Virgin Pulse, an employee wellness firm, throbs with love for Blue Mesa, a digital diabetes wellness platform, although that fondness may plateau after a while.
I don't know what's wrong with Oviva, we just reported on a company that raised $93 million for a "digital" approach to treating Type 2 diabetes, and Oviva could only raise $21 million for the same thing.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/14/oviva/
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There is nothing virtuous about Virta Health's overhyped claims to cure Type 2 diabetes with its digital coaching, etc approach, but the company continues to rack up investment, getting $93 million in a new capital round.
Modern Health gets money the old-fashioned way, raising $31 million in additional funding from venture capitalists to support its mental health benefits business.
Massimo, which provides devices for monitoring, is acquiring NantHealth's division which offers software and services around interoperability and data connections for medical devices, for about $47 million.
DrChrono doctors up some new financing, $20 million worth, for its "essential platform and services for modern medical practices to make care more informed, more interactive and more personalized." You can't make this up, I can't make this up, but apparently someone at the company can. What they really do is over scheduling software, nothing wrong with that, a very basic need and something you should be proud of, so why not just say that.
Another minute, another analytics company getting big bucks, as Arcadia Health raises $29.5 million in new capital for its version of analytics to help health systems aggregate data and spot areas for performance improvement.
Covera Health blankets investors with an appeal resulting in $23.5 million in new capital to support its clinical analytics business focused on correcting mis-diagnoses.
Telemedicine vendor Teladoc is acquiring InTouch Health, a competitor, for $600 million. For that price it gets only about $80 million in revenue. This is a typical trajectory and one that should concern investors. Telemedicine has potential and can add value to the system but it is highly hyped. So companies feed on that hype, get a high value, can't really generate the revenue, or certainly the profit expected, and then start doing acquisitions to divert attention and try to create something that can generate a return.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.