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AI-enabled cancer care startup Vine Health raises £1.2 million in Seed funding

By admin July 19, 2019 9

Vine Health, developer of an AI-enabled mobile app that helps cancer patients manage and understand their treatment and lifestyle, raised £1.2 million in a Seed funding round, according to a Medium.com post.

The funding was led by Playfair Capital, with participation from Entrepreneur First, Ascension Ventures, Tiny VC, and angel investors Simon and Michael Blakey and Pam Garside. Vine Health will use the funds to develop its platform and make key hires at its London-based headquarters.

Founded by Rayna Patel, a Cambridge-trained doctor and NHS England Clinical Entrepreneur, and Georgina Kirby, a data scientist & former VP of leading health tech startup Touch Surgery, Vine is a digital health platform to support cancer patients during and after treatment.

Vine Health’s mobile app uses behavioral science and AI to increase the quality of life and survival of cancer patients. The app allows patients to track their medications, symptoms, mood, exercise, diet, side effects and activities. The App will also connect patients with other cancer patients.

Dr. Rayna Patel, CEO at Vine Health said: “Many people living with cancer feel isolated and unsupported, and traditional routes of delivering healthcare struggle to address these issues. It’s also imperative that we gather the necessary data to understand how cancer therapies affect not just survival, but quality of life, so that patients and doctors can weigh up this information to make informed decisions about their care. At Vine, our goal is to put patients back in control.”

Chris Smith, Managing Partner of lead investor Playfair Capital, said: “Rayna and Georgina are on a mission to revolutionize cancer care for patients across the globe and we’re thrilled to support them on their journey. This is exactly the kind of innovative early-stage business Playfair Capital wants to invest in and work hard to help grow and fulfil its huge potential.”

Alice Bentinck, co-founder of Entrepreneur First, said: ““We are incredibly excited to have supported two such talented and driven female founders at such an early stage. This is a highly significant milestone in breaking the glass ceiling for women entrepreneurs.”

Maternal health technology startup Mahmee raises $3 million in Seed funding

By admin July 17, 2019 20

Mahmee, a provider of comprehensive maternity care programs through its online software platform, raised $3 million in a seed funding round from Mark Cuban and Serena Williams (through Serena Ventures).

The funding round was led by Arlan Hamilton’s ArlanWasHere Investments, with participation from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. Mahmee will use the new funds to grow its engineers, clinicians, and sales staff.

Mahmee is a maternity and infant care management platform. Its platform provides personalized maternity and infant care programs for new or expecting moms. Mahmee sells paid monthly membership (community and comprehensive) care program to new and expecting parent. The paid members can chat with experts, connect with other moms, and book appointments with nurses, lactation consultants, and other healthcare practitioners in Mahmee provider network.

According to the Mahmee, it currently has over 1,000 providers and organizations in its network, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, AltaMed, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and UCLA. Mahmee platform has identified and escalated over 1,000 critical care issues, including sepsis, postpartum psychosis, and postnatal hemorrhaging.

According to the Center for Disease Control, about 700 women die from pregnancy-related complications each year in the US. Pregnancy-related death can happen during pregnancy, at delivery, and even up to a year afterward (postpartum). Heart disease and stroke caused more than 1 in 3 deaths (34%). Other leading causes of death included infections and severe bleeding.

“In the maternity healthcare process, on the surface there are generally three or four people involved: the mother, the baby, and each of their physicians. What we don’t see are the many other people helping them: nurses, lactation consultants, midwives, nutritionists, therapists, doulas, home health aids, social workers, and more,” said Melissa Hanna, CEO and Co-Founder of Mahmee. “And this industry is lacking the IT infrastructure needed to connect these professionals from different organizations to each other, and to follow and monitor patients across practices and health systems. This missing element creates gaps in care. Mahmee is the glue that connects the care ecosystem and closes the gaps.”

“There is a massive unmet opportunity to improve maternal and infant outcomes by leveraging both personalized care and tech infrastructure at scale. The Mahmee team brings deep clinical and industry expertise and are uniquely positioned to be the critical change the healthcare industry needs,” said Mary Grove, Partner at Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. “We’re proud to support Mahmee’s important mission and look forward to helping the team expand to more markets and revolutionize maternal healthcare.”

