In this episode of Health Tech Deals, Jess is back! Where was she? Out in the wilds in Arizona, hiking in mountains. A big shoutout to Ian Morrison for filling in. Some recent deals: Omada Health raises $129 million; Somatus raises $325 million; Qventus raises $50 million; Story Health raises $22.6 million; and Medibuddy raises $125 million.
TRANSCRIPT
Matthew Holt:
Hang on. You’re not Ian Morrison.
Jessica DaMassa:
I’m not.
Jessica DaMassa:
He let me come back.
Matthew Holt:
Hang on, look. And we’re together.
Jessica DaMassa:
We’re together. I went from being completely away and replaced, to being right next to you.
TODAY Tuesday, May 11th at 2pm ET/11am PT — RSVP here
Back in November of last year, Catalyst @ Health 2.0, supported by professional services firm Wipfli, launched the Survey on the State of Digital Health, with the goal of creating a comprehensive analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on digital health companies and the rest of the ecosystem. Between the end of 2020 and thru March 2021 we received detailed responses from 300+ digital health aficionados including 180 digital health companies. We’re sure this is the most detailed assessment of what’s happening on the ground in digital health companies you’ll find anywhere.
Join us at 2pm ET/11am PT on Tuesday, May 11th for The Catalyst @ Health 2.0/Wipfli Survey on the State of Digital Health Results Presentation, you’ll see the full results from me & Catalyst’s Elizabeth Brown, hear from Wipfli’s Paul Johnson & Girish Ramachandra, and get reaction to the results from our guests Ryan Johnson, lawyer at Fredrikson & Byron; Sunny Kumar, investor at GSR Ventures;, and digital health CEOs Helena Plater-Zyberk, Supportiv; and Mudit Garg, Qventus.
I think the zoom is full, but you can see it livestreamed below at 11 am PT – 2pm ET – Matthew Holt
On November 19th, six teams competed in two virtual pitch events for the finals of two Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Innovation Challenges, one for Emergency Response for the General Public and the other for Emergency Response for the Health Care System.
The teams – binformed | covidata, CovidSMS, and Fresh EBT by Propel for the General Public Challenge and Path Check, Qventus, and Tiatros, Inc., for the Health Care System Challenge – presented in front of expert judging panels, who evaluated the entries on impact, UX/UI, innovation/creativity, scalability and strength of presentation. (You can see the demos for all teams on yesterday’s post here)
binformed | covidata and CovidSMS tied for first place in the RWJF Emergency Response for the General Public Challenge and were each awarded $17,500.
Meanwhile, Qventus was declared the winner of the RWJF Emergency Response for the Health Care System Innovation Challenge and received $25,000.
After they had a chance to catch their breath and enjoy their wins, Catalyst caught back up with the three winning teams – hear the winners’ reflections below:
binformed | covidata – RWJF Emergency Response for the General Public Innovation Challenge Winner’s Interview
CovidSMS – RWJF Emergency Response for the General Public Innovation Challenge Winner’s Interview
Qventus – RWJF Emergency Response for the Health Care System Innovation Challenge Winner’s Interview
In mid-June, Catalyst launched the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Emergency Response Innovation Challenges. These Challenges, one for the General Public and one for the Health Care System, asked innovators to develop a health technology tool to support the needs of individuals as well as health care systems affected by a large-scale health crisis, such as a pandemic or natural disaster.
The Challenges saw a record number of applications— nearly 125 applications were submitted to the General Public Challenge and over 130 applications were submitted to the Health Care System Challenge. Over the course of several months and with the help of experts and industry leaders who evaluated the submissions, these applications were narrowed down to five and then again until only three teams per Challenge remained. These teams were:
Emergency Response for the General Public Finalists:
Binformed Covidata– Binformed is a clinically-driven comprehensive desktop + mobile infectious disease, epidemic + pandemic management tool targeting suppression and containment of diseases such as COVID-19.
CovidSMS– CovidSMS is a text message-based platform providing city-specific information and resources to help low-income communities endure COVID-19.
Fresh EBT by Propel– A technology tool for SNAP families to address food insecurity & economic vulnerability in times of crisis.
Emergency Response for the Health Care System Finalists:
Path Check– Path Check provides privacy first, free, open source solutions for public health to supplement manual contact tracing, visualize hot spots, and interfaces with citizen-facing privacy first apps.
Qventus– Qventus is a patient flow automation solution that applies AI / ML and behavioral science to help health systems optimize resources for Covid, create effective capacity, and reduce frontline burnout.
