CEO Steve Yaskin takes on the tough job giving us a brief overview of TEFCA (the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement) which is meant to establish once-and-for-all a common ground for data interoperability. Then, we get into QHINs – a specially designated group of “qualified health information networks – and how his business is applying for this certification to further build “the bridge” between the public sector and the private sector and what’s needed to achieve compliance for data exchange.

Phew! No wonder this startup has landed nearly $80 million dollars in funding! We talk about the basis for the business model – but, more importantly, the real market need – and find out what’s in store for all of us in the next chapter of data interoperability.

TRANSCRIPT

Jessica DaMassa:

Hello from Miami. I am at ViVE and look, the exhibit hall coming down around me. Here’s what the reg area looked like. People are leaving, everybody’s got their bags and ah, look who I’ve got. Weighing in with the big funding deals from ViVE, Matthew Holt. It is the March 10th episode of Health Tech Deals. Well, we’re selfie-style here, because we are on the move.

Matthew Holt:

Yeah. You had a fantastic professional cameraman and we decided not to use him

Jessica DaMassa:

No. Instead we’re using this, but I’ve interviews for you guys coming out of this.

Matthew Holt:

Even I did some, actually a lot of stuff going on in the show, pretty interesting. And there were a few deals announced.

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah. A lot of money floating around.

Matthew Holt:

Although, actually the most money he wasn’t at this show, but there was a decent amount of new money in this hall right here just this week, so I guess we should-

Jessica DaMassa:

All right, let’s do this. Set your timer.

Matthew Holt:

Should probably get to it.

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah. What else is going on? Not much right now. We kind of missed the action.

Jonathan Weiner:

You doing an official video shoot over there?

Jessica DaMassa:

It’s a great… yes, it’s an official, oh look.

Matthew Holt:

The boss himself.

Jessica DaMassa:

The boss himself. Wave.

Matthew Holt:

Okay. Well, we still interrupted by the boss, Jonathan Weiner, the head of HLTH and ViVE

Jessica DaMassa:

If you’ve ever been to a conference with Matthew Holt, you know you can’t stand next to him without people come and up to me, he’s like a celebrity.

Matthew Holt:

I think he was coming to see you.

Jessica DaMassa:

I doubt it.

Matthew Holt:

I think he was.

Jessica DaMassa:

But no, he did a great job. ViVE was like a really good event. This was awesome. Congratulations to them. All right. Set that time where we’ve got a lot of deals to talk about here.

Matthew Holt:

All right, here we go.

Jessica DaMassa:

All right.

Matthew Holt:

Un, deux, trois, two minutes going now.

Jessica DaMassa:

Oh my God. 215 million. It can only be Softbank money and it went to Elemy. Matthew Holt, what do you think?

Matthew Holt:

It’s an autism plan and program. It’s a big, serious problem. They say in the press week, they’re going to get to a hundred million in revenue sometime this year. Sounds like valuations over 1.2 billion… Sounds like a hell of a lot of money for a very specialized, it’s important, but very specialized disease.

Jessica DaMassa:

There’s not anything happening in that space.

Matthew Holt:

No, there’s a couple others. There’s a company called Cognoa, which is also in that space and there aren’t that many people. They are expensive. Those kids are expensive, obviously, not least to be done, but hard to imagine that they’re going to have two huge businesses out of that. But Southbank believes that. The guy has got hair that looks a little bit like Adam Newman.

Jessica DaMassa:

Yes. There’s definitely a type that they like to invest in. All right. What about Health Gorilla? They get 50 million.

Matthew Holt:

Okay. This is more of the interop API things, Steve Yaskin and his crew there. They’ve been banging away pretty well. You can now using them and some other tools get to a lot of health data. I think that there’s a real business there. They’re growing pretty decently. Don’t know who the eventual winner’s going to be.

Jessica DaMassa:

All right. Flume Health gets 30 million and I interviewed their CEO, but Matthew Holt, what do you think?

Matthew Holt:

I thought it was very clever. I met him briefly last night as well. Very interesting. It’s basically you can build your own health plan if you are like a capitated medical group or potentially a pharmacy or whoever else. And they got the various pieces you need like sort of claims processing and network management and that kind of stuff, . And by the way, actual health plans themselves might start using them to sort deconstruct some of the stuff they don’t want to do

Jessica DaMassa:

Yes. Cigna and Optum are invested in there.

Matthew Holt:

Exactly.

Jessica DaMassa:

What about Homeward? That’s Jenny Schneider’s new company launched here 20 million from General Catalyst?

Matthew Holt:

We’ll see the interview that you did with her on the THCB

Jessica DaMassa:

Scoop that.

Matthew Holt:

But Homeward is pretty cool. What it is doing, it’s going to be a mix of capitated and non-capitated care for people in rural communities. They’re setting up a rural care provider network, terribly underserved, 20 million General Catalyst money. Hopefully, it’ll improve some lives.

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah. And what about MDisrupt? They get six.

Matthew Holt:

Ooh, you just got in there.

Jessica DaMassa:

Oh, did I get it?

Jessica DaMassa:

MDisrupt… The joke here is that I’m a tiny investor and this is interesting, right? Rudy Gadelrab, the CEO has put together a network –It’s basically that Levi Strauss mined gold miners. Ruby’s going to be mining the digital health community over the 50 billion spent in venture capital and digital health. What she’s doing is putting together a network of clinicians, operations people, and others who are both going to be sort of validating digital health tools, helping digital health companies sort of get up the curve on stuff. I think it’s a pretty clever idea. She’s got basically quite a good business now of sort of leasing out staff and she’s going to build a platform for it. I think it’s pretty clever and hope it’ll work well, especially since I put some money in.

Jessica DaMassa:

Always about you.

Matthew Holt:

It’s always about me. That one really is.

Jessica DaMassa:

Nevermind patients. Nevermind the industry. Nevermind healthcare. It’s always about the-

Matthew Holt:

I’m in damn press release, which I didn’t expect. I didn’t, in fact they raised 6 million. I did not put in 6 million. If I had 6 million, I probably wouldn’t be here.

Jessica DaMassa:

And then what would we all do? Did you have a fun show?

Matthew Holt:

It was good. I had some interesting interviews, met some interesting people, plus it’s Miami beach, so you get to go out late and have fun, which is a bit different than some other places. We saw Wyclef Jean last night.

Jessica DaMassa:

Yeah, that was awesome.

Matthew Holt:

The Fugees

Jessica DaMassa:

Very cool. The police shut that down at the end. How awesome is that?

Matthew Holt:

Quite amusing, but a bunch… He kept on going about, he’s an old guy. He’s in his 50s, talking about the old guys showing up the young bucks.

Jessica DaMassa:

You’re like, “Yeah. Preach.”

Matthew Holt:

It was me. I saw some intense negotiations between McKesson Ventures and Xealth. I think-

Jessica DaMassa:

There’s a picture of that on Twitter.

Matthew Holt:

I think Michelle Snyder was asking for her money back.

Jessica DaMassa:

Uh-oh. No. That’s not true. We’re going to dinner with them later. Sh.

Matthew Holt:

We’ll find out.

Jessica DaMassa:

Yes. We’ll find out the scoop on that. All right guys. Well, if you want to catch more episodes of Health Tech Deals, head on over to our YouTube channel search up Health Tech Deals or subscribe to the email newsletter@thehealthcareblog.com. That little newsletter contains all of the interviews. We do all of these episodes and the best of the blog delivered directly into your inbox every week. My arms are starting to get tired. We’re selfie-style here. We’ll talk to you guys soon, bye.

Matthew Holt:

Bye.