AI-powered personal health assistant Gali Health raises $2 million in Seed funding

By admin June 30, 2019 16

Gali Health, developer of an AI-powered personal health assistant app, secured over $2 million in Seed funding. The funding round was led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from institutional investors Civilization Ventures and Bold Capital Partners. Angel investors Mostafa Ronaghi and Robert Nelsen also participated in the round.

Gali Health intends to use the funds to accelerate its development and precision medicine-focused R&D efforts.

Gali Health develops a mobile app called Gali for people who live with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Gali Health plans to release the Gali app to the general public in the fall of 2019. Its app leverages individual health information and collective intelligence to allow people with chronic conditions to proactively manage their health.

Gali Health is working to advance precision medicine by crowdsourcing personal health data and medically-validated insights, applying AI to process them and providing highly personalized informational support on the medical, lifestyle and psychological aspects of living with chronic disease.

Co-practicing startup Alma raises $8 million in Series A funding round

By admin June 30, 2019 30

Alma, a co-practicing community of therapists, coaches, and wellness professionals, raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Tusk Venture Partners, with participation from: Sound Ventures, First Round Capital, Primary Ventures, and Box Group.

To date, Alma has raised a total of $12.5 million in VC funding.

This latest funding will allow Alma to improve its technology platform and expand into additional locations in New York and beyond.

Previous rounds: In October 2018, Alma raised $4.5 million in Seed funding from a group of investors including: First Round Capital, Primary Ventures, Rainfall Ventures, Box Group, and able Partners.

Alma currently provides three Membership plans for providers:

Community ($145/month), a membership plan for providers who don’t currently need space but still want to join Alma community.
Flex (starting at $165/month), a membership plat for providers who are launching a new practice or have irregular client hours.
Dedicated (starting at $490/month), a membership type ideal for providers with a predictable schedule and a steady client base.

Alma technology allows providers to schedule appointments, electronically accept payments, and automatically generate insurance-ready superbills for clients.

Gut microbiome testing platform DayTwo raises $31 million in Series B funding

By admin June 30, 2019 19

DayTwo, a provider of food-as-medicine solution that helps people with diet-related chronic illnesses to balance their blood glucose, including type 2 diabetes and prediabetes, raised $31 million in Series B funding.

The funding round was co-led by aMoon, a life sciences venture fund, together with Ofek Ventures, a new venture fund focused on disruptive ICT technologies, with participation from existing investors Seventure Partners and Johnson & Johnson.

DayTwo said it will use the funds to accelerate go-to-market initiatives in the United States where the company partners with payers, providers, and employers, and to continue to develop a new generation of products and services for metabolic and gastrointestinal conditions.

Total Funding: DayTwo has now raised a total of $48 million in funding.

Previous rounds: DayTwo raised $5 million Seed in financing in 2016.

In 2017, DayTwo raised $12 million in Series A funding from Seventure Partners, Mayo Clinic, Johnson & Johnson, Marius Nacht, and French Investment Fund.

DayTwo raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Israeli professional basketball player Omri Casspi in June 2018.

“DayTwo is the only evidence-based, actionable, microbiome platform in the market today. We are in a privileged position to leverage our experience including first-rate science, clinical trials in Israel and the United States, tens of thousands of customers, and provider, employer, and payer relationships,” said Lihi Segal, CEO and Founder of DayTwo. “This deep and broad foundation, coupled with this financing, enables DayTwo to address the large and pressing clinical need to bring food-as-medicine to market for people with type 2 diabetes in the United States.”

DayTwo’s glycemic control solution uses gut profiling and other clinical parameters to provide a food-as-medicine solution to enable glycemic control. DayTwo’s personalized approach provides actionable insights into how the body metabolizes food and allows individuals to navigate what specific foods and meals to choose to balance their blood sugar levels. DayTwo

“We are undergoing a transformational change in healthcare, when technology and machine learning can benefit patients with diabetes,” said Yahal Zilka, Managing Partner at Ofek Ventures. “After success in its initial market, we are excited to bring DayTwo to the U.S. where it has the potential to improve the lives of over one hundred million people with diabetes and prediabetes,” added Mr. Zilka, whose investment track record includes Waze, Argus, Onavo, DesignArt, Magisto (acquired by Google), Continental, Facebook, Qualcomm, and Vimeo, respectively.

