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Wednesday, February 19, 2020

A Wrap Up for 2019 closes the year with 251 digital health fundings |


We are well into 2020 and is time to look back at the Funding for Digital Health for now and the future.  

In the final quarter of 2019, MobiHealthNews tracked 55 digital health funding deals totaling just over $1.7 billion. The three-month period was headlined by Bright Health’s $635 million Series D round and a $200 million raise from iFit, allowing it to edge out last year’s Q4 of 52 deals at $1.18 billion. 

Funding Digital Health



This is a slightly different story than what we see when taking the full year into account. Here, 2019 comprised 251 funding announcements representing about $7.18 billion, with Babylon Health ($550 million), Clover Health ($500 million) and Gympass ($300 million) taking their place behind Bright Health as the largest deals of the year. Compared to 2018’s 244 deals for $7.7 billion, it would seem that the past year had a slightly higher quantity of raises but (by MobiHealthNews’ accounting) came up about half a billion short of the previous year’s total — although it’s also worth noting that we were unable to peg a number of nine of this year’s deals. 

To dig a little deeper, read on below for a full listing of this year’s funding news, and click on the company’s name to visit our original reporting on the raise.

Company Round/Series Amount (M) Investors What's it for What they do Quarter of announcement
Bright Health

Series D

$635.00

NEA, Bessemer Venture Partners, Cross Creek Advisors, Declaration Partners, Flare Capital Partners, Greenspring Associates, Meritech Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Town Hall Ventures.

Bright Health said that the new funds would fuel its continued expansion of products, regions and users. The startup will do so through new hires and continued work on its tech platform.

Through individual, family and Medicare Advantage plans, members can access services such as a health rewards program or personalized care teams through a consumer-minded tech platform consisting of web tools and a mobile app.

Q4

Babylon Health

Series C

$550.00

Saudi Arabian crown prince, Tencent, Samsung, Telus, Prudential Asia

This investment is part of Babylon Health’s recent fundraising to expand in North America, the Middle East and China.

Babylon’s app lets patients book virtual GP appointments and order prescriptions in order to make healthcare more accessible.

Q3

Clover Health

N/A

$500

Greenoaks Capital

The new money will be used for growth, innovation and deepening ties with physicians.

 
Q1

Gympass

N/A

$300

SoftBank's Vision Fund Latin America Fund, General Atlantic, Atomico, Valor Capital Group

The new funding will allow Gympass to further personalize the user experience of its product. The startup also told Bloomberg that it will be expanding its service into the Asian region.

Gympass allows employers to provide employees with monthly passes that can be redeemed for gym access and various fitness classes. Through the app, members can search for locations that support a Gympass, lookup specific class schedules and check into their session via GPS.

Q2

Tencent Trusted Doctor

N/A

$250

Country Garden Holdings, Tencent Holdings and Sequoia Capital

N/A

Tencent Trusted Doctor said it connects 440,000 certified doctors with more than 10 million patients online, offering services from online consulting to e-commerce to physical checks.

Q2

Collective Health

Series E

$205

SoftBank, PSP Investments, DFJ Growth, G Squared, Founders Fund, GV, Maverick Ventures, Mubadala Ventures, NEA and Sun Life

Collective Health is targeting new strategic partnerships within the US; bumping up its sales, engineering and customer experience teams; and developing new capabilities to its platform.

Promising an alternative to hectic multi-vendor implementations, Collective Health’s suite of software offers a centralized hub for employers to manage members, conduct administrative tasks, optimize networks and point solutions, and gauge performance. Members, meanwhile, have access to an online and mobile portal that handles benefit navigation and, with the help of predictive analytics, matches members to the programs that would most benefit them.

Q2

iFIT

N/A

$200.00

Pamplona Capital Management

Watterson said that the investment will “allow iFit to further accelerate its rapidly growing interactive fitness platform in the connected home and club fitness industries."

iFit — which shares its parent company with workout machine makers NordicTrack, ProForm and Freemotion — has built a streaming platform for use on these companies’ products. Users can sign up for individualized virtual workouts and classes led by live trainers.

Q4

Capsule

Series C

$200.00

TCV, Thrive Capital and Glade Brook Capital

The startup plans to put the new cash towards building its New York services and expanding to other locations.

The digital pharmacy company offers hand-delivered same-day medication drop off to its customers.

