On Health in 2 Point 00, Jess and I talk about TDOC earnings before getting into today’s deals. First, Virta Health scores $133 million in a round led by Tiger Global for its keto diabetes reversal program. Seqster raises $12 million in its Series A, and there are some interesting investors in this one. MSK startup Kaia Health raises $75 million, bringing its total to $123 million. Online pharmacy Capsule raises $300 million, bringing its total to $570 million. Finally Accolade acquires virtual primary care platform PlushCare in a $450 million deal. —Matthew Holt
Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 129 | Kaia Health, RapidSOS, Abacus Insights, Ready, and Doximity
Today on Health in 2 Point 00, we have more deals to cover continuing off of yesterday’s episode! Jess and I talk about Kaia Health raising $26 million in a B round led by Optum Ventures, RapidSOS gets $21 million for their emergency response tech, Abacus Insights raising $35 million, and Ready raising $48 million pairing home visits from EMTs and nurses with telehealth. In other news, Target is now offering free access to telehealth visits through CirrusMD, and Doximity is acquiring THMED (which is changing its name to Curative) to put together a database of doctors to improve healthcare staffing/recruitment. —Matthew Holt
Back Pain Treatment Under the Watchful Eye of Your SmartPhone Camera | Konstantine Mehl, Kaia Health
By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH
With a holistic mind-body approach to treating chronic back pain and COPD, Kaia Health is a digital therapeutics startup gaining a lot of attention from some really big players, including Optum Ventures (the venture arm of U.S. health insurance giant United Healthcare) which recently made an $8M follow-on investment to the startup’s Series A. What makes Kaia standout in a crowded field of digital health solutions focused on chronic pain? CEO Konstantin Mehl points to their proprietary tech, which uses a smartphone camera to provide real-time corrections to patients as they complete their physical exercises. As digital therapeutics like Kaia gain greater clinical validation and show widespread improvement to patients’ lives, Konstantin shares his hopes for the future of reimbursement for clinically-proven health tech.
Filmed at Frontiers Health Conference in Berlin, November 2019.
