Issue 058.
Get E&O weekly. | Subscribe
Digital health research from Brian Dolan.
Welcome to E&O.
Last week I wrote about Proteus Digital Health’s origins and bankruptcy. Next week I am open to ideas — what should E&O dig into? Here’s what’s happening this week:
- Plenty going on this week with Apple’s WWDC event and the American Telemedicine Association’s annual conference, but I also dug into a secret (not yet disclosed) J&J acquisition from last summer. If you’ve worked in digital health for a long time, it’s a startup you probably know well… read on below.
- Apple added sleep tracking and handwashing features to the Apple Watch along with more sophisticated movement tracking for Watch and iPhones. Apple also added more than a dozen new symptoms to its tracking features in HealthKit. Watch these sessions to learn more about the technical updates to various Apple Health-related initiatives: Updates on CareKit. Updates on ResearchKit. Updates on HealthKit. New motion-tracking features beyond counting steps.
- Pear Therapeutics inked a deal with RemedyOne, a PBM that got its start in 2015. RemedyOne intends to “engage its growing customer base to implement formulary addition of reSET and reSET-O, offering their members with software-based, FDA market authorized addiction recovery support and treatment when they need it.”
- Fresh off its landmark FDA De Novo clearance last week, Akili Interactive announced that it also received a CE Mark for its ADHD digital therapeutic, EndeavorRx. The company tells E&O the timing is a coincidence. (An ADHD caregiver app or a version of EndeavorRx for major depressive disorder are likely its next products. Check out Akili’s current pipeline in the image below.)
- BrightInsight, which recently inked deals with AstraZeneca and CSL, raised another $40 million for its regulated digital health platform. More here.
- Dreem published results of a recent study that compared how the Dreem headband compared to an overnight sleep study at a sleep center via traditional PSG (polysomnography). The study showed similar accuracy for sleep phase detection between the two.
Did this get forwarded to you? Clear your conscience and sign up as a paying subscriber today! Get full access to E&O by clicking here.
Johnson & Johnson Consumer quietly acquired smartphone-powered otoscope startup, CellScope
This has not been reported elsewhere, but E&O has learned that Johnson & Johnson Consumer acquired digital health startup CellScope in mid-2019.
Erik Douglas, CellScope’s co-founder and CEO also joined J&J Consumer as its director of digital device innovation. Here’s how Douglas describes CellScope’s pre-acquisition positioning:
“CellScope is making remote care smarter. We are helping families collect actionable data at home by turning their smartphone into a connected medical toolkit. With simple attachments and clever software, we guide the user through a late night ear infection or suspicious rash and connect them with a doctor. Backed by leading investors including Khosla Ventures, Montage Ventures, and Rock Health.”
“We are taking the primary tools of medicine, bringing them to the smartphone, and making them smart with machine learning tools for guidance and automated insights. For the leading pediatric condition, ear infection, we have built the world’s largest database and built highly-accurate algorithms.”
As the image above may remind you, CellScope’s device had a moment of fame when Dr. Eric Topol used it during a demo on Stephen Colbert’s old Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report. (Weirdly, this is the second time in two weeks I’m mentioning Colbert, since he also famously mocked Proteus, as I wrote last week.) Along with AliveCor and other devices, CellScope had a place in Dr. Topol’s black bag of digital health devices for many years.
And yet, CellScope didn’t make it.
The startup raised its Series A — its last round of funding — in November 2013. At that point, it had raised more than $5 million from investors that included Khosla Ventures, Claremont Creek Ventures, Montage Ventures, and Rock Health.
At the very end of 2014, CellScope began taking preorders for its direct-to-consumer Oto device to parents in California. It planned to ship those in early 2015. The consumer device was $79 upfront. CellScope also offered remote consultations, called Oto Connect, with physicians based on the images the Oto captured of the child’s eardrum. Each of those remote diagnostics was $49 after the first consultation, which was free. While the consumer launch was its focus, CellScope also sold a similar but more feature-rich device for physicians, the Oto Pro, for $299.
By late 2016, less than two years after commercially launching, the company’s team of about 15 began to depart. CellScope’s other co-founder, Amy Sheng, also left in September 2016. A temporary CEO (who had likely been put in place by CellScope’s biggest investor, Khosla Ventures) lasted about 10 months before leaving the company in October 2016.
Khosla Ventures removed any mention of CellScope from its portfolio page on its website in early 2017.
Based on social media activity, LinkedIn profiles, and a lack of website updates, CellScope may have been a “walking dead” zombie startup between 2017 and its acquisition in the first week of June 2019.
As far as I can tell, Douglas was the only remaining employee of CellScope at the time of acquisition by J&J. He also appears to be the only one to join J&J as part of the deal.
In addition to bringing Douglas onboard, J&J acquired CellScope’s IP assets, which included six patents at various stages of development. One patent was issued while the others were at the application phase or had expired at some point during the filing process.
