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Matthew’s health care tidbits: Digital Health is dead (well, not quite)

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Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt

For today’s health care tidbits, the elephant in the room has truely come home to roost, and now it’s landed on the phone wire, it’s close to breaking it. OK, I have stretched that metaphor to death but you’ll get my point. Writing on THCB earlier this month Jeff Goldsmith and Eric Larsen picked up on something I’ve been saying for a while –the fall in valuation of publicly traded digital health companies will have a knock effect on private companies. 

It took a while–those public companies stock prices started falling from their heights 14 months ago–but in the last month the venture capital scene has gone quiet. The days of sub $20m ARR companies getting mutli-hundred million dollar valuations are over for now. They will be back at some point in the future, as that’s how Silicon Valley has always worked, but it’ll be a while and in the meantime everyone is going to have to figure out what to do in the new world.

The “What to do?” question is getting harder as the data starts to come in, and it’s getting ugly. On the one hand the two fastest growing digital health companies ever have both had their comeuppance. Livongo was a tremendous exit for its investors and ended up trading at 20 times future revenue before it got acquired by Teladoc for $18bn mostly in stock. This quarter Teladoc wrote off much of its investment in Livongo and the whole company is now only worth $5bn. Clearly those “synergies” between telehealth and chronic care management didn’t work. The other rocket ship was Cerebral, which went from nothing in Jan 2020 to by Jan 2022 having over 100,000 patients and thousands of providers on its system as it raised over $300m from Softbank et al. Its aggressive & expensive customer acquisition costs, with its controversial controlled medication prescribing patterns, brought it way too much controversy. Its young CEO is gone, and it’ll be a slow climb back with bankruptcy and collapse the likeliest of outcomes.

But the part of digital health that’s trying to replace the incumbents is not the only place showing ugliness. The technologies and services being rolled out are often not working. Exhibit A is a randomized controlled trial conducted a Univ of Pennsylvania. One set of heart patients was set up with connected blood pressure cuffs, a pillbox that tracked their Rx adherence and lots of coaching help. The others were sent home with the proverbial leaflet and told to call if they had problems. You’d assume many more deaths and hospital readmissions in the second group. You’d be wrong. There were no differences.

So digital health needs to see if it can produce services companies that move the needle on costs and outcomes. The advantage is that they are eventually competing with hospital systems whose DNA doesn’t allow them the ability to let them cross the chasm to the new world. The bad news is that those systems have huge reserves which they can use to subsidize their old world activities.

I’m hoping digital health’s impact in the next 2 years will be as big as it was in the past 2, It’s by no means dead or over, but I am pessimistic.

#Healthin2Point00, Episode 192 | Happify, 100Plus, Health Recovery Solutions—& Glen Tullman is back

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Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we’re back with more deals as promised for our post St-Patty’s episode. On Episode 192, Jess and I have lots to chat about because Glen Tullman is back—he becomes the CEO of Transcarent, a new company which is going direct to employers and doing navigation and telehealth and centers of excellence. Despite the crowded space (especially after this week’s Doctor on Demand and Grand Rounds merger), Glen says there is huge demand from employers. Catch our interview with him on WTF Health. Next, Happify Health gets $75 million, bringing their total up to $123 million. I had an interview with their President Ofer Leidner on THCB Spotlight yesterday, so tune in there to find out about this mental health company delivering automated, self-service care. Finally, two remote patient monitoring companies get funding – 100Plus gets $25 million in a Series A, and Health Recovery Solutions gets $70 million in a C. How are these different and why is there all this money in RPM now? —Matthew Holt

Remote Patient Monitoring Sets Up Big Tech to Revolutionize Telemedicine and Healthcare

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By JAMES MOELLER

Remote patient monitoring has emerged as the next significant challenge for virtual healthcare and that challenge is creating significant opportunities for many companies largely outside of the traditional healthcare technology marketplace. In particular, it is potentially setting up an opportunity for Big Tech companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon, to revolutionize telemedicine and healthcare similar to what those companies have accomplished in mobile phones, Internet search, and retail.

Next Generation Remote Health Monitoring

Next generation remote healthcare monitoring will likely look much different than anything done before. What is emerging today is the potential for the broad adoption of remote health monitoring devices and systems that leverage consumer wearables, smart home communication systems, and big data to produce holistic views specifically for healthcare providers. The pandemic has thrust telemedicine solutions forward by years if not a decade or more in the short span of three to six months. This is creating an opportunity for remote patient monitoring to provide even better visibility into patients beyond what can be accomplished with basic video conferencing.

But while telemedicine is now becoming more firmly established, remote monitoring seems to still have a long way to go. This is evident in a new report by KLAS Research (a healthcare industry research firm) published on August 27th, where they interviewed 19 executives from 18 healthcare organizations regarding their challenges and solutions during the outbreak of the pandemic. Not surprisingly, telemedicine was the top challenge with 32% of the executives. Overall, though, 84% of the executives indicated that the telemedicine issues were already solved and the remining 16% indicated that the solutions were in progress. However, remote patient monitoring ranked as the second most significant challenge with 26% of the respondents. But furthermore, only 22% of the executives indicated the remote monitoring challenges were solved, with 33% saying it was in progress, and 45% indicating it was completely unsolved. So, a clear opportunity exists.

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Ouchie, a Chronic Pain Management App Mapping “Pain Journeys” | Rachel Trobman, Upside Health

BY JESSICA DAMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Not only is ‘Ouchie’ what you say when you’re in pain, but now it’s also what you say when you need to find relief! Rachel Trobman, CEO of Upside Health, introduces us to Ouchie, a remote patient monitoring and treatment tool for chronic pain that patients can download onto their phones. Central to the patient experience of the app is the focus on documenting the patient’s “pain journey” where they answer a series of important lifestyle questions that inform the platform to come up with ways to receive support and other health resources. Not only does this self-reported data help patients identify triggers and patterns that impact their pain level, but it is also a treasure trove of information for physicians who can use it to better (and more quickly) tailor treatment to suit individual needs. The business behind Ouchie, called Upside Health, is starting to take off too and Rachel talks through revenue model, funding, and future plans.

Filmed at Frontiers Health in Berlin, Germany, November 2019.

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 93 | Ginger, VillageMD, & Health Recovery Solutions

The drought is over! On Episode 93 of Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I talk deals, deals, deals. Ginger, which provides digital mental health services, raises $35 million and is growing quite fast; VillageMD, one of numerous companies who are trying to figure out a new way to do primary care, raises $100 million; Health Recovery Solutions, which does remote patient monitoring, gets $10 million. In other news, Livongo’s stock price collapsed a little bit, but it was crazy when it first came out so now prices are more “normal”; uBiome files for bankruptcy, and Tula Health’s $2.5 million raise gets quite possibly the best press release we’ve ever seen (you’ve got to hear this). —Matthew Holt