Portfolio News

9 Digital Health Startups that Could Join the IPO Wave

Large companies like Lyft, Pinterest, and Uber have made big-splash IPOs in 2019, and Slack and Airbnb are expected to join them. But behind the headline-making companies is a wave of digital health startups that have been transforming the health industry for close to a decade or more—and they are either announcing plans to go public or are rumored to be preparing for an IPO. Nine of these digital health startups are ZocDoc, 23and Me, HeartFlow, Modernizing Medicine, Livongo, Health Catalyst, Change Healthcare, Phreesia, and Peloton. “Now...

On Amazon Prime Day, What Could Health Care Look Like?

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, author of the book HealthConsuming, recently wrote on the Health Populi website about how we could “Amazon-ize” health care to increase its benefit to consumers. In the U.S., patients have been morphing into health care consumers—a trend that has been accelerated by the growth of high-deductible health plans, coupled with health and medical savings arrangements (HSAs and MSAs). Sarasohn-Kahn also says that the constant deluge of direct-to-consumer ads for prescription drugs in the same channels as ads for cars, food, and appliances has made...

AI for all that ails American health care. But how smart is that?

Health technology investment and research company Rock Health reports that from 2011 to 2017, 121 digital health companies earned $2.7 billion in venture funding to apply artificial intelligence (AI) to 19 areas ranging from drug research and development to clinical-decision support to health benefits administration. Even the government is getting in on the action. Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched an AI outcomes challenge in which it offered $1.65 million total in prizes for AI models that predict hospital and...

Adam Boehler, Who Championed Value-Based Care, to Leave HHS

Adam Boehler has stepped down from his position as head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to take a position in the world of foreign aid. In addition to his CMMI role, Boehler served as a senior advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on value-based care. The idea behind value-based care is that rather than paying for procedures, medical insurance should pay for patient outcomes—an idea that has been championed by the Trump administration. As the primary driver of the transition to...

The Most Trusted Man at Accolade Inc.

Richard Eskew may be the chief privacy officer at Accolade, but his colleagues rarely have difficulty finding him. Because he is available to talk and answer employees’ questions, he is able to keep privacy and security front and center for Accolade’s more than 900 employees. Accolade customers are typically self-insured employers. “Accolade combines highly intelligent technology, clinical expertise, and compassion to help individuals make the right health care decisions at the right time,” Eskew said. Doing so requires going beyond standard transactional questions like “is this...