Portfolio News

Vivante Health Joins Accolade Trusted Supplier Program

Vivante Health, a provider of digital medicine tools for digestive health and disease, has joined the Accolade Partner Ecosystem as part of the company’s Trusted Supplier Program. GIThrive is Vivante’s digital gut health platform. Using proprietary algorithms and data from each user’s symptom and food log, GIThrive aims to anticipate GI symptom flares before they strike, helping users avoid possible triggers and high-cost medical interventions. GIThrive members have direct access to a registered dietitian for personal nutrition support. The program includes therapies proven to reduce inflammation...

COVID-19: The Critical Role of Real-World Evidence Made Real

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the HLTH Matters Blog Series will be interviewing experts from across the health ecosystem to bring timely facts and updates to the HLTH community. A post written by Aetion CEO Carolyn Magill details the role of real-world evidence in the fight against coronavirus. “I’m certain that it’s critical we look to real-world data (RWD), right now, for answers,” Magill wrote. Real-world data represent our daily lives as captured by sources like health insurance claims, electronic health records, labs, and wearable devices....

Cancer screenings plunge more than 90% due to COVID-19

Electronic health record software provider Epic released data indicating that appointments for cervix, colon, and breast cancer screenings have dropped between 86 percent and 94 percent compared to average volumes in the three years before the confirmation of the first COVID-19 case in the U.S. At the end of April, Komodo Health released the results of a study assessing records from 320 million U.S. patients, and the results are in alignment with those of Epic, even if the decline isn’t as steep according to Komodo’s assessment,...

Aetion Urges FDA To Establish Cloud-Based RWE Platform

Aetion has issued a call for the FDA to implement a cloud-based real-world evidence (RWE) platform with robust data governance so that users can do data queries, archiving, access, and aggregation. Such a system, the company says, could help avoid unnecessary data duplication and support concurrent reviews by global regulators. The FDA was going to discuss its September 2019 Technology Modernization Action Plan, an overarching plan that could include the use of RWE, at a meeting on March 27, but the meeting was rescheduled for June...

GRAIL Announces $390 Million Series D Financing

GRAIL announced that it has completed a $390 million Series D financing round. New investors including Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), and two undisclosed investors joined existing backers including Illumina in this round of funding. “GRAIL is making significant progress with our blood-based, multi-cancer early detection test,” said GRAIL CEO Hans Bishop. “Nearly 80 percent of cancer deaths result from cancers for which there is no screening test today, and GRAIL’s mission is to change that through...