Q3

Doctolib

N/A

$170.30

General Atlantic, Eurazeo, Bpifrance, Kernel, Accel and unnamed German healthcare entrepreneurs

The company plans to use the funds to accelerate growth in France and Germany (it plans to double the size of its team over the next three years) as well as push into other international markets. Additionally, it will use funds for product development and to promote its telehealth offering, which just launched last month.

Doctolib offers its subscription-based SaaS platform to medical practices, allowing doctors to manage their appointment bookings and communicate with patients. The company also offers its services to patients, which they can use to to locate doctors or services while tracking their appointments.

Q1

Hims

N/A

$100

Undisclosed

Undisclosed

Hims is an online mail-order men’s health company that uses remote consultation to prescribe cosmetic and sexual health products.

Q1

DocPlanner

Series E

$90.90

One Peak Partners, Goldman Sachs Private Capital Investing, Piton Capital and ENERN Investments

The company said that it would use the new funding to continue its push in core European and Latin American markets, purse R&D activities and expand its team.

DocPlanner's online doctor booking services offers doctors and clinics a SaaS tool to improve patient flow and help digitize their practices, and allows patients to book appointments through its online marketplace with healthcare professionals.

Q2

Tonal

Series C

$90

The Growth Fund of L Catterton, Evolution Media, Shasta Ventures, Mayfield, Serena Ventures and Sapphire Ventures

The company plans to use the new funding to create new “personalized software experiences” for the device, hire new talent and expand its video content library.

Tonal offers a special connected exercise machine with a AI-powered fitness software, all focused on the goal of strength training. Rather than traditional weights, the machine uses "digital weights" that use magnetic force to provide resistance.

Q2

Calm

Seires B

$88

TPG Growth, Creative Artists Agency and Insight Venture Partners and Sound Ventures

The company plans to use the money to build international growth.

The company created a guided meditation app.

Q1

Ro

Series B

$85

N/A

The company did not disclose its plans for the new money.

Ro made a name for itself in the digital health world with its online platform that specializes in men’s health, but has recently expanded to smoking cessation and women's health.

Q2

Omada Health

N/A

$73

Wellington Management Company, Cigna Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, U.S. Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Sanofi Ventures, Civilization Ventures and Providence Ventures

The funding will help ongoing scaling efforts for its digital care program.

Omada offers a slew of digital coaching programs addressing hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, mental health conditions and other health needs. The company also implements connected technology to track participants and hold them accountable — for instance, a wireless scale, a pedometer, and a mobile app to track food and activity for its diabetes program.

Q2

Weave

Series D

$70.00

Tiger Global Management, Catalyst, Bessemer, Crosslink, Pelion and LeadEdge

Weave wrote in its announcement that it’s aiming for a deeper push into the international markets, and will also be continuing its investment into product expansion and workforce development.

Weave’s digital platform looks to encompass a broad range of patient communications and relations capabilities for small to medium-sized practices.

Q4

Jawbone Health

N/A

$65.40

N/A

The company did not disclose specific directions for its new funding.

Jawbone Health sees itself as “a personalized subscription service that utilizes continuous health information combined with human and machine intelligence to take care of its members on a daily basis.”

Q2

Cityblock

Series B

$65

Redpoint Ventures, 8VC, Echo Health Ventures, StartUp Health, Sidewalk Labs, Thrive Capital, Maverick Ventures, Town Hall Ventures and EmbelmHealth

The company will use the new money to expand the team and grow its reach into both existing and new markets. It also plans to invest in technical product capabilities and add new services.

Cityblock, a spinout of Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs, looks to limit disparities by providing preventative medicine and access to resources through its digital tools.

Q2

Pear Therapeutics

Series C

$64

Temasek, Novartis, 5AM Ventures, Arboretum Ventures, Jazz Venture Partners, The Bridge Builders Collaborative and EDBI

The new money is set to help the company globalize the commercialization of the reSET suite of products—which were first commercially launched in November.

The Boston-based company makes prescription software-based treatments

Q1

Quartet Health

Series D

$60.00

Echo Ventures and Deerfield Capital

Quartet’s full Series D round aims to fuel the company’s expansion efforts. Of note, the company said during the summer that it hopes to reach Medicaid beneficiaries who are in need of behavioral health services.

Quartet’s integrated platform links providers, payers and services together in its aim to more effectively deliver mental and primary care.

