Issue 026

Welcome back to E&O Mondays, the free newsletter from Exits & Outcomes that features the world’s most complete weekly health tech funding round-up.

 E&O Mondays.

In this issue:

• This past week’s round-up of nearly $1 billion in health tech funding.
• The answer to last week’s trivia question (along with the names of a number of E&O readers who got it right).
• Finally, if you’re new to E&O Mondays, this free newsletter isn’t much like the ones I send Fridays and every-other-Wednesday (or the long-form research reports). Yea, yea, it’s great and all, but you’re really missing out if you only read this funding list each week. So, consider becoming a full-fledged subscriber of E&O by clicking right here…

Yet another $1B health tech funding week.

Here’s what I found for health tech funding this past week. It looks to be another week of $1 billion in funding deals. But first: Which is your least favorite verb for startup-raises-money news articles? As in: “Startup grabs $5 million in funding from BRB Ventures.” I often see grabs, nabs, earns, lands, and pockets as well as mainstays like raises and, simply, announces.

What keeps me up at night: How do you decide which company “earned” their funding round and which one “grabbed” it? (Like you, I’m pretty sure most writers just choose a verb arbitrarily. But it got me thinking.) So, this week I simplified E&O’s list to remove this verb-choice bias. If you’re missing the full sentence structure, however, please assume that almost all of these companies “dog and pony showed their way” to whatever Series round, (but also know that I strongly believe one of them “glommed onto” their funding).

$316 million – Kry – Series D. Lead: CPP Investments and Fidelity Management & Research. Kry is a virtual care provider operating in Sweden, Norway, and Germany. It also operates in the UK and France as Livi. Release

$300 million – Capsule – Series D. Lead: Durable Capital Partners. Digital pharmacy startup that also expanded into telehealth consultations. Bloomberg

$100 million – Caresyntax – Series C. Lead: PFM Health Sciences. A digital surgery company that analyzes real-world data in and around the OR and offers virtual, real-time consults with remote experts like medical school instructors or medtech reps. Release

$53 million – Ceribell – Series C. Leads: Longitude Capital and The Rise Fund. Developer of a non-invasive brain monitor called Rapid Response EEG for faster diagnosis of seizure. Release

$24 million – Sesame – No lead. Sesame runs a direct-pay healthcare marketplace where patients pay doctors directly for in-person or virtual care. Release

$21 million – Glytec – Debt and equity. Insulin dosing software and glycemic management for in-hospital care. Crunchbase News

$15 million – Seven Bridges – Series C (partial). Big data startup that aims to help researchers “extract meaningful insights from genomic and phenotypic data in order to advance precision medicine.” Release

* $14.2 million – Vessel Health – Wellness tracker and urinalysis startup that monitors nutrition, stress, toxins, and hydration. Site

$13.5 million – Supersapiens – Lead: MICA Ventures. The company self-describes as a sports continuous glucose monitoring startup, which builds software based on Abbott’s CGMs. Supersapiens plans to develop its own wearable. Release

$12.5 million – Vector Remote Care – Series A. Lead: Updata Partners. Digital health startup that helps remote care teams monitor people with implanted cardiac devices. GeekWire

$12 million – Outcomes4Me – Series A. Lead: Northpond Ventures. Helps people with cancer navigate their care journey by combining their personal health information with the company’s datasets. Release

$12 million – Edifice Health – Lead: Leaps by Bayer. Stanford digital health spin-out that uses a novel metric of inflammatory health to develop personalized health interventions starting with nutrition. Release

$12 million – Take Command Health – Series A. Leads: LiveOak Venture Partners and SJF Ventures. Tech-enabled services startup focused on HRA health plans. Release

$10 million – Grin – Seed (extension). Lead: Triventures. Teledental startup focused on teeth straightening. Crunchbase News

$9.5 million – Alife Health – Series A. Lead: Lux Capital. “Fertility technology company building a modern operating system for IVF.” Release

$8 million – The Public Health Company (PHC) – Seed. Investors: Venrock, Verily, Sweat Equity Ventures. The company offers a platform to protect businesses and communities from infectious diseases. Release

* $11.1 million – Form Health – Personalized, medical weight loss with one-on-one coaching via telehealth. Site

$5.5 million – UCM Digital Health – Series A. Lead: Armory Square Ventures. (E&O wrote about this round in mid-March when an SEC filing showed the company had raised $4 million.) Release

$5 million – Calmerry – Seed round. Lead: Digital Future. Online therapy provider. Site

$3.5 million – MD Ally – Seed round. Lead: Generaly Catalyst. Expanding the scope of 911 first responders to provide virtual care in non-emergency concerns. Release

$3 million – CareCar – Seed round. Leads: Kapor Capital and Impact America Fund. The company manages non-emergency medical transportation benefits as well as in-home care benefits. Release

$2.5 million – Votive Health – Lead: Flare Capital Partners. Facilitates payer-provider integration of value-based arrangements for complex care. Release

* $2 million – RxLive – Telehealth pharmacy that connects pharmacists to patients. Site

* $2.1 million – WeRecover. An addiction treatment search engine and digital health assistant named Wendi. Site

* $1.8 million – CyMedica Orthopedics – Debt and other options. Combination of therapy and digital health tech to treat muscles weakened by knee osteoarthritis. Site

$1.65 million – Intus Care – Seed round. Leads: EO Ventures and Third Culture Capital. Helps long-term care facilities predict when their highest-risk patients will need care. Forbes

$1 million – Docosan – Seed round. Lead: AppsWorks. Vietnam-based appointment booking and costs transparency site. VN Express

Health Tech Trivia Answer

Last week’s trivia question was the first one submitted by an E&O subscriber.

ICYMI – The Question: Healtheon is arguably one of the first to claim that digital health and the internet would transform healthcare. Healtheon, founded just over 25 years ago, eventually became a unicorn before that term was even invented. What was Healtheon’s original company name? Bonus follow-up question: Can explain the cause of the company’s name change? Who got it right: Quite a few people! So, I rounded up a few who were among the first to do so… Hats off to these well-studied digital health scholars:

• Lisa Suennen, Lead, Manatt Ventures (Follow her on Twitter here)
• Don Jones, Chair, Cardiff Ocean Group
• Neal Khosla, Founder/CEO, Curai Health
• Elizabeth Kiernan Pattyn, SVP Innovation-Life Sciences, Capital Rx (Linkedin)

The Answer: Healthscape. The reason for the change — loosely — was that it sounded too much like Netscape. (Surprisingly, it was not because it sounded like “hellscape”.) Both companies were founded by Jim Clark. Others associated with Netscape pushed Clark to change Healthscape’s name, and, thus, it became Healtheon. Healtheon eventually merged into WebMD.

Until next week… (and let me know if you have a trivia question that I can use!)