Rock Weekly – NEW

Since 2015, Rock Health has annually surveyed thousands of US adults to understand consumer use of digital health technologies. Over the five years prior to 2020, adoption steadily climbed. Then came a global pandemic—and for the first time, digital health solutions were not simply an enhancement, but a necessity in healthcare access and delivery. As COVID-19 kicked the digital health ecosystem into high gear, consumer adoption of live video telemedicine, wearables, and digital health metric tracking grew by 10+ percentage points each from 2019 to 2020. But adoption was not equal across all technologies and survey respondent subgroups—check out how the data broke down and implications for innovators, enterprises, and consumers alike. Special thanks to Stanford’s Center for Digital Health for their partnership on this work.

The Watson Health hype cycle may soon come to a close for IBM. Executives are exploring a sale of the six-year-old business that, despite a handful of acquisitions (Merge Healthcare and Truven), never quite hit its stride. The logic of a successful platform is that it attracts large scale networks of users with its simplicity and that its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Amidst digital health’s raging platform wars, this potential exit could be seen as a cautionary tale that bundling a wide range of assets around one tech stack is not the same as platform building.

The stated goal of the newly-announced Truveta—a data aggregation startup rolling deep with 14 of the largest U.S. health systems on board—is to liberate meaningful health data from medical records to drive treatment discovery research and improve patient care. This exciting new venture offers promise and peril: there’s an opportunity to unleash the largest trove of real world clinical data ever. But doing so without compromising patient privacy—and ensuring the data is used to advance outcomes that actually matter to patients—will require clear intention and sustained focus. Success will require collectively taking advantage of all the second Machine Age has to offer—cloud computing, Big Data, the IoT, AI—in ways that no health system could tackle alone. Here's hoping for all the breakthrough, with none of the distraction.

Digital health solutions are popping up left and right to support vaccine rollout and distribution. Just a few days ago, Google announced a new solution to help governments with vaccine scheduling, analytics, and even COVID-19 case forecasting; Buoy began offering vaccine education modules and workforce interest surveys to employers; and data privacy startup Skyflow got into the mix with a digital passport offering. All of this recent activity got us thinking—where is the innovation headed and which gaps remain? Check out our take on the growing space of vaccine wraparound tech.

Groundhog Day is nearly upon us and lately, digital health news has us reminded of the eponymous cinematic classic. Last week, the platform wars heated up with DarioHealth's $31M acquisition of musculoskeletal solution Upright; Sharecare, Ro, and 23andMe joined the ever-growing list of companies throwing their hats into the SPAC ring; insurance startup Sidecar Health was dubbed the latest unicorn; and behavioral health solution Lyra snagged another ginormous $187M Series E raise. Same story, different day—but regardless of whether the groundhog sees his shadow tomorrow, spring has come early for digital health.

Wild times in the world of remote cardiac monitoring. Following Philips’s $2.8B acquisition of BioTelemetry in December, in the past few days Hillrom announced a $375M deal for Bardy Diagnostics, and Boston Scientific shared plans to snap up Preventice Solutions for $925M. All three acquired companies offer connected patch devices to monitor and diagnose heart rhythm disorders. What should we make of this rapid $4B+ in acquisitions of a trio of competitors? For one, there aren’t many startups remaining in the remote ECG market. More broadly, it’s clear that remote patient monitoring is going to be the standard of care for patients with heart rhythms disorders.

2020’s stress test to our healthcare system created what felt like a fast forward button for digital health, with unprecedented growth in funding, adoption, policymaking, and national attention.

Five days into 2021, it’s out with the old, and in with the new. Or in this case, out with Haven, and in with Amazon Care. For those following the Haven saga—aka the Amazon-Berkshire Hathaway-JPMorgan Chase healthcare joint venture—the news yesterday of the organization’s dissolution didn’t come as a huge surprise. The original launch three years ago promised a new era for employer-driven innovation. But since those early days, reports of executive turnover and the continued prioritization of independent healthcare objectives—most notably by Amazon—seemed to crowd out chances of collective progress. Now that the writing on the wall is official for this employer joint venture, we look forward to additional efforts from each company more closely aligned to their strengths.

Whew, 2020. We…made it? Almost? It’s hard to fathom that we are approaching the end of this unfathomable year. But it’s probably safe to say that those of us in digital health feel a renewed sense of purpose and commitment to play a pivotal role in improving healthcare across the board. For this final Rock Weekly of the year, we’re sharing a roundup of the stories that shaped the wild ride of 2020

Entrepreneurs are riding the last funding waves of 2020—and Olive, Everlywell, and Virta Health just caught some big ones. With this latest funding in tow, they are digital health’s three newest unicorns. However, the pressure to decide whether to go public, remain private (and continue to acquire), or aim for a strategic exit looms on the horizon.