| | | |  By Casey Ross, Katie Palmer, Mario Aguilar, and Mohana Ravindranath | STAT's latest newsletter is launching Monday, July 18! Every week, Health Care Inc. will bring you original reporting from Bob Herman and Tara Bannow on how money shapes health care. Sign up now! | | | Funding plunges — but investors see a silver lining  MEGAN THIELKING / STAT. SOURCE: ROCK HEALTH
After a banner year in 2021, the first half of 2022 has been a big letdown for digital health companies. Not a single health tech company has gone public. Mergers and acquisitions are way down. And in a new Rock Health report, the investment firm and consultancy tallied $10.3 billion in funding for the sector, down from $14.7 million in the first six months of 2021. But investors said the slowdown is reflective of the broader market and the “anomaly” of 2021’s bonanza — and that for certain companies, a cooling-off period could be a benefit. While Series C rounds are smaller this year, A rounds are steady, reflecting an opportunity for early-stage startups, some investors said. Another silver lining: a16z’s Julie Yoo wonders whether tighter purse strings will lead companies to “demonstrate more differentiation, clinical rigor, and operational efficiency in order to get funded, and thus more stories about the patient outcomes and cost savings.” Read more analysis from investors in Mario’s story. | Can tech help abortion clinics do more with less? In states where abortion remains legal, clinics are expecting a surge of out-of-state patients — and some are turning to telehealth and automation to make the most of their limited resources. Carafem, a chain of reproductive health care clinics in Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., is bringing on more telehealth providers and instituting online booking, while Maine Family Planning is building a system to allow for asynchronous messaging between patients and providers — a helpful tool for patients who live in rural areas or may not have access to broadband. Read about more digital strategies in Mohana's latest. | ICYMI: A second round of verdicts for Theranos Six months after a jury found Elizabeth Holmes guilty of defrauding investors in her blood-testing business Theranos, the trial of former second-in-command Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani came to a similar end. Balwani was found guilty of all 12 counts brought against him — including conspiracy to defraud patients, a verdict that Holmes avoided. Both former execs will face up to 20 years in prison. | In-depth biopharma, business, and policy analysis at your fingertips Sign up for STAT Plus to receive in-depth analysis of the biotech and pharma industries, exclusive one-on-one interviews with industry pioneers, and inside intelligence from Capitol Hill. Don't be the last to know. Subscribe today to start reading. | The escalating risks of real-world data post-Roe  Real-world data is increasingly important for clinical developers and academics. But as valuable as that information has become, Erik Perakslis calls for hospitals and health systems to consider pausing data sharing until the risks introduced by the Supreme Court’s removal of federal abortion protections are better managed. “In states where abortion is illegal, the risk, threat, vulnerability, and impact stemming from the prosecutorial use of real-world data have all gone up significantly, for patients and health care providers,” writes the chief science and digital officer at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in a STAT First Opinion. The White House seems to agree: In an executive order issued Friday, President Biden called on the secretary of Health and Human Services, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and Attorney General “to address the potential threat to patient privacy caused by the transfer and sale of sensitive health-related data and by digital surveillance related to reproductive healthcare services, and to protect people seeking reproductive health services from fraudulent schemes or deceptive practices.” | Deep learning to predict cerebral palsy in infants Because machine learning excels at image-based tasks, researchers have turned the technique on movement and gait disorders — attempting to detect and evaluate conditions like Parkinson’s disease and stroke. But video-based models could also be used to target early diagnosis, as a new paper in JAMA Network Open describes. It trained a deep learning model to detect movement differences in video of infants at high risk of brain injury, identifying those who later were diagnosed with cerebral palsy with a sensitivity of 71.4%. The video-based approach “is still in its infancy,” wrote the authors of an invited commentary. But they’re optimistic that clinical validation will lead to new modes of early diagnosis and surveillance. | Doubling down and letting go -
Layoffs continue to hit early-stage startups. Payment and billing company Cedar cut 24% of its workforce, Business Insider reported, after last year’s $425 million acquisition of Ooda Health. And primary care startup Forward laid off 5% of its employees. -
As free Covid-19 testing remains difficult to access across large swaths of the country, population health technology company Color will stand up nearly 1,000 new testing sites in the coming weeks as part of a CDC program to increase community access. The federal program will prioritize sites high on the CDC’s social vulnerability index. -
Tebra, formed late last year with the merger of billing and EHR tool maker Kareo and automation startup PatientPop, secured $72 million in growth equity and debt financing. The funding was led by Golub Capital. -
Value-based care company Signify Health, which went public last year, is ending services for one of Medicare’s pay-for-performance models after new pricing made the program unsustainable, the company said in a release. - The Mayo Clinic has solidified a new collaboration with long-time partner Sheba Medical Center in Israel, focused on supporting health tech startups fostered by each system’s incubator: at Mayo, Platform Accelerate, and at Sheba, the ARC Innovation Center.
| From theme parks to pharmacies -
As CVS Health continues to build out its digital business, it has hired Tilak Mandadi into a new role as chief data, digital, and technology officer. He’s previously held digital strategy leadership roles at MGM Resorts International, Disney Parks, and American Express. -
Having lost almost 100% of its stock value since a SPAC merger took it public last year, digital health company UpHealth appointed a new CEO. Replacing Ramesh Balakrishnan is Samuel J. Meckey, who most recently was head of healthcare at EXLService Holdings. -
Transcarent, a health care company for self-insured employers, named Peter Bridges as its new chief commercial officer, following his recent positions as president of Curai Health and chief commercial officer at Ginger. - Now that Intermountain Healthcare has completed its merger with SCL Health, it’s tapped the health system’s chief digital and information officer Craig Richardville to fill the same role for the combined network of 33 hospitals and 385 health clinics.
| What we’re reading -
Inaccurate pulse oximeter readings tied to less supplemental oxygen for darker-skinned ICU patients, STAT -
Digital mental health companies draw scrutiny and growing concerns, Kaiser Health News -
After Dobbs, advocates fear school surveillance tools could put teens at risk, The Markup | Thanks for reading! More Thursday,  | | | | Have a news tip or comment? Email Us | |
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