| |   | | | Deja vu for mental health funding? For employer mental health platform Lyra Health, turning the calendar page over to a new year is a little bit like passing Go in Monopoly: Last January, the company announced a $187 million Series E fundraise, and this week, it announced a $235 million in fresh funding. Even before this colossal round, investors were questioning just how much more funding the company could take as a private company. The totals today are downright staggering: $916 million raised to date, at a $5.58 billion valuation. Elsewhere in mental health, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 just invested $75 million in digital therapeutics developer Big Health, which makes app-based treatments for anxiety and insomnia. (SoftBank was one of the last investors to put money into Pear Therapeutics before it announced it would go public via a SPAC merger.)
According to data published today by CB Insights, funding for mental health tech startups and digital therapeutics both more than doubled in 2021 to $5.5 billion and $3.4 billion respectively. Despite those impressive numbers, the Big Health and Lyra deals suggest investors aren’t done yet. | Health records reveal racism in medicine Doctors’ notes are far from objective, revealing deep negative bias against certain patient groups including by race, finds a new study in Health Affairs. Black patients, for instance, were 2.54 times more likely to see one or more negative descriptors — words like “noncompliant” or “aggressive” — than white patients. The bias, authors wrote, could “stigmatize Black patients and possibly compromise their care, raising concerns about systemic racism in health care.” The study — which looked at medical records from 18,000 patients treated in Chicago in 2019 and 2020 — also found patients who were unmarried and on government insurance were more likely to have negative descriptors in their notes. Read more. | | | Early Bird Access Extended: The Breakthrough Science Summit For one more week only, access our best rates! On March 31, we're gathering knowledgeable insiders - from pharma executives to cutting-edge researchers - to hear their takes on the innovations in tech and procedures that are set to change the face of health and medicine. Early bird pricing ends Friday, Jan. 21 so get your pass now! | Why fax machines aren’t going away anytime soon  They’re clunky, low-resolution, and run the risk of exposing sensitive patient data to the wrong recipient. But the health care system won’t rid itself of fax machines anytime soon — partly because phone lines can be more reliable than Wi-Fi, and because faxing individual patient records minimizes the risk of exposing entire online patient databases to hackers. Still, it’s clear that faxes slow down decision-making in health care. STAT’s Alex Hogan has a look at why they’re still a vital piece of tech in this video. | Washington makes moves on health data sharing This week, federal health IT policymakers finally released a long-awaited set of guidelines and agreements for more seamless clinical data flow between health organizations. The first version of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement — collectively known as TEFCA — outlines basic non-binding policies and practices for better data exchange and lays out the specific infrastructural details that different health networks would need to securely exchange clinical information. It’s a step toward interoperability: a vision for common data standards allowing patients, providers and payers to quickly share data even outside their own networks.
ONC also released the latest draft version of the standard data points on each patient health IT vendors need to be able to store to be considered interoperable. They added a few new components, including disability status, functional status, mental function, and pregnancy status. It’s open for public comment until April. | Partnerships and Funding -
Sonde, which develops vocal biomarker tech to track cognitive health, inked a multi-year partnership with GN Group, a conglomerate that owns a number of hearing aid companies. They hope to develop biomarkers for mild cognitive impairment to help detect it early in people with hearing loss. -
Verily and cosmetics giant L'Oréal are teaming up to advance skin health with a pair of programs. One project will seek to understand the biology of skin aging, and the other will explore tech like sensors and artificial intelligence, to enable virtual diagnosis for dermatology and skincare. -
Truepill announced a new platform to help health plans fulfill requests for at-home Covid-19 tests, offering a solution for complying with the government’s new reimbursement requirements. The company in December announced a virtual care platform to help people get rapid access to Covid-19 antivirals. -
Galileo, the new tech-enabled care startup from One Medical founder Thomas Lee, announced a new partnership to deliver virtual primary and multispecialty care to MVP Health Care’s Medicaid members in New York. -
Wheel, which provides technology and clinicians to enable virtual care, raised a $150 million Series C round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Tiger Global. -
Apprentice, which builds tech to aid pharmaceutical manufacturing, raised a $100 Million Series C round led by Alkeon Capital with additional investment from Silverton Partners, Insight Partners, Pacific Western Bank, and others. - Sema4, a health data analytics company, intends to acquire genomics testing company GeneDX for approximately $473 million in cash and stock, and could be up to $623 million depending on the company reaching certain milestones.
- Just a few weeks after it closed a deal to acquire Higi, digital health company Babylon announced it will acquire DayToDay, a patient engagement platform.
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