Change Healthcare prices IPO and concurrent offering of tangible equity units

By admin June 29, 2019 64

Change Healthcare (CHC), a healthcare technology company providing data and analytics-driven solutions and services to help improve clinical, financial, and patient engagement outcomes, announced the pricing of its initial public offering (IPO) of 42,86 million common shares at $13/share and its concurrent offering of 5 million of its 6.00% tangible equity units with a stated amount of $50.

The offerings are expected to close on July 1, 2019, subject to customary closing conditions.

Change has granted the underwriters in the common stock offering a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 6,428,571 shares of common stock. Change has granted the underwriters in the Units offering an option to purchase, within a 13-day period beginning on, and including, the date of the initial issuance of the Units, up to an additional 750,000 Units. The shares and the Units are expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on June 27, 2019 under the symbols “CHNG” and “CHNGU,” respectively.

Change healthcare intends to use the net proceeds from both the common stock offering and the Units offering to repay a portion of the outstanding indebtedness under its senior secured term loan facility.

Barclays, Goldman Sachs & Co. and J.P. Morgan are acting as lead book-running managers for the offerings. BofA Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities, Morgan Stanley and RBC Capital Markets are also acting as joint bookrunners for the offerings. Blackstone Capital Markets, Baird, Cantor Fitzgerald & Co., Cowen, First Liberties Financial, Guggenheim Securities, Piper Jaffray, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, SVB Leerink, Wells Fargo Securities, William Blair, Drexel Hamilton and Siebert Cisneros Shank & Co., are acting as co-managers for the offerings.

In 2017, McKesson merged its McKesson Technology Solutions (MTS) businesses with Change Healthcare to create a new healthcare information technology company. The new company was named Change Healthcare and combined substantially all of CHC’s business and the majority of MTS. In conjunction with the creation of the new company, Change Healthcare raised approximately $6.1 billion in debt, which was utilized to fund cash payments of approximately $1.25 billion to McKesson and approximately $1.75 billion to CHC stockholders, cover transaction costs and repay approximately $2.8 billion of existing CHC debt.

McKesson owns approximately 70% of Change Healthcare, with the remaining equity ownership held by CHC stockholders, including Blackstone and Hellman & Friedman. Change Healthcare is jointly governed by McKesson and CHC stockholders.

In a separate release, McKesson said it expects to exit its investment in Change Healthcare in a tax-efficient manner.

Telehealth startup Remedy raises $10 million in Series A funding

By admin June 27, 2019 39

Remedy Applications (dba Remedy), a provider of non-emergency medical consultation services in the comfort and convenience of a patient’s home, office, or workplace, raised $10 million in Series A funding round led by Santé Ventures, a specialized healthcare and life sciences investment firm.

As part of the funding, Santé Ventures managing directors Joe Cunningham and Doug French will join Remedy’s board of directors.

The new money will go toward scaling Remedy’s technology platform and expanding its offerings for self-funded employers.

To date, Remedy has raised a total of $12.5 million in VC funding.

“After reviewing numerous telemedicine companies in recent years, we feel confident Remedy can scale beyond traditional primary care delivery and is well-positioned to dramatically lower costs and improve outcomes for high-cost procedures and chronic disease management,” said Cunningham. “The market potential for coordinated care delivery and chronic disease management from a telemedicine platform is the next evolution of this technology.”

Remedy provides medical care in the form of 24/7 telemedicine and nurse access, lab visits and house calls, for both individual patients as well as large employer clients. Remedy has contracts with many in-network providers including, UnitedHealthcare, BlueCross BlueShield and Aetna.

Remedy aims to simplify the pathway to urgent and primary care through a combination of its proprietary technology-enabled telemedicine portal, modern house call doctor visits and walk-in clinics.

“We instantly connected with Santé’s values,” said Dr. Jeremy Gabrysch, Founder and CEO at Remedy. “The relationships and expertise Santé brings as physicians, former chief executives of large healthcare systems and early and steadfast investors in companies that are revolutionizing healthcare is invaluable. More than anything, we share a passion for better quality and access for patients.”

Telehealth startup Remedy raises $10 million in Series A funding

By admin June 27, 2019 33