Johnson and Johnson Consumer’s CTO Josh Ghaim signed the agreement to acquire these CellScope patents:
A few months after joining J&J, Douglas gave a presentation at an IEEE event last fall. He told the story of CellScope and ended by noting he had joined J&J, but he never let on that J&J had acquired his startup’s IP. Here’s how he ended his talk:
“I’m helping J&J to think about what digital device innovation can look like primarily in the consumer space. What families at home can use these sorts of tools for and how we can provide access to care and diagnosis and that sort of thing for families. I just want to mention a few of the areas we look at…”
Douglas ended his presentation by inviting those in the room who were researchers to meet with him to discuss how they might work with J&J. Part of his role is clearly to source new digital health technologies for J&J’s R&D team, but it seems likely he is also working on some permutation of CellScope at J&J.
Given the rise of remote visits during the pandemic, it seems likely tools like the one CellScope developed will increasingly become of interest to consumers. As CellScope mentioned in almost every presentation it gave over the years, one of the number one reasons parents of young children visit the pediatrician is suspected ear infections. CellScope also branched out into remote diagnosis of skin ailments — another area of interest to J&J.
Ultimately, CellScope’s product was probably too expensive a consumer product for its use case. The company often referenced thermometers — a common home medical device used by all parents of young children — as an example of the kind of status Oto may have one day.
If any company has a chance of making that a reality in the next decade, it’s J&J.
Note: I reached out to Douglas at J&J for comment on this story. If I hear back, I will update with additional details.
Veterans Affairs now prescribes Bluetooth-enabled medical devices and describes future devices like that secret Google home health project
As I wrote last week, I kicked off my week as one of the MCs of the big, annual American Telemedicine Association event, which was entirely online this year.
The one session that really stuck out for me was a panel that featured the Dr. Kevin Galpin, Executive Director of the Veterans Health Administration Telehealth Services. Dr. Galpin is in charge of telehealth across the VA.
He revealed a new capability or VA docs but also described in considerable detail what he thinks the future of home health will look like in two years time. While he didn’t mention any company or product names he described that super-secret project I wrote up in E&O’s The Google Health Report from November 2019.
But first: Dr. Galpin announced that the VA had just rolled out a new feature in its digital health platform that would allow physicians working for the VA to prescribe various Bluetooth-enabled medical devices to their patients as they see fit. Here’s how Dr. Galpin explained the VA’s latest rollout:
“It is certainly not across the system for the VA, but our new application VA Video Connect, does allow for the connection of peripherals and this is particularly relevant for our iPad program. We can prescribe a veteran an iPad with 4G if they don’t have connectivity or sufficient internet. So it is, again, trying to reach across that digital divide. And also on that platform we can prescribe a stethoscope, a weight scale, a pulse ox — and that actually integrates directly with the video technology. It shows up for the provider on the screen. That’s actually something that we have just put into production… just released that for the AppStore, so that will be a bigger part of our roadmap going forward.”
Dr. Galpin may have teased a bit about where that roadmap is heading two years down the line, too. When asked what the near-term future holds for telemedicine in the next two years, Dr. Galpin said:
“I think we are going to see increased simplicity and more integration. The key is putting this into the provider workflow so it doesn’t feel like something else. That is what will make this successful longterm.”
“I also think we are going to see this as more ubiquitous. Using video will be as commonplace as using the telephone or in-person care. We commonly say in our office that every VA provider is going to come to work and they are going to get a computer, a webcam, and a telephone. And they are going to have to know how to use all of them.”
“The other thing I think we are going to see is more and more digital technologies that allow us to provide more comprehensive care in the home. I think when we look at touchless monitoring, you know, monitoring through the camera to be able to pick up heart rate, even blood pressure. I mean, there are some unbelievable systems out there in development that can get tremendous amounts of patient data without it actually having a wearable.”
When asked if he predicts this “medical home of the future” with a camera that can do touchless monitoring is likely within two years, Dr. Galpin said he thinks it is:
“I believe, yea, I mean, I’ve seen those products already in testing. I think we will go beyond [vital sign monitoring]. I’ve seen unbelievable stuff out there in the public realm that can look and see, Are you standing up? Are you sleeping? How much time are you spending in bed? And again this is without actually having to wear something. What stage of sleep are you in? Could it potentially diagnose sleep apnea without actually physically touching you? And it is remarkable stuff. I think we are on the verge of seeing this really come to market as something that we can begin to integrate into practice.”
Especially with the sleep focus, that sure sounds like the Google Health Nest device I wrote about in November.
While I have heard that other companies are developing somewhat similar offerings, don’t forget that the VA has a partnership with Google-owned Verily as of October.
If you registered for ATA, (and maybe even if not? seems to work?) you can watch this panel on demand right here.
Akili Interactive’s current pipeline: MDD and ADHD caregiver apps are likely next product launches
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 Proteus Digital Health Report (Subscribers-only Link)
The Hinge Health Report (Subscribers-only Link)
The Digital Health Enrollment Report (Subscribers-only Link)
The Omada Health Report (Subscribers-only Link)
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 058 of E&O.
