Portfolio News

Digital therapeutics company SidekickHealth inks partnership with Bayer

Nordic company SidekickHealth announced that it has entered a strategic partnership with Bayer to provide a digital medication management and lifestyle change platform to patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD), a condition that is estimated to affect more than 236 million people globally. Sidekick, founded by two doctors, develops gamified digital therapeutic products and programs, working with pharmaceutical industry and health care industry partners. In addition to peripheral artery disease, the company wants to improve chronic disease management for Type 2 diabetes, ulcerative colitis, and other...

Express Scripts unveiled the first group of digital therapeutics included in its digital health formulary

Cigna pharmacy benefit management arm Express Scripts recently unveiled the first group of digital therapeutics included in its digital health formulary. That group includes Propeller Health. The point of creating the digital health formulary was to help its health plan clients find vetted digital tools to help manage their illnesses, the same way consumers can look at options for drugs to treat their conditions by looking through drug formularies. CVS Caremark launched its own digital health formulary in June. The first set of digital therapeutics products were...

GRAIL Appoints Gautam Kollu as Chief Commercial Officer

GRAIL Inc., a health care company whose mission is to detect cancer early, when it can be cured, recently announced the appointment of Gautam Kollu as Chief Commercial Officer. “We are very pleased to welcome Gautam, who brings extensive experience in accelerating market development efforts to support the adoption of novel technologies in the genomics space,” said GRAIL CEO Hans Bishop. “It’s an exciting time for our company, and Gautam’s strategic leadership will be invaluable as we work to advance our multi-cancer early detection test toward...

Xealth Named Finalist in Accenture’s HealthTech Innovation Challenge

Xealth recently announced that it is a finalist in Accenture’s HealthTech Innovation Challenge, a recognition that supports innovative approaches and solutions for improving the way people access, manage, and finance health care in North America. Since its inception, the Accenture HealthTech Innovation Challenge has recognized innovations focused on health care organization buyers, using criteria including solution design quality, disruptive business models, and solution scalability. “After reviewing submitted applications, our team of executive judges have identified those services that have the greatest potential to address today’s health...

Recent breakups don’t presage a pharma-digital collaboration doomsday, experts say

It’s easy to see why there’s a lot of doom and gloom about partnerships between digital health companies and pharmaceutical companies: Proteus Digital Health’s floundering business and failed investment round; Sanofi’s change of direction that led to parting ways with Onduo; and the premature conclusion of a partnership between Pear Therapeutics and Sandoz have made news in the last quarter. However, these setbacks are not coming as a major shock to people who are working in the digital health field. According to Bill Evans, managing director of...