Q4

Healthy.io

Series C

$60.00

Corner Ventures, Joy Capital Ventures, Ansonia Holdings, Aleph and Samsung NEXT

Healthy.io is accelerating global expansion and continue product development. Additionally, the company plans to pursue additional regulatory approvals so that its new ACR test can be used at home as well.

Healthy.io’s primary product is Dip.io, a smartphone-enabled testing kit consisting of a disposable test strip, testing cups and a colored panel. Strips are dipped into urine samples and then placed into the board, whereupon the user takes a picture of the two with their smartphone camera to receive a prompt result.

Q3

Quartet Health

Series D

$60

Centene Corporation, F-Prime Capital Partners, GV, Oak HC/FT and Polaris Partners

The latest round will support Quartet’s ongoing expansion, with a particular focus on Medicaid beneficiaries who are in need of behavioral health services.

Quartet’s integrated platform links providers, payers and services together in its aim to more effectively deliver mental and primary care.

Q2

PathAI

Series B

$60

General Atlantic, General Catalyst and others

The funding will help PathAI pursue new partnerships and build out its existing and in-development service offerings.

PathAI’s platform employs convolutional neural networks in its analysis of medical images. By doing so, the company’s product can help pathologists diagnose and sub-type cancer and other diseases.

Q2

Noom

Series E

$58

Sequoia Capital, Aglae Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and a number of individual investors including Whats App cofounder Jan Koum, DoorDash cofounder Tony Xu, and Oscar Health cofounder Scooter Braun

The new funding is expected to help the company grow their team and build their customer service capabilities.

Noom’s platform is focused on creating behavioral health changes related to weight loss, fitness and diet management.

Q2

Healx

Series B

$56.00

Atomico, Intel Capital, Global Brain, btov Partners, Balderton Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, and Jonathan Milner

The funds will be used to develop the company’s therapeutic pipeline and to launch its global Rare Treatment Accelerator, a collaboration programme which allows select patient groups and clinicians to combine knowledge, information and expertise.

The UK-based firm specialises in using artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery and development of rare disease treatments.

Q4

Whoop

Series D (includes debt financing)

$55.00

Foundry Group, Two Sigma Ventures, Accomplice, Thursday Ventures, Promus Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank and other individual investors

The $55 million will be put towards expanding consumer acquisitions, membership services and product development.

Whoop’s product includes a wearable strap that collects physiological data and a corresponding app, which gives users insights into their training and recovery.

Q4

Nurx

Series C

$52.00

Kleiner Perkins Digital Growth Fund, Union Square Ventures, Reproductive Health Investors Alliance, Dreamers VC (actor Will Smith’s venture fund), Lowercase Capital, and Y Combinator

The company has a lot of plans for this funding, including introducing additional offerings for what they describe as “sensitive health needs” and growing their userbase.

Nurx offers telemedicine prescription and delivery of birth control pills.

Q3

OM1

Series C

$50.00

Scale Venture Partners, General Catalyst, Polaris Partners and 7wire Ventures

OM1 said it will be using the funds to further flesh out its products for real-world evidence, value-based care and predictive medicine.

OM1’s cloud platform employs AI machine learning organize and analyze large datasets for real-world measures of clinical outcomes. Stakeholders across the healthcare industry can use the startup’s tools to support decisions regarding care management, treatment costs, regulatory submissions and event prediction.

Q4

Viz.ai

Series B

$50.00

Greenoaks, Threshold Ventures, CRV, GV and Kleiner Perkins

The new money will be put towards expanding the technology to more locations.

Viz.ai focuses on using AI to triage stroke patients and coordinate care. Specifically, using a deep learning algorithm the technology aims to highlight suspected large vessel occlusion. The system then alerts all members of the stroke team.

Q4

Talkspace

Series D

$50

Revolution Growth, Northwest Venture Partners, Qumra Capital, Spark Capital and Compound Ventures

The new funding will be put towards expanding Talkspace’s services and accelerating the startup’s commercial business. The company also noted that it plans to expand into international markets and build out new artificial intelligence capabilities.

Talkspace is a digital platform that connects patients seeking mental health services to providers. Based on a client’s needs, the platform matches them to a therapist. Users can then access clinicians through a telemedicine service and schedule times to talk.

Q2

Cala Health

Series C

$50

Novartis, Baird Capital, LifeSci Venture Partners, TriVentures, JJDC, Lux Capital, Lightstone Ventures, Action Potential Venture Capital, dRx Capital, GV and other unnamed backers.

