Portfolio News

Health Data Analytics Startup Komodo Health’s $220M Series E propels it to $3.3B valuation

Komodo Health announced a $220 million Series E funding round led by Tiger Global Management and joined by Casdin Capital. Existing investors ICONIQ Growth, Andreesen Horowitz, and SVB Capital also participated in the round. The funding has propelled Komodo into the unicorn club with a valuation of $3.3 billion. Komodo’s primary business is to offer providers, pharma, and other life sciences stakeholders with a variety of services based on its Healthcare Map, an AI and data analytics tool Komodo says is tracking more than 325 million...

The Apple Watch in clinical trials: Current uses and future possibilities

The use of wearables has been of great benefit to clinical trials: researchers can gather far more data, more often, more objectively, and more easily than ever before. And over the past year, digital tools for remote measurement made it possible to continue trials that otherwise would have been halted. Of all these wearables, the Apple Watch has earned the highest rankings when it comes to gathering health data. Steady improvements in software, firmware, and form factor over the years have led to the Apple Watch...

Grail Signs on Quest Diagnostics to Provide Phlebotomy for Cancer Detection Test

GRAIL has entered an agreement with Quest Diagnostics to provide phlebotomy services in support of its multi-cancer early detection blood test. The test, called Galleri, is expected to go to market in the second quarter after its PATHFINDER multi-site interventional study. Under the agreement, Quest’s phlebotomy network, which is composed of approximately 2,200 patient service centers and 5,000 mobile phlebotomists, will help GRAIL with its specimen collection when Galleri is launched. “Today, the majority of cancers go undetected until too late when outcomes are often deadly, and we...

Wellness brand Hims & Hers moving deeper into healthcare with Privia Health partnership

Hims launched in 2017 as a men’s health company, selling just a few products designed to help men suffering from erectile dysfunction or hair loss. Now the company has expanded greatly, adding a women’s health business called Hers, focused on birth control, sexual health, and skin and hair care. But even then, the company’s ambitions seemed to be growing: In 2019, Hims hired its first chief medical officer, Pat Carroll, MD, and the company began to put itself on the map as a healthcare delivery...

Christine Lemke on Evidation’s Push to Use Wearables in Healthcare

On a recent episode of the Moneyball Medicine podcast, host Harry Glorikian interviewed Evidation Co-CEO Chrstine Lemke on what Evidation does, its history, and how its work has evolved since the company started. Smart devices like Fitbits and Apple Watches are with us all the time, and so much of the time the data can go far beyond telling you if you’ve finished your 10,000 steps for the day. But the data comes in so many forms from so many sources that it’s very difficult to...