International Transactions

Koch brothers make their first investment in healthcare and lead a $150 million investment in the Israeli-based company, Insightec’s series E

The company is developing a non-invasive image-guided neurosurgery device. The FDA-cleared technology’s first use is for tremors. Essentially the doctor can use the device to aim high-intensity ultrasound at parts of the brain. The company is already working on other areas including Parkinson and cancer of prostate, liver and pancreas. The investment gives the right to the investors to inject another $150M into the company down the line.  This is an amazing breakthrough.

Wolters Kluwer’s health division sells its US subsidiary, ProVation for $180M

Clearlake Capital is the buyer. ProVation is a procedure documentation software company for hospital and ambulatory surgery centers. The company has $70 million in revenue and 200 employees. Wolters Kluwer bought the company in 2006 for $112M.

Carlyle Growth Investments acquires significant majority in Visionary RCM based in India

The target is the largest provider of medical billing, coding and RCM outsourcing services in India with 2,500 employees and five offshore delivery centers. This is a smart investment and the platform can be scaled to cover additional services.  India has managed to maintain its competitive advantage in people-intensive sectors and will continue to thrive in healthcare.

Boston-based American Well gets $59.2M from Allianz

The company is undoubtedly one of the pioneers of the telehealth industry. American Well works with millions of patients through national health plans, hospitals, employers and pharma companies in the U.S. As a global and well capitalized insurer, Allianz of Germany has over 800,000 medical providers in its network across the world. The plan is to take American Well’s technology globally. This is fantastic news for the company and the U.S. healthcare industry. We don’t hear much about globalization of U.S. digital health industry.

Singapore-based Tessa Therapeutics raises $80M

Temasek led the round. the company focuses on T-cell treatments for solid tumors. The company’s virus-specific T-cell immunotherapies bear some similarities to CAR-T; they also involve harvesting immune cells from patients, tweaking them to respond to tumors and infusing the cells back into the patient. Drug free treatments, keep them coming!!

Lifco AB acquires Computer Konkret AG of Germany

Computer Konkret develops software for dentists and orthodontists. Lifco is a $3.5B market cap company based in Sweden and is a large distributer of dental equipment. The acquisition makes sense to us.

Doctrin AB of Sweden receives $11M in funding

The company helps providers to roll out eVisit platforms. It has developed a comprehensive platform of gathering patients’ information to assist providers to better care for their patients. eVisits is certainly a global trend now.

Japan’s JSR Corporation, parent of JSR Life Sciences, has snapped up Taiwan-based CRO Crown Biosciences for about $400 million.

With operations across the U.S., Europe and China, Crown has a portfolio of platforms for oncology and cardiovascular/metabolic diseases. The company says the solution can bring insight to a drug’s efficacy, pharmacological profile and patient response. Buyer’s parent company has a market cap of $4.5B. This is a big bet for the company.

Elsevier buys Via Oncology based in Pittsburgh, PA

The Via Pathways, a UPMC spinoff, features evidence-based content developed by committees of leading oncologists, helping with development of clinical algorithms to help treat 95 percent of cancer types. The content is deployed to providers through Via Portal, a decision support tool that’s integrated with their EHRs at the point of care.

Siemens buys fast Track Diagnostics based in Luxemburg to boost molecular offering

After shedding its HIT unit to Cerner, Siemens is entertaining floating its healthcare unit. The technology of Track Diagnostics helps reduce time in the laboratory for the detection of conditions including respiratory infections.

Accel KKR acquires Chilean digital healthcare network I-Med for $120M

I-Med is the largest healthcare digital network in Spanish-speaking Latin America. The company processes over 600 million bill payments, payroll and data processing for the healthcare industry.  Chile is the eight best healthcare systems in the world in part because of the efficiencies brought by I-Med technology.

Imascap SAS picks up TMG France for $88M

TMG is a leading developer of planning software for joint surgery. The buyer is owned by Wright Medical Group of the Netherlands and is one of the largest medical device manufacturer for extremities and biologics.