The funding will kickstart the market launch of Cala Trio, its wearable hand tremor therapy, as well as buff up its therapeutic pipeline.

Stanford University spinout Cala Health has created a wearable neuromodulation therapy indicated for essential tremor, with other offerings under development focused on neurology, cardiology and psychiatry.

Q2

EverlyWell

Series A

$50

Goodwater Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Next Coast Ventures, NextGen Venture Partners and other unnamed investors.

The company will be using the $50 million to further expand its digital platform and beef up its partnerships with brands like CVS and Humana.

EverlyWell offers consumers a range of lab tests that can be ordered on the company’s website. Customers receive an breakdown of their results online.

Q2

Paige

Series B

$45.00

Healthcare Venture Partners, Breyer Capital, Kenan Turnacioglu and other funders

The company said the new cash will be put towards getting FDA clearance for its products and further development. The company is also looking to build up its commercialization in the US as well as expand to the European, Brazilian and Canadian markets.

The AI company uses computational and digital pathology to help oncologists and pathologists make decisions faster, more accurately and at a lower cost.

Q4

Teckro

Series C

$43

Northpond Ventures, Section 32, Founders Fund, Sands Capital Ventures and Borealis Ventures

The company will continue development of its platform and international expansion.

Teckro’s digital offering collects and conveniently presents clinical trial data within a single mobile platform. The machine learning-powered app keeps study teams and active trial participants connected and, as a result, allows stakeholders to conduct their trials more quickly and accurately.

Q1

Solera Health

Series C

$42

HCSC Ventures, BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners/Sandbox Advantage Fund, Adams Street Partners and SJF Ventures

Solera will be using the funds to “extend the impact of its novel marketplace and payment innovation model.” In particular, the company noted its interest in addressing behavioral health and social determinants of health issues for its customers.

Solera’s platform hosts a broad selection of digital behavior modification programs that are offered to the members of its health plan and employer customers.

Q2

Elvie

Series B

$42

IPGL, Octopus Ventures and Impact Ventures UK.

The new money will be put towards research and development, as well as growing brand awareness for the two products in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

The women-led startup has developed two main products in the feminine care space; a pelvic floor trainer and a breast pump.

Q2

OneDrop

Series B

$40.00

Bayer

While the company didn’t spell out exactly how they will be using the $40 million, its new deal with Bayer includes helping the pharma build up its digital efforts in oncology, cardiovascular diseases and women’s health.

OneDrop uses artificial intelligence to make lifestyle recommendations to people with chronic conditions.

Q3

Aidoc

Series B

$40

Square Peg Capital

Aidoc is looking to extend its reach to more providers.

Aidoc's FDA-cleared and CE-marked solutions support and enhance the impact of radiologist diagnostic power, helping them expedite patient treatment and improve quality of care.

Q2

TriNetX

Series D

$40

Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Mitsui & Co. and Itochu Technology Ventures, MPM Capital, F2 Ventures and Deerfield Management

The $40 million will support the TriNetX’s expansion in Europe, Asia and South America. Additionally, the company is looking to continue developing the AI, machine learning and digital clinical trial components of its analytics platform.

TriNetX has built a data platform containing clinical and claims information generated from more than 300 million global patients. The company provides these real-world data to clinical researchers on demand alongside supporting analytics tools.

Q1

EarlySense

N/A

$39

Hill-Rom and Wells Fargo & Company, BlueRed Capital, Israel Innovation Fund, Argos Capital and Hotung Capital

The company hinted that this new money will be used to expand AI analytics and grow sales both internationally and domestically.

EarlySense makes a contact free health monitoring system.

Q1

Synyi

Series C

$36.30

Tencent, Sinopharm Capital

Synyi will use the latest funds to explore the smart healthcare sector, attract new medical and AI talent and ensure its products stay at the top of the Chinese market.

To solve the problem of data silos and low usability of data in healthcare information systems, Synyi developed a new hospital informatics platform with AI capabilities in 2018.

Q3

Bardy Diagnostics

Series B

$35.50

River Cities Capital Funds, HealthQuest Capital, Aperture Venture Partners, Aphelion Capital, Lumira Ventures, Rex Health Ventures, V Health Investors, Health Enterprise Partners and Ascension Ventures

Bardy Diagnostics will be leveraging the funds to expand its sales force and monitoring services, pursue development of augmented intelligence and visualization capabilities, and generally fuel the growth of its platform.

