The companies building a health data economy

A new data economy has emerged as a cluster of companies rush to facilitate the exchange of information while also protecting their privacy. While their methods differ, they’re driven by their shared opposition to buying and selling patient data without their knowledge or consent. In his latest story, Casey introduces us to the companies leading this effort.

“We don’t like to think about personal data as being owned, because we don’t think people can be owned,” said Heather Flannery, who heads Washington, D.C.-based “data liquidity” company Equideum Health. “We think analogies that conceive of data more like a person’s labor than property are more ethically appropriate.” Read more.

Who’s leading the charge on VR

As virtual reality companies score billions of dollars in venture funding, it’s individual doctors and therapists that are bringing headsets to patients, hoping that insurers and larger health systems eventually make wider adoption possible. Most often they’re prescribing simple exercises or guided visualizations for conditions like chronic pain or anxiety that patients can do with a headset and handheld controllers, Mohana reports.

Some companies — most notably XRHealth — are pitching their health services as an entry point into the “metaverse,” a nebulous term that some define as a sprawling virtual environment that people might interact with using VR, AR, or other tech. Critics say we’re a long away from realizing the metaverse and that some VR companies are simply capitalizing on the hype.

XRHealth, which showcased its products at HIMSS this year, says its clinical staff is building the foundation for metaverse medicine by treating patients entirely virtually. “As time goes by, more and more people will understand that we’ll get to as good outcomes” for patients in the virtual realm as in the physical one, CEO Eran Orr told Mohana.

But Susan Persky, who leads a VR research lab at the NIH, added a big caveat to that vision: it requires common standards so that disparate developers can build out a seamlessly navigable world that parallels the physical one. “The idea of having portable digital applications you’re having with providers that could interface with your telemedicine visit, we’re talking probably a 10 year timeline,” Persky said.

An upcoming program at Cedars Sinai could blend the physical and simulated realms by establishing a virtual IBS clinic that patients can walk through using a VR headset; each room will host a different “fantastical” simulated environment, Cedars Sinai’s Brennan Spiegel told STAT.

A major diversity failure in data

Using cheap, AI-powered clinical support tools could be a great help in countries with constrainted clinical resources. But if the data used to train those tools doesn’t represent the local population, the tools might fall short. There’s cause for real concern: A new review of more than 7,000 clinical AI papers published in 2019 revealed that most of the data came from the U.S., China, and other high-income countries. The solution isn’t simple, Katie writes, because countries that are resource poor are also more likely to be data poor, but several efforts are underway to try to remedy the problem.

Dispatch from Washington’s ‘Health Datapalooza’

FDA commissioner Robert Califf took the stage this week at Health Datapalooza, the annual health IT event in D.C. Califf, who spent several years at Verily between his first and second stints at the FDA, warned attendees that the U.S.’s breakneck pace for developments in health research hasn’t necessarily improved key metrics like life expectancy.

“Most of the sectors that I’m dealing with as FDA commissioner are doing pretty well, financially at this time. And yet, the aggregate outcome is not going the right direction,” he said. “What if we align the business interests with the direction that we need to go?

Califf said he hoped the FDA could take a more active role in addressing some of these inequities. "Some people say ‘FDA, stay in your box,’ and what I would say is FDA is like a foundational structure in the system,” especially since it touches food, dietary supplements, biologics and tobacco, in addition to pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices.

He also called on health policy and health IT leaders to tackle issues like misinformation, the collection of real world evidence for clinical trials, and outdated public health data systems.

The latest funding rounds

Clarify Health, a health care analytics company, raised a $150 million Series D round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The company hopes to expand its intelligence offerings and drive adoption of its value-based payments platform.
Eleos Health, which provides voice analytics for behavioral health treatment, raised a $20 million Series A round led by F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads Ventures. The company says it has captured 6.5 million minutes of treatment to date and projects 30 million minutes by the end of the year.
Evernow, a telehealth platform to provide menopause care, announced a $28 million Series A round led by NEA with participation from 8VC, Refactor Capital, and Coelius Capital. It will spend the money to expand its team, build a member community, and use the company’s data and research to focus on product development.
Forge Health, a tech-enabled behavioral health provider, raised $11 million from HC9 Ventures. It plans to use the money to “accelerate expansion” and to build out value-based partnerships.