Capital Raising Activity

CD&R and others back Vets First Choice with $220 million funding.

The company provides on line pharmacy for veterinarians and has built solutions around medication adherence. The company intends to accelerate its growth in the U.S. and enter select international markets. Vets First Choice serves 20,000 veterinary practices. This is a massive funding for a company that is barely seven years old but then again, the vet market is one of the most under-served and inefficient markets in healthcare. This is a golden opportunity for sure.

Evolent Health looks to raise over $170 million in public offering.

This is the second public offering of the company in less than a year. The stock plunged by 17% the day of the announcement and has not recovered. Evolent assists providers to move to value based care. The company reported quarterly revenues of $107 million with a loss of $8.4 million for fiscal quarter ending June 30th.

PatientPoint of Cincinnati, OH raises $140 million and purchases Patient Education Network.

Our hat is off to the company for securing such a big investment. PatientPoint provides patient engagement solutions at the point of care. Pharma pays for the content to be displayed in a variety of setting from waiting rooms to exam rooms and other clinical areas. The company counts 31,000 doctors’ offices and 1,000 hospitals as clients. It is staggering to note that over ½ billion patients’ visits go through PatienPoint’s network.

PEN is a leading point of care digital education network for oncology practices and has 120 high-volume practices nationwide. We like the deal as it further consolidates PatientPoint’s strong market share.

Color Genomics of Burlingame, CA raises $80 million bringing funding to $180 million.

Color is similar to companies like 23andMe which focus on genetic cancer screenings with at-home kits. Color is now working on hereditary high cholesterol tests to assess possible heart disease risk. We believe early detection of diseases via genetic testing is a historic opportunity and expect continuing robust funding in the sector.

Invitae Corporation raises $73 million in a PIPIE offering from OrbiMed and others and acquires Good Start Genetics from Safeguard for $40 million and CombiMatrix from Alpha Capital AG for $33 million.

Invitae based in San Francisco, CA brings genetic information into mainstream. Good Start focuses on genetic screening for inherited diseases. OrbiMed was also an investor in the company. Alpha Capital is a NASDAQ-listed microcap company with annual sales of $12.0 million. The company is involved in pediatric, neo natal genetic screening amongst other fields. Invitae has an EV of $450 million and is listed on NYSE. The company can now claim that it has capability to run genetic testing across all stages of life.

New York-based AbleTo raises $36.6 million from Bain Capital Ventures and others.

Mental health and well being is a big industry and growing. The funding in the sector is at record high and the number of approaches are as many as there is schools of psychology. AbleTo offers an integrated platform for an eight week program of coaching and therapy which is self-tailored for the individual. It appears that the company is borrowing a page from Omada Health and is targeting the validation of its platform via clinical research particularly in areas of depression and anxiety. Omada pioneered the idea of a therapeutic clinical trial. Including this funding, AbleTo has raised total of  $57 million.

Arivale of Seattle, WA targets a $30 million raise.

The company provides personalized health management by using individuals’ genetic, clinical data and health history. The company has grown from a handful of employees to over 170. This will bring total funding to $50 million. We believe that there is ample room for high touch personalized services like Arivale, but believe that scaling them is a big challenge.

rfXel of San Ramon, CA snaps up $30 million in Series B.

rfXcel is a real-time supply chain optimization for the life science and medical device industries. The company has a long-standing relationship with Verizon to develop IoT technologies. The new funds are earmarked for international expansion as well as technology development for its famous platform, Track and Trace.

Science Exchange raises $28 million in Series C.

Based in Palo Alto, CA, Science Exchange on line market place for scientific research services. Its market place can be used to find and order outsourced research and development services from the best labs in the world. We love this high end outsourcing model. The company has over 2500 service providers offering 6300 project categories. Science Exchange receives a fee based on the value of the project which it intermediates between the researcher and the service provider.  The company has raised over $57 million in capital to date.

Clinical documentation company, Accuity Delivery Systems received $25.5 million funding from MTS.

Las Vegas/NY-based company relies on its unique approach to coding for its success. With all the advancements in NLP and automated coding, it is hard to see what type of growth rate documentation      companies will experience. We know one thing; the industry is not going away anytime soon but differentiation is getting harder.

LabConnect of Seattle, WA announces $24.5 million Series A funding.

LabConnect is essentially a lab outsourcing company but without owning a lab. The company which was founded in 2002, provides central laboratory and scientific support services to bio pharma companies. It manages central lab testing through a global network of primary and specialty labs; focusing on logistics project and data management reporting and customer service. We like the model.

Stride Health gets $23 million in funding from F-prime and others.

Based in San Francisco, the company helps independent workers and part time employees select and enroll in affordable health coverage. This brings total funding raised by Stride to $40 million. We think this is a significant opportunity particularly as the gig economy continues to create an ever-increasing independent workforce.

iVinci Health raises $18.5 million of capital.

The Boise, ID-based company was seeded by St. Luke and counts Intermountain Health as one of its investors. iVinci allows patients to manage their accounts on their own via an online financial engagement platform called VisitPay. The system integrates with a variety of billing solutions and presents various payment options to the patients. There are so many companies that are tackling the patient responsibility sector; and most are pretty successful. The sheer size of the industry and the fragmentation of the providers are fertile ground for many companies to succeed.

Solera Health of Phoenix, AZ secures $18.3 million in Series B.

Solera integrates chronic disease prevention services in its role as preventive care benefits manager. The company has successfully consolidated Diabetes Prevention Program providers into one integrated network; allowing health plans and employers to offer a wide variety of non-clinical programs. The company covers 40 million lives and has raised over $30 million of capital to date. We love the model.

Apervita based in Chicago raises $16 million backed by prestigious firms such as GE Ventures and Baird Capital.

The company calls itself the biggest democratizer of data. With its technology, customers can decouple the data from analytics and then distribute the results widely through the enterprise. Additionally, customers can choose various apps from its market place that are used by leading healthcare institutions in the country. Organizations can also write apps and sell through the platform which is called Apervita Marketplace.  We think the industry is ready for this. 

Artemis Health of SLC, Utah raises $16 million from F-Prime and others.

The company provides self insured employers with actionable insights on their healthcare programs. It identifies problems such as overspending or in network variance and inefficient medication spending. The whole area of benefit management is getting really crowded. But it all comes down to ease of use in identifying the problems and optimizing the best recommendations.

Wellframe secures $15 million form F-Prim and others.

The company uniquely connects patient mobile apps to care management dashboards. This type of close and constant interaction between the care team and the patient is a good way to build a sustained relationship. Gartner named the company as one of their “cool vendors”.

Viome, based in Bellevue, WA raises $15 million.

This is the company’s first round of funding. Viome develops wellness monitoring kit. It blends readings from blood, urine, saliva and stool samples to develop a profile of the biochemistry as well as the microbes in the digestive systems. The results are then fed into the smartphone app which personalizes recommendation for diet and lifestyle. The biggest difference here is that Viome’s technology is based on RNA not DNA. Watch for more funding in the RNA space.

Gravie based in Minneapolis, MN raises $14 million from GE Ventures and others.

Gravie is a comprehensive health management platform for individuals, families and employers. It helps its customers comparison shop for options on private and public exchanges. Employers can select the amounts they would like to provide their employees and Gravie takes care of the rest. This brings up total funding for the company to over $40 million.