Bardy Diagnostics’ primary product is the Carnation Ambulatory Monitor (CAM), a P-wave signal-capturing wearable that can be used to remotely monitor patients’ cardiac activity or detect arrhythmia over a seven-day period.

Q2

Exo

 
$35.00

Intel Capital, Applied Ventures, Bold Capital, Creative Ventures, Longevity Vision Fund, Magnetar Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, OSF Healthcare, Rising Tide Fund, Sony Innovation Fund and Wanxiang Healthcare Investments

The new money will be put towards developing the product and helping the startup go through regulatory channels.

The Redwood City, California-based startup is developing a portable ultrasound that is able to create a 3D image.

Q3

Ginger

Series C

$35.00

WP Global Partners, City Light Capital, Nimble Ventures, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Khosla Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures and Kapor Capital

The new money will go toward growing its data sciences and clinical services. It is planning to expand globally within the next two years.

Ginger focuses on providing digital mental health services including behavior health coaching, video therapy, tele-psychiatry visits and other self-guided content.

Q3

Biofourmis

Series B

$35

Sequoia India, MassMutual Ventures, EDBI, Jianke, Openspace Ventures, Aviva Ventures and SGInnovate

The company plans to use the new funds to commercialize in the US and Asia and grow its team focused on data science, clinical and regulators and sales operations.

Using a propriety wearable, a patient-facing app and AI technology, the system is able to create digital biomarkers “reflecting the health status” of a patient. The platform was designed to detect when an adverse health event is about to happen. In part, the system was created to help monitor patients as they take different medications.

Q2

Unite Us

Series B

$35

Oak HC/FT, Newcomers Town Hall Ventures, Define Ventures, Scout Ventures, Luminate and New York Ventures

The new funding will be used to fuel its continued growth and coordinated network curation.

Unite Us’ digital platform not only handles external referrals between community services and providers, but also tracks each patients’ outcomes and their journey through care. The company’s goal is to develop a unified support network able to address social determinants of health in ways that health systems or social service workers working alone could not.

Q1

Innovaccer

Series B

$35

Microsoft's venture fund M12, Westbridge Capital and Lightspeed

The new money will be put towards growing its AI capabilites and growing its team.

Innovaccer's product InData is a unified health data integration platform that offers providers a full view of a patient's data, both insidea nd outside of thir network.

Q1

Diabeloop

Series B

$34.40

Odyssée Venture, Supernova Invest, Air Liquide Venture Capital and others

Diabeloop now plans to accelerate the commercial rollout of its system, ramp up R&D activities and submit its application for FDA clearance, having already obtained CE marking.

The company’s primary product is what is referred to as a hybrid closed-loop system for management of Type 1 diabetes. Called DBLG1 (Diabeloop Generation 1), it connects a continuous glucose monitor, a patch insulin pump and a handset that hosts the company's unique algorithm.

Q4

Mirror

Series B-1

$34.00

Point72 Ventures, lululemon, LionTree LLC, Spark Capital and individual backers, including Karlie Kloss, Kevin Huvane, Lerer Hippeau and Steve Lockshin.

Mirror said that it will use the funds to sustain strong growth momentum, as well as to push into different types of content verticals.

The core of the startup’s platform is a large LCD panel that streams workout videos and music, while also doubling as a full-length mirror when not in use.

Q4

Limelight Health

Series C

$33.50

Principal Life, AXA Venture Partners, MassMutual Ventures, Aflac Ventures, Transamerica Ventures, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, LaunchPad Digital Health and Wanxiang America Healthcare Investments.

Limelight will be using its new capital to support customer acquisition, staffing and global expansion.

Limelight’s cloud-based software looks to streamline quoting and underwriting for medical and ancillary carriers handling employee benefit plans.

Q1

Alodokter

Series C

$33.00

Sequis Life, Philips, Heritas Capital, Hera Capital, Dayli Partners, Softbank Ventures Asia and Golden Gate Ventures

Alodokter will use the funds to expand its hospital network integration and to further develop its health insurance service.

Halodoc operates a mobile platform for patients to access doctors any time of the day and pharmacy delivery across 50 cities, as well as home lab services, increasing accessibility to easy, affordable, and reliable healthcare services.

