Rock Weekly – NEW

Digital health is on track for its second largest funding year ever, with $5.5B invested across the first three quarters of 2019. Against the backdrop of nine $100M+ mega deals, both behavioral and women’s health are on the rise—fueled by increased funding, larger deals, more later stage companies, and a strong pipeline of early stage innovation.

Digital solutions are changing how medications are delivered—from precision drug dosing to rightsizing regimens. To that end, we’re excited to share our two newest investments: InsightRX and Arine. InsightRX enables clinicians to individualize treatment at the point of care—helping identify not only the right drug for the right patient, but also the right dose at the right time. And Arine generates timely, personalized recommendations to ensure patients are on the safest and most effective meds. We're honored to welcome their teams to the Rock Health family!

No commitment issues here—Google and Mayo Clinic announced a 10-year collaboration to put Mayo’s patient data in the cloud, expand AI capabilities, and build a Google office in Rochester. We've seen a slew of such partnerships as big tech vies for healthcare’s cloud business nationwide. Meanwhile, Apple launched three new studies with leading medical researchers to explore whether its Watch is a meaningful tool for monitoring women’s health, hearing, and mobility.

Regulations that enable patients to summon medical records through consumer apps aim to usher in an era of choice and convenience. But not everyone sees eye to eye on the consequences. Some industry players are becoming more vocal about privacy concerns—“patient privacy can’t be retrieved once it’s lost”—while others argue the shift allows patients to push back on paternalism in medicine.

There’s been a lot of talk about putting health records in the palm of patients’ hands via APIs. But so far, they've been slow to adopt them. Two potential reasons for the trend: the apps have limited functionality, and health systems haven’t done enough to market them just yet.

If consumer-grade genetic insights (à la 23andMe) aren’t enough for you, head on over to a deep genomic sequencing clinic. For a hefty price tag, top medical institutions are offering substantially more thorough DNA analyses—but there's plenty of skepticism about targeting healthy clientele and downstream testing costs.

What if devices like your iPhone and Apple Watch could detect signs of dementia from everyday behavior data? They might, according to early results from a research collaboration between Apple, Eli Lilly, and Rock Health portfolio company Evidation Health. More on the research front from our portfolio: Podimetrics’ comprehensive remote monitoring solution detected 91% of diabetic foot complications in high-risk patients who had already lost one foot.

In the latest episode of Amazon vs. America’s pharmacy supply chain, Surescripts cut off vendor ReMy Health for improperly sharing medication histories with PillPack—and said it notified the FBI. The data feud didn't stop Amazon and other big tech execs from teaming up in a notable, renewed commitment to make claims data accessible to patients, however. Meanwhile, CMS announced a pilot program to put Medicare claims data in physicians' hands—an echo of the agency’s proposed interoperability rule earlier this year.

All eyes were on two digital health household names last week—both Health Catalyst and Livongo made their much-anticipated public market debuts on Thursday. Livongo’s executive chairman hinted that the IPO provides spending money for an acquisition or two—which wouldn’t come as a surprise since digital health companies remain the most likely acquirers of other digital health companies.

Sensors are the future of healthcare technology. So says former Apple CEO John Sculley—and tech giants are poised to change consumer health by adding remote monitoring capabilities to the likes of the Apple Watch and Google Nest. Elon Musk brainchild Neuralink wants to go one step further with its implantable brain-machine interface, starting in paralyzed patients. But with regulatory checkpoints and, well, actually having to decode the brain, we’re likely a long ways from such "symbiosis with AI."