Parkinson's tech picks up steam

With new funding and partnerships with major health systems, companies developing technology to track the progression of Parkinson's disease are gaining traction in care, I report in a new story.

Today, Kneu Health, which is in use at Cedars-Sinai and Mass General Brigham announced $5.6 million in funding. Rune Labs, which works with Kaiser Permanente, quietly raised $11 million over the summer. PKG Health, an older company in the space, will get a new burst of life after being acquired by Empatica.

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The state of M&A, funding, and growth

There's been an increase in digital health mergers & acquisitions, I wrote this week. Three factors are driving the uptick: the rise of AI and companies moving quickly to take as much of the health care market as possible; a wave of private equity funding fueling the creation of large health tech rollups; and a reckoning for smaller startups that are running out of cash. In the story I talk to prominent investors and companies about what they're seeing. (There's more M&A in the news roundup below.)

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M&A caused by companies giving up isn't necessarily a good sign for health tech, but even the most pessimistic appraisal in the story above conceded that things are improving. Over the last week I've seen a number of other optimistic data points:

Rock Health's closely watched quarterly funding recap found $9.9 billion has flowed into digital health companies so far this year, an increase from where we were last year. The authors observe the picture is a little fuzzy owing to an increase in companies that don't label their fundraising rounds in conventional terms, and slower overall progress on Series B rounds, "the checkpoint where startups show they can convert early traction into real growth. " To my observations about rollups and AI platforms above, Rock Health adds: "platforms risk being seen as feature bundles that incumbents can easily replicate."
Post-2020 health AI companies are scaling quickly to $100 million in annual revenue, according to data presented by Andreessen Horowitz's Julie Yoo. (She's also quoted a few times in my M&A story above.)
This "market map" of c ompanies applying AI to the prior-authorization problem from various angles illustrates how startups and incumbents alike see a huge opportunity to profit. I recall that in my recent interview with Breyer Capital's Morgan Cheatham he told me that "I always joke with people, once there's a market map of a space, it's too late to invest."
We've been tracking fundraising in AI scribing solutions, and my own envelope math pushes annual funding over $1 billion for the year. In a new report on the space, Pitchbook analysts offer their own figure, a useful breakdown of features offered by different scribes, and an assessment of the business prospects: "We see a minimum annual revenue opportunity in the U.S. of $3.8 billion for the ambient scribe functionality," they write. "Adding revenue cycle management (RCM) workflow agent capabilities should result in at least an additional $1.5 billion in annual revenue opportunity for the industry."

Health tech news roundup

Virtual mental health provider Talkspace acquired Wisdo Health, "a clinically-proven and AI-powered social health and peer support platform."
Qualtrics, which helps companies collect survey and other data about customer experience, will pay $6.75 billion in cash and equity to acquire Press Ganey, a company that offers similar services to health care organizations interested in patient experience.
Amazon is introducing new medication dispensing kiosks in One Medical locations.
Zignage raised a $12.5 million seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners for its "AI-powered care delivery platform" for home care.
Attuned Intelligence raised $13 million in seed funding led by Radical Ventures and Threshold Ventures for "supervised" voice AI to power hospital call centers.
In keeping with the trend of EHR companies r eimagining their software with AI, Athenahealth announced its "next generation AI-native EHR solution to simplify clinician experience."