Capital Raising Activity

ABILITY Network of Minneapolis, MN raises $545M in debt financing

Summit-backed ABILITY is one of the best success stories of an HIT investment. The company is amongst the largest players in the industry with roots in RCM services. ABILITY has now moved into clinical domain and has a broad offering across the board from hospitals to skilled nursing facilities. The proceeds refinance the existing debt facilities and pay dividend to shareholders.

After the sale of  ZirMed, ABILITY and Availity are now the last two remaining mega players left in the industry.  

WestView backs Concord, CA-based Jopari Solutions with a significant investment

We have the highest respect for WestView, one of the smartest PE firms around. WestView has been extremely successful in investing in “under loved” sectors and making attractive returns.

Jopari enables the electronic exchange of claims, clinical attachments and payments to the P&C, commercial and healthcare markets. The software is integrated with leading workers comp payers.

Intuity Medical of Freemont, CA coins a $70M debt and equity raise

Intuity is a diabetes management technology company. The monitor called Pogo, which received FDA approval in 2016, contains a test port, lancets and a lancing device all in a single 10-test cartridge system.

Hercules Capital provided $30M of debt financing. The company has raised over $250M since 2009. The sector is over crowded, but then again diabetes is a serious condition. Intuity has the technology and now the funds to become a true success story.

Pager of New York, NY closes a strategic round of financing with the NJ insurer, Horizon Healthcare

Pager, which was founded in 2014, provides large health plans and health systems with solutions to help their members/patients find the most convenient and cost-effective care. This could be via video consults or schedule appointments with primary doctors and specialists. Horizon is deploying Pager to an initial group of 10,000 members. The company has a comprehensive technology roadmap to use AI and machine learning to expand its products.

Metavention of Eden Prairie, MN raises $65M in Series C

NEA led the round. The company is starting Phase 2 study of its technology which aims to treat Type 2 diabetes through a one-time procedure that is performed by an interventional cardiologist.  Clearly this will revolutionized the treatment of T2D. Another example of drug free treatment which is now a serious branch of medicine.

Synzi of Clearwater, FL receives an investment from the private equity firm, Kinderhook Industries

Synzi is a spinoff of the language services company, Stratus Video. It offers providers, payers and biotech/pharma companies a multi-channel communication platform combining video, email and messaging with a high degree of customization.

The platform has the ability to also monitor patients remotely. Given its roots, Synzi also caters to people who have limited English proficiency or are deaf/hard of hearing. We like the whole package.

DNAnexus of Mountain View, CA fetches $58M in funding bringing total raise to date to $104M

DNAnexus is a cloud-based genome informatics and data management company. It provides tools for companies that are involved in the delivery of genomic medicine. Microsoft and Google are both investors. The company also facilitates collaboration between a variety of scientists worldwide. 

Pear therapeutics of Boston, MA raises $50M in Series B, bringing total funds raised to $70M

Pear develops digital therapies for behavioral health disorders.  The range of solutions cover addiction, schizophrenia, pain, anxiety, stress, depression, etc.. Temasek, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, led the round. We have been a huge proponent of digital therapeutics and applaud this team.

Quartet Health, based in New York, NY raises $40M in Series C, bringing total funding to $92 million since 2015

The company connects primary care doctors to mental health providers. It also helps patients find the right mental health provider. F-Prime Capital Partners and Polaris Partners led the round. Google Ventures also participated.

Mental health is certainly a hot space. AbleTo, Headspace, Habit and Digital Health (UK) are some of the recent companies that have received funding in the sector.

Milpitas, CA-based Bigfoot Biomedical raises $37M in Series B bringing total funding to $85M

The company is developing an AI-enabled automated insulin delivery system for people with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D).

Bigfoot has integrated Abbott’s glucose-sensing technology inside its insulin delivery solution. Over six million Americans need to use insulin regularly, so the addressable market is quite significant.

HNIhealthcare based in Austin, TX raises $32M bringing total funding to $52M to date

The company is a practice management vendor for the hospitalist industry. HNI can help clinical teams to identify and improve key quality metrics including CMI, LOA and HCAHPS and increase documentation accuracy. 

Six undisclosed investors provided the funding.

Aledade of Bethesda, MD raises $23M bringing total funding to date to close to $100M

Aledade is run by the former HHS official, Dr. Farzad Mostashari. The company works with doctors to analyze patient data and coordinate care. It has attracted ACOs and providers who are interested in the new payment contracts with Medicare and private health insurers.

Alphabet’s spin off, Cityblock based in New York, NY raises $20M

The company comes out of Alphabet’s urban innovation group, Sidewalk Labs, and aims to help low-income Americans get healthcare. This includes elderly as well as homeless population. The focus is on patients who qualify for Medicaid which unfortunately is 1 out of 5 Americans. The way the company makes money is through taking on risk for this targeted population and delivering better and more affordable care. Former CMS administrator, Andy Slavitt, and Rock Health co-founder Halle Tecco are some of the big names on the board of the company.  We are very excited about Cityblock and hope other startups will follow suit. Thrive Capital is amongst the backers of the company.

StartUp Health, based in San Francisco, CA gets $19M from the Chinese firm, Ping An Global and others

StartUp Health is a unique combination of a fund and support organization aiming for 10 specific healthcare moonshots.  The company has amassed 200 digital health companies form 5 continents and 19 countries. They claim to have 30,000 investors from around the world.

Neural Analytics of Los Angeles, CA secures $15M in funding in Series B bringing total raise by the company to $38M

Neural is a medical device company that develops technologies for measuring, diagnosing and tracking brain health. Alpha Edison led the round. The company’s Lucid System is an ultrasound which assesses the brain’s blood vessels from outside the body. The solution helps physicians perform the test in the office and diagnose brain disorders. The system is FDA cleared. The company recently won a $10M contract from DoD. Rapid diagnostics at point of care is the future.     

New York, NY- based CareDox closes a $16M in Series B

AI Life Sciences and 7wire led the round. The company connects school nurses, parents and pediatricians around caring for the child. There are 50 million kids nationwide in schools.  Public schools are the first targets. The software captures student medical charts, medications and immunization and engages parents and providers with alerts about health events.

There are companies that are trying to aggregate the family’s medical records and manage  relationships between their members and the physicians. It will be interesting to see if CareDox will be able to squeeze its way and come to the top.

OWKIN of New York, NY receives $11M in Series A

The company is an AI software provider which allows prediction modeling and population comparison services. These services are used to accelerate drug discovery. Drug discovery often takes years and is a big pain point for the pharma industry. OWKIN will not be short of interested customers.

Peerfit of Tampa, FL raises $10.3M in Series B bringing total funds to $15M

Peerfit, a service offered to employers, operates as a community to help people  share fitness with their team of colleagues. They help employees to find the right classes and tools to stay motivated and connected. A niche play that could work.

Manhattan Beach, CA- based contracting software, Curisium, using Blockchains raises $3.5M in seed capital

We do not cover small raises in this newsletter. But we are keeping our eyes on blockchain investing. Curisium, is a contracting software helping payors, providers and life science companies engage in value-based contracts. The argument is that these contracts have highly complex logistics and are difficult to verify. Blockchain technology is the perfect solution. Some big heavy hitters are investors here including NEA, Sanofi Ventures and Flare Capital.