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That sinking feeling
Katie looked back at the year in health tech startups going public to find out, well, what exactly happened? The results aren’t pretty. Despite a bull market, health tech companies that went public in 2021 — both through SPAC mergers and traditional IPOs — saw stock prices fall an average of roughly 45% since the close of their first day of trading. Looking more closely at sectors doesn’t paint a rosier picture. Among three companies trying to upend the insurance industry that went public last year — Clover Health, Oscar Health, and Bright Health Group — all have seen nearly a 75% drop in share price since their market debuts. Read more.
advertisement Time’s ticking on a big Talkspace experiment
Reno, NV. officials and Talkspace are scrambling to find a solution as a controversial deal to provide all residents of the city with teletherapy is set to expire this month. In total, 3,100 people have used the platform under the partnership. As Mario reported in March, the deal to send $1.3 million of CARES Act funds to the billion-dollar company provoked an outcry from local mental health providers who said the money would’ve been better spent building local capacity — and supporting local businesses. At least some fears about the deal — including whether people would lose access after it ended — appear to be bearing out. A Talkspace spokesperson told STAT the company hopes to ‘ensure that anyone who wants to remain with a Talkspace therapist is able to do so.’
advertisement Mayor Hillary Schieve, who spearheaded the original effort, told Mario that negotiations are ongoing but that the tentative plan is to fund affordable access to local therapy using a voucher system or to provide vouchers for reduced rate access to Talkspace. Ultimately, her hope is to make progress on a 24-hour mental health crisis center within six months with yet another piece of federal legislation: ‘With ARPA funds that is looking like a reality,’ she wrote. ‘We now know people are receptive.’
Clinical trial for depression taps online provider
Speaking of experiments in mental health care, Alto Neuroscience is teaming up with digital mental health provider Cerebral to conduct a decentralized 200-person clinical trial for its depression drug candidate, ALTO-300. Cerebral, which started out as a direct to consumer company providing medication management, has expanded to treating large populations for health plans and recently raised a $300 million round. Cerebral will comb its patient pool for people who haven’t been helped by other drugs and might be eligible to participate. ‘We can identify these patients much more quickly and then also engage them in care in a way that’s very, very different than what traditional CROs would do because we own our clinicians and own our patients,’ Cerebral CMO David Mou told STAT.
Alto is one of several companies working on so-called precision psychiatry to find biomarkers that indicate that its treatments work. Patients in the study will receive genetic tests, computer-based cognitive tests, and EEG testing, as well as in-home evaluations. The company predicts it will have a readout by the end of 2022. ‘That speed is unheard of,’ said CEO Amit Etkin.
A case of AI gone right
As AI in health care matures and adoption widens, developers can look to screening for diabetic retinopathy as a case study in what it takes to roll it out right in the real world. It’s an attractive target — it’s the leading cause of blindness in the U.S. And AI techniques for catching it — developed by Eyenuk and IDx, which recently changed its name to Digital Diagnostics — have cleared hurdles that have tripped up tech in the past: It has good results in prospective trials, and appears to perform accurately across different races, ages, sexes, and ethnicities. But the technology still requires a massive amount of buy-in: from health systems that need to shell out for it, from providers that need to add another task to their workflow, and from patients that must be convinced to take extra time for the screen. Katie has the whole story.
‘Catastrophic’ pacemaker failure may evade detection
Earlier this year, the FDA issued a recall of nearly a dozen models of Abbott pacemakers that could stop working without warning. Due to the risks, Abbott recommended providers closely track patients’ pacemakers for signs of battery depletion, but a new case report in the Journal of the Heart Rhythm Society suggests failing devices might evade detection, despite more frequent remote monitoring. Batteries in two patients’ Abbott St. Jude Assurity and Endurity pacemakers failed without any signal, abruptly cutting off communication between the devices and the monitoring platform before the malfunction could be flagged on the provider’s end.
Tiger Global bets on health data
Health data analytics company Innovaccer announced a $150 million Series E round at a $3.2 billion valuation led by Mubadala Capital, with participation from existing investors including Microsoft’s M12 fund, OMERS Growth Equity, Tiger Global Management, and many more investors.
Tiger Global also led a $50 million Series B round in Ophelia, a digital provider of medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder. Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, and other investors also participated.
THINKMD, which develops clinical assessment technologies, received $6.3 million from investors including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Xandar Kardian, which builds contactless health monitoring solutions, announced a $10 million Series A funding round led by Phoenix Venture Partners, Portfolia Active Aging & Longevity Fund, and Taronga Ventures.
Psychiatry tech companies broaden their reach
Digital weight loss coaching program Found hired Rekha Kumar as chief medical officer and Acacia Parks as chief behavioral health officer. Kumar is a practicing endocrinologist at Cornell University and was previously medical director of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. Parks was previously chief science officer at Happify Health. The company also announced it raised $100M in Series B funding led by WestCap,
Digital therapeutics company Big Health hired Celeste James as VP of equity and population health. She was previously executive director of community health at Kaiser Permanente.
German biotech company HMNC Brain Health hired Nir Naor as its chief financial officer to help expand the precision psychiatry company’s reach in the U.S. Naor, previously the CFO of Arbor Pharmaceuticals, has worked for pharmaceutical companies in multiple countries, including Switzerland, Israel, and Germany.
The Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) has a new chief scientific officer: Ieuan Clay, who used to work at Evidation Health. The society also announced PayRx founder and CEO Keith Kennerly as a board member and board treasurer.
What we’re reading
https://www.statnews.com/2021/12/16/talkspace-mental-health-ipo-public/