Tiatros– A mental health and social support platform that combines clinical expertise, peer communities and scalable technology to advance mental wellbeing and to sustain meaningful behavioral change.
These six teams competed in the finals, a virtual pitch event, on November 19th in front of expert judging panels, who evaluated the entries on impact, UX/UI, innovation/creativity, scalability and strength of presentation. (Also re-introduced during this event was Catalyst’s SourceDB, a health tech tracking database – more on that in a separate blog post here!)
In the Health Care System Innovation Challenge, judges awarded first, second, and third place to Qventus, Path Check, and Tiatros, Inc., respectively, with these teams receiving, in order, $25,000, $15,000, and $5,000. However, there was a tie for first in the General Public Innovation Challenge between binformed | covidata and CovidSMS. These two teams split the first and second place prizes and received $17,500 each, and Fresh EBT by Propel in third place received $5,000.
Yesterday Catalyst @ Health 2.0 hosted the finals of the RWJF Emergency Response Challenges, one for tools for the General Public and the other for the Health System. It was a great session, sadly virtual and not at a conference with cocktails afterwards. But the promise of the tools that have been built as part of these challenges is immense in the battle against this COVID-19 pandemic and the ones yet to come.
The finalists for the General Public challenge were
Binformed Covidata– A clinically-driven comprehensive desktop + mobile infectious disease, epidemic + pandemic management tool targeting suppression and containment of diseases such as COVID-19. The presenter was veteran health IT expert Rick Peters.
CovidSMS– A text message-based platform providing city-specific information and resources to help low-income communities endure COVID-19. In contrast to Rick, CovidSMS’ team were undergraduates at Johns Hopkins led by Serena Wang
Fresh EBT by Propel– A technology tool for SNAP families to address food insecurity & economic vulnerability in times of crisis – highlighted by Michael Lewis on his Against the Rules podcast about coaching earlier this year. Stacey Taylor, head of partnerships for Propel presented their solutions for those in desperate need.
The finalists for the Health System challenge were
PathCheck– A non profit just spun out of MIT. It has a raft of volunteers and well known advisors like John Brownstein and John Halamka among many others, and is already working with several states and countries. Pathcheck provides privacy first, free, open source solutions for public health to supplement manual contact tracing, visualize hot spots, and interface with citizen-facing privacy first apps. MIT Professor Ramesh Raskar was the presenter.
Qventus– A patient flow automation solution that applies AI / ML and behavioral science to help health systems create effective capacity, and reduce frontline burnout. Qventus is a great data analytics startup story. It’s raised over $45m and has lots of health system clients, and they have built a suite of new tools to help them with pandemic preparedness. Anthony Moorman, who won the best facial hair of the day award, showed the demo.
Tiatros Inc– A mental health and social support platform that combines clinical expertise, peer communities and scalable technology to advance mental wellbeing and to sustain meaningful behavioral change. They’ve done a lot of work with soldiers with PTSD and as you’ll see entered this challenge to get their tools to another group of extremely stressed professionals–frontline health care workers. CEO Kimberlie Cerrone and COO Seth Norman jointly presented.
Videos of the whole session and the demos will be up soon.
And the winners were…
A tie in General Public challenge between CovidSMS & BInformed, who split the $25,000 first prize (and the $10,000 second prize!)
Qventus in the Health System challenge who take home $25,000
But there were no losers. A great culmination of a lot of work to get tech solutions to help us deal with the pandemic.
Matthew Holt is Publisher of THCB and also Co-Chairman at Catalyst @ Health 2.0
In this edition of Health in 2 point 00, Jessica DaMassa asks me about enterprise sales (Qventus, Medicity, Health Catalyst), DTC vs Enterprises as a market, the VA allowing nationwide telehealth,, and the TEAP & TEFCA frameworks (that last answer may have overran the 2 minutes a tad!) — Matthew Holt
Another day, another $30m round in health tech. On Monday Qventus raised that from Bessemer Partners, with Mayfield, Norwest and NY Presbyterian kicking in too. That brings their total to $43m in so far–not bad for a 75 person company that is in the somewhat obscure space of using AI to improve hospital operations. Qventus sucks in data and delivers operational suggestions to front line managers. Of course given that somewhere between $1-1.5 trillion goes through America’s hospitals each year, there’s huge potential for saving money. And given that most hospitals are being paid fixed cost per case, anything that can be done to improve throughput and increase productivity drops to the bottom line and is thus likely to meet interested buyers. I talked to CEO Mudit Garg about the problem, his company’s solution and what they were going to do next.
+Challenge+Graphic.png?format=750w)