Q4

DispatchHealth

N/A

$33

Echo Health Ventures, Alta Partners, Questa Capital and other unnamed backers

The Denver, Colorado-based startup plans to put these new funds towards opening up new locations across the US.

DispatchHealth’s platform allows patients to request on-demand care to their home. Clinicians will arrive to the patient’s home within two hours of the request and can treat flu, UTI, stomach virus, respiratory conditions and other common health concerns.

Q2

Redox

Series C

$33

Battery Ventures, .406 Ventures, RRE Ventures and Intermountain Ventures

The round will help the company expand its reach and improve its user experience.

Redox focuses on data interoperability for health apps and other health IT services.

Q2

Amboss

Series B

$32.90

Partech’s growth fund, Cherry Ventures, Wellington Partners and Holtzbrinck Digital

The new funds will go toward developing clinical decision support tools for specialists and generalists.

Amboss was developed as a digital resource to help medical students and professionals access information. The platform includes a program specifically designed help medical students study for the US medical licensing exams and national board exams.

Q3

Zava

Series A

$32

HPE Growth

The company will be using these funds to accelerate its growth.

Zava is a London-based telemedicine provider active across six European markets.

Q2

DayTwo

Series B

$31

Ofek Ventures, aMoon led the round, Seventure Partners and Johnson & Johnson.

The money will fuel its push into the US market, where it will be seeking partnerships with payers, providers and large employers. In addition, DayTwo will be targeting new products and services focused on metabolic and gastrointestinal conditions.

DayTwo’s platform asks patients to send a sample of their gut microbiome to the company’s lab, where it is sequenced and characterized alongside blood test results and a user questionnaire. These results are delivered back to the patient as a full report of their gut health and read by a machine learning algorithm that, more.............




2019
closes the year with 251 digital health fundings | MobiHealthNews

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Digital Health Consumer Adoption Report 2019 |



In 2006 Digital Health Space began publishing about the transformation which was about to take place during the past 15 years. It has followed the usual predictability curve for disruptive innovation. 


Roger's Curve

In 1962, Everett Rogers, a professor of rural sociology, published his seminal work: Diffusion of Innovations. Rogers synthesized research from over 508 diffusion studies across the fields that initially influenced the theory: anthropology, early sociology, rural sociology, education, industrial sociology,  and medical sociology.  His original curve applied to sociological innovation.

Since Roger's time, there have been other curves developed that more closely follow the adoption of disruptive technology.


Big Bang Theory

This curve indicates a shift to the left, perhaps because of the increase speed of communications delivered by the internet. Social media also contributes to this 'big bang' theory.

Graph- T


The rate of digital adoption by year.

Digital services and solutions are an increasingly common component of the healthcare experience for Americans. Over the past five years that Rock Health has surveyed US adults ages 18 and over, adoption of digital health tools like telemedicine, wearables, and health apps has consistently climbed upwards. In 2019, the historical rise in adoption leveled off in what appears to be a slight moderation of digital health usage overall. However, adoption differs sharply among subgroups of the broader population. These findings have important implications for consumers, startup entrepreneurs, clinicians, and innovators within established, large-scale enterprise healthcare and technology companies.
In this white paper, we examine broad digital health adoption trends among consumers, highlighting findings most likely to drive sustained shifts within healthcare. In addition, we identify and explore differences across population segments to paint a more nuanced, complex picture of consumer behavior. We conclude that consumer-clinician dialogue and transparency around data collection and sharing will be central to the growth of digital technology in healthcare. 

These results were from a survey of consumers about their use of digital. health applications

Click here to download the complete white paper.









Digital Health Consumer Adoption Report 2019 | Rock Health | We're powering the future of healthcare. Rock Health is a seed and early-stage venture fund that supports startups building the next generation of technologies transforming healthcare.:

Google Health has grown to 500 employees

Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are counting on new businesses as growth slows in its core digital advertising business.

What will these mean as we go forward in health IT and health reform? In the past, Google struggled with Health Vault which was a major fail at the time electronic health records were going mainstream.


It's led by former Geisinger CEO David Feinberg, who reports to Google AI chief Jeff Dean, and key players include Google veteran Paul Muret, who runs product, and Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo.  Google and its Alphabet holding company are becoming a landing page and exit strategy for former HHS employees of high rank.

