Portfolio News

Digital healthcare investment deals grow by nearly one-third in 2017

Investors poured $5.8 billion into digital healthcare in 2017, according to Rock Health. That’s an increase of $1.4 billion – or 32.1% – over 2016’s investments. This kind of growth has been standard over the last several years; since 2012, digital healthcare investment has had a compound annual growth rated of about 32%. According to Rock Research consultant Rachana Jana, the digital healthcare game has moved to the ‘middle innings,’ and we’re “at the end of the beginning of digital health.” The companies attracting the most attention...

Kyruus Joins Epic App Orchard To Enable Seamless Scheduling

Kyruus and the Epic App Orchard have joined forces. The new partnership will allow hospital systems to use both Epic’s electronic health record (EHR) system and Kyruus’s DirectBook solution in tandem. This means that patients will now be able to access Kyruus’s ProviderMatch™ to find the right provider and then book appointments, all while never leaving the ProviderMatch interface. The first hospital system to reap the benefits of this new integration will be Piedmont Healthcare. VP of Experience at Piedmont, Katie Logan, commented: “We’re thrilled to...

82% of Consumers Do Not Use Telehealth, Survey Says

According to a report sponsored by Avizia, most consumers are not taking advantage of telehealth options. Avizia, a telehealth provider based in Virginia, sent out two surveys in March 2017 to get a feel for the current use rates among consumers and healthcare professionals. One survey was sent to consumers and included responses from over 400 individuals aged 18+ and living in the United States, while the other survey was sent to nearly 450 healthcare professionals who subscribe to Modern Healthcare. Only 18% of survey respondents reported...

Crossing Boundaries

In a recent article for The Daily Star, Shahriar Rahman interviewed Ian Kazi Shakil, founder/CEO of Augmedix. Augmedix, a McKesson Ventures portfolio company, uses Google Glass technology to give providers more time to focus on patient care. By taking on documentation and administrative tasks through a system of remote scribes, Augmedix saves providers more than 10 hours of time each week on average. During the interview, Shakil shed light on the difference between having a remote scribe fill in EMR information and simple transcription services. He...

No Ordinary Christmas

British writer Beth Britton will be spending Christmas with relatives in South Africa. But things this year will be different than they have been before, because one of her relatives is suffering from dementia. Britton has been writing about dementia and supporting families in which a member has dementia ever since her father, who was suffering from the condition, passed away. As she has done so, she has learned a lot about what helps people with dementia. Included in Britton’s gift giving for her relative with dementia...