Issue 034. Get E&O weekly. | Subscribe
Digital health research from Brian Dolan.
Welcome to E&O.
Last week’s newsletter had a 56 percent open rate. Here’s what’s happening this week:
- Healthcare investor and founder of NaviMed Capital, Bijan Salehizadeh, took VC-dabbling hospital executives behind the woodshed. In a well-liked Twitter thread, he explained why health systems’ VC arms are shutting down. He noted (without naming names) that four high-profile non-profit health systems investment arms pulled the plug in recent months. (New York-Presbyterian, Inova and… who and who?) Tweets here.
- One more Twitter thread worth a skim: Atul Gawande, who currently heads up Haven, tweeted some thoughts on the long-awaited, just-published RCT that revisits the concept of hot-spotting in population health. Gawande made the concept famous in a New Yorker article nine years ago. The RCT showed the hot-spotting program didn’t lower costs.
- Lots of interesting data in Silicon Valley Bank’s healthcare investments and exits report for 2020. Odd to see Pear lumped in with diagnostic and analytics companies. Read the full thing here.
- Oklahoma’s Progentec Diagnostics raised $5 million to continue to build out a combination product focused on predicting and managing flares in patients with lupus.
- Keto diet-powered, diabetes reversal startup Virta Health raised a whopping $93 million led by return backer Caffeinated Capital. Virta founder Sami Inkinen also recently published a manifesto here.
- Livongo inked a partnership with higi, which has 10,000 biometric kiosks installed at retail pharmacies around the US, to market its hypertension program.
- But who needs a kiosk? Valencell unveiled blood pressure sensing technology embedded in earbuds at CES 2020. The company will publish results from a study it conducted that compares the technology to standard cuff blood pressure monitors in March. It claims to identify hypertension with 89 percent accuracy.
- This is a sponsored post in Nature (so I feel a little funny linking to it), but Roche posted an explainer on its patient app, Floodlight, which the company offers to patients to help them monitor the progression of MS.
- Finally, specialty pharmacy and patient services company Eversana just inked a deal with Noom. It’s already working with Cognoa. With the EnvoyHealth fallout, just a matter of time until it lands Pear Therapeutics as well?
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Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson advice to pharma on digital strategy: “avoid superficial intelligence”
Sanofi’s new CEO Paul Hudson wrote an advice column in Fortune this week that advises biopharma companies pursuing digital products to stop the clock and maybe start over.
He doesn’t mention Onduo, but it’s hard not to read it without thinking about Sanofi’s recent step back from its joint venture with Google/Verily.
Hudson says biopharma companies are driven by innovation but they also are “too often rushing to appear to be ahead of the curve, pursuing bold partnerships and investing in ‘trending’ technologies that are undeniably impressive but aren’t necessarily addressing critical medical needs.” He then takes a swipe at Apple’s massive AFib study for not having a control arm, before writing:
“It’s easy to succumb to the temptation to partner with the company that will build us the splashy tool, rather than work with the company whose outcomes align with our own objectives and whose capabilities fill in our gaps.”
Read the full piece over at Fortune here.
Pear adds pain, IBS, migraine, and other interventions. Goes live in 38 PA treatment centers.
Pear Therapeutics announced a handful of acquisitions, licensing agreements, and collaborations this week that point to the near-term development of its pipeline of prescription digital therapeutics:
- Pear acquired two clinical-stage digital therapeutics from Firsthand Technology that use virtual reality to treat acute and chronic pain. (This deal likely closed about a year ago when a couple of Firsthand employees joined Pear.)
- Pear licensed content for a clinical-stage digital intervention focused on irritable bowel syndrome from the Karolinksa Institute.
- Pear licensed a clinical-stage digital therapeutic for migraines from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
- Pear licensed machine learning-based voice digital biomarkers from Winterlight Labs… to develop and clinically validate digital biomarkers for a variety of diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, depression, insomnia, schizophrenia, opioid use disorder, and substance use disorder.
- It’s also collaborating with NeuroLex to use its voice survey platform to collect structured voice data from patients with depression and healthy volunteers.