Google Health, which represents the first major new product area at Google since hardware, began to organize in 2018, and now numbers more than 500 people working under David Feinberg, who joined the company in early 2019. Most of these people were reassigned from other groups within Google, although the company has been hiring and currently has over a dozen open roles.

Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are counting on new businesses as growth slows in its core digital advertising business. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who was recently promoted from Google's CEO to run the whole conglomerate, has said health care offers the biggest potential for Alphabet to use artificial intelligence to improve outcomes over the next 5 to ten years.

Google's health efforts date back more than a decade to 2006 when it attempted to create a repository of health records and data. Back then, it aimed to connect doctors and hospitals and help consumers aggregate their medical data. However, those early attempts failed in the market and the company terminated this first "Google Health" product in 2012. Google then spent several years developing artificial intelligence to analyze imaging scans and other patient documents and identify diseases with the intent of predicting outcomes and reducing costs. It also experimented with other ideas, like adding an option for people searching for medical information to talk to a doctor.

Google is already harnessing many of its strengths to be used or integrated into electronic health records either as a patch, plug-in or API. When HIPAA became law many of entities such as Google were not included in the law.  There is a stipulation for health care entities to sign business associate agreement with subcontractors which details HIPAA's regulations. It is unknown whether this is being enforced.  The author will investigate this in the coming month, and the results will be published here.

Google AI  already created algorithms to analyze images of the retina, CT, and MRI images.

On the left is a fundus image graded as having proliferative (vision-threatening) DR by an adjudication panel of ophthalmologists (ground truth). On the top right is an illustration of our deep learning model’s predicted scores (“P” = proliferative, the most severe form of DR). On the bottom right is the set of grades given by physicians without assistance (“Unassisted”) and those who saw the model’s predictions (“Grades Only”).

In our latest study, to be published today in Ophthalmology, we demonstrate methods by which explanations of deep learning algorithms can be shown to ophthalmologists to increase both the accuracy and confidence of their grading for diabetic eye disease. Using the results of the model trained and validated on high-quality labels from our earlier study, we generated different forms of potential assistance for general ophthalmologists. We presented to the physicians the algorithm’s predicted scores for different DR severity levels as well as heatmaps highlighting image regions that most strongly drove its predictions. Using this assistance, we saw a significant increase in physicians’ diagnostic accuracy, as well as improved confidence in their diagnosis.

We saw clear evidence that showing model predictions could help physicians catch pathology they otherwise might have missed. In the retinal image below, our adjudication panel found signs of vision-threatening DR. This was missed by 2 of 3 doctors who graded it without assistance; but caught by all 3 doctors who graded it when they saw the model predictions (which accurately detected the pathology).

Jeffrey Dean co-founded Google Brain in 2010, which catapulted the company's deep learning technology into the medical analysis. Some of the first health-related projects out of Google Brain included a new computer-based model to screen for signs of diabetic retinopathy in eye scans, and an algorithm to detect breast cancer in X-rays. In 2019, Dean took the helm of the company's AI unit, reporting to Pichai. 


Researchers found that the AI system reduced false positives by 5.7 percent for US women — a significant improvement when you consider how distressing it would be to be told you have cancer when you actually do not. It also reduced false negatives by 9.4 percent, meaning it caught instances of cancer that would’ve otherwise gone undetected.
And it did this by “looking” at mammograms alone, without access to any of the other health data that human doctors have on their patients.
This does not mean AI will soon replace radiologists — that’s a common but false narrative. While AI systems catch things that doctors miss, doctors also catch things that AI systems miss. Their abilities are complementary, best used together.o build the AI system, researchers got anonymized mammograms from some 76,000 women in the UK and 15,000 women in the US. They used that data to train the system. Then they tested it on the X-rays of a different group — 25,000 UK women and 3,000 US women — analyzing how often the AI was right about whether the woman actually ended up having cancer, as determined by biopsies and follow-ups.
In both the UK and the US, the AI outperformed a single radiologist.
In the UK, the standard of care is to have two radiologists read the X-rays, which can be tricky to analyze. The AI didn’t do better than two radiologists combined, but it didn’t do worse than them, either — and it reduced the workload of the second reader by 88 percent.
In the near future, I predict there will be an additional disclosure that AI is used by the entity to diagnose and/or treat the patient.
Google (Alphabet) has also dabbled with Verily and Calico Labs a company that focuses on aging.   Verily has since been shuttered.