female-run investment funds.

Then, listen to Susan Williams, founder and CEO of Agency Other, on how women in our industry are starting to come together for world domination through orgs like Healthtech Women, a non-profit dedicated to such doings. Susan just launched the group’s newest chapter in one of the most eclectic healthcare markets in the country, Los Angeles, and also weighs in on what the health tech scene is like in Hollywood.

WTF Health | Kyruus co-founder, Julie Yoo

By JESSICA DAMASSA

WTF Health – ‘What’s the Future’ Health? is a new interview series about the future of health and how we love to hate WTF is wrong with it right now. Can’t get enough? Check out more interviews at www.wtf.health. 

They just raised another $10M and you should find out why….

I met up with Kyruus co-founder and chief product officer Julie Yoo at #HIMSS18 to hear about the #AI magic behind their ‘intelligent routing engine.’ Apparently, it does such an incredible job driving business into health systems by better matching patients to docs that some more funding is in order to help them expand!

So, where does Kyruus fit into the ‘big picture’ of health’s ‘big data’ movement? Julie’s beat on how AI implementation in healthcare is going gives you a pretty good idea.

WTF Health | Uber Health’s Head of Strategy, Lauren Steingold

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By JESSICA DAMASSA

WTF Health – ‘What’s the Future’ Health? is a new interview series about the future of health and how we love to hate WTF is wrong with it right now. Can’t get enough? Check out more interviews at www.wtf.health. 

One of the new faces – and mega tech companies – to be at #HIMSS18, I caught up with Uber Health’s head of strategy Lauren Steingold just after the launch of their HIPAA compliant ride share service for patients.

Lauren talks about the year-long approach Uber took to get into #healthtech, what they’re looking to do next, and her first impressions of HIMSS.

What advice does the tech company have for healthcare? HINT: uber’s ‘on-demand’ ethos extends to the way providers can sign up for their service. It’s a self-service sign-up (no cumbersome contract negotiations with procurement, whaaaat?) with next day implementation. The bar is set, Health Tech.