Pear also announced that Crossroads Treatment Centers, the parent company of ARS Treatment Centers, will be rolling out Pear’s reSET-O in 38 of its treatment centers in western Pennsylvania this month. It also intends to prescribe the product throughout its 10-state footprint later in the year.
Teva plans late 2020 launch for its Digihaler Rx products
Teva Pharmaceuticals plans to launch its prescription-only Digihaler products for asthma and COPD by the end of the year. A report in Clinical Leader noted that Teva had to work with three different parts of the FDA to get the combination product approved. The Digihaler was cleared as a medical device back in December 2018.
Teva acquired the underlying technology for the Digihaler back in late 2015 when it bought Gecko Health Innovations, formerly known as GeckoCap. Gecko’s founder and CEO only just left Teva this past September to start up a new (still stealth) company.
AstraZeneca aims to “leapfrog” in digital R&D, develop DTx for breast cancer DS-8201
A recent job posting from AstraZeneca lays out the company’s vision for digital in R&D and reveals plans to build digital therapeutics around its breast cancer medicine.
“AstraZeneca would like to leapfrog in this area and has prioritized digital in R&D as a critical strategic area of focus by 2025, as part of the overall company strategy, now approved by the Board.”
The FDA has given AstraZeneca’s medicine for metastatic breast cancer, DS-8201, priority review and a decision is expected in Q2. The medicine is a collab with Daiichi Sankyo.
The job post seeks someone who will “lead the development of digital products [and] create a paradigm shift in patient outcomes”. They are also tasked with “rapid development and global deployment of bespoke digital therapeutics that augment DS-8201”.
Here’s the full three-stage vision for digital transformation at AstraZeneca:
“Digital in R&D journey is incorporating 3 key stages:
- Stage 1 – foundational, reimagine how we work, by maximizing the use of digital, data and analytics transform processes within R&D to gain significant benefits on speed of the portfolio (goal 9 months acceleration) productivity (goal -20% reduction in cost per patient per year) quality at source, patient experience and probability of success
- Stage 2 – advanced, reimagine clinical trials to improve patient outcomes, example redefining patient populations, remote clinical trials, patient apps to reduce/manage adverse events and improve patient outcomes (OS), using data from EHMr and RWE instead of control arms, and through PROs and continuous patient monitoring, creating new endpoints enabling studies in earlier stages of disease (ctDNA changes) prolonging significantly patients lives
- Stage 3 – future-readiness, reimagine healthcare, examples, AZ as a healthcare provider beyond medicines for certain indications (example: Breast Cancer, proving monitoring, predictive analytics and therapies for improved outcomes), full integration of Multiomics (imaging, genomics, proteomics …) to better predict and significantly improve patients’ health”
Virgin Pulse acquires Blue Mesa to add DPP to its offerings
The ever-acquisitive Virgin Pulse added yet another company to its list of deals this week: It bought virtual diabetes prevention program (DPP) company Blue Mesa Health.
Blue Mesa’s DPP, called Transform, has secured full recognition from the CDC, but the company has not managed to attract a participant base close to the sector’s biggest virtual DPP company, Omada Health, which has claimed 300,000 aggregate participants over the years.
Virgin Pulse looks to change that by offering the rebranded Virgin Pulse Transform program to its more than 4,000 customers and existing base of 6 million, (which I believe are similar to “covered lives” not users). Virgin recently inked a partnership with musculoskeletal-focused DTx company Kaia Health.
Virgin Pulse also hinted that its move into DPP was just the beginning of its foray into digital therapeutics: “The acquisition… paves the way for Virgin Pulse to introduce future digital therapeutic solutions aimed at other common, high-cost chronic conditions and populations underserved by the healthcare system today.”
Quick links to E&O research reports
The links below aim to make it easier for paying subscribers to find the long-form research reports on the E&O site:
The Google Health Report (Subscribers-only Link)
The Pear Therapeutics Report (Subscribers-only Link)
The AliveCor Report (Subscribers-only Link)
Apple’s Healthcare Work Experience (Subscribers-only Link)
Approximating Livongo’s S-1 (Subscribers-only Link)
That’s a wrap on Issue 034.
