Digital health news, funding round up in the prior week; February 21, 2023

Cigna rebranded; Elation Health bought Lightning MD; Aera Therapeutics raised $193M

Top Health News

• AARP announced that it chose Luna to be the exclusive provider of in-home physical therapy for its 38 million members. As a result of this partnership, AARP members will be matched with local therapists at the time and location of their choosing based on factors such as specialty, geography, and schedule. Members will be able to schedule in-home physical therapy sessions directly with Luna therapists at their convenience by speaking with a Luna concierge representative via a dedicated toll-free number specifically for AARP members. The Luna concierge representative will explain how Luna works, answer all of their questions and then schedule the AARP member with a licensed physical therapist suited perfectly for them. The AARP member will work with the same Luna physical therapist throughout their therapy treatments.
• Samsung announced a new partnership with Swedish birth control app Natural Cycles this week, bringing the company's temperature-based menstrual cycle tracking capabilities to the Galaxy Watch5 series. Founded in 2013, Natural Cycles uses body temperature, and other key fertility indicators, to determine each user’s unique fertility status. By integrating into the Samsung Watch5, users will automatically have their temperature taken via a sensor that uses infrared technology, rather than having to take it themselves in the morning. These new skin temperature-based cycle tracking capabilities will be available through the Samsung Health app on the Galaxy Watch5 and Watch5 Pro by the second quarter of this year, across 32 markets: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S.
• Equiva Health, a digital patient engagement and health relationship management provider, announced a new partnership with wireless internet service provider Infiniti Mobile to help bridge those gaps. Together the two companies are launching the Equiva ACP Connect Program, which is designed to help hospitals, nursing homes, and other healthcare organizations enroll patients and engage digitally with those individuals for targeted health initiatives. With Equiva ACP Connect, healthcare organizations will be able to configure tablets and aggregate the display of population-targeted educational resources and care management tools. Additionally, Equiva provides a service to distribute these tablets to enrollees via healthcare facilities or direct to individual homes. While the ACP is open to households in which at least one member is already enrolled in Medicaid, SNAP, SSI, WIC, Tribal-specific programs, and other government assistance programs, the majority are not enrolled: while 48 million households, nearly 40% of the households in the U.S., are eligible, the FCC says that only 15.4 million households had subscribed as of January 2023, and less than 15% of eligible Medicaid patients had enrolled.
• Cleerly, a company that uses artificial intelligence to identify the features of plaques that may cause heart attacks, announced a partnership on Tuesday with ClearDATA, a managed cloud, compliance and cyber defense provider for the healthcare industry, to keep its data safe and protected. As per this partnership, ClearDATA spun up a new account in AWS that could scale 10x, allowing Cleerly to expand its engineering team and capacity. With ClearDATA's help, Cleerly's engineering team now spends 20% or less of their time on security and compliance-related activities; that means that, since partnering with ClearDATA, Cleerly’s product development team has tripled its capacity and saved its engineers over 4,300 hours of cyber security compliancea management.
• The White House shared a report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, showing that from the first quarter of 2018 to the first quarter of 2022, the number of Americans with medical debt on their credit reports fell by 8.2 million. The report found that the percent of credit reports with any medical collection tradelines, meaning an appearance of an account that has been established with a lender, declined by roughly 24% in this period; at the same time, the share of consumer credit reports with any banking or financial collection tradelines remained basically the same. Still, 57% of consumer credit reports, or approximately 37.7 million, with at least one collection tradeline had at least one medical collection tradeline.
• Lark Health, an AI-driven provider for chronic conditions, and Smart Meter, a supplier of Remote Patient Monitoring solutions, announced a partnership with the goal to of helping health systems to support patients with type 2 diabetes. The partnership will combine Lark’s diabetes management program, called Diabetes Care, with Smart Meter's cellular-enabled iGlucose meter. Smart Meter’s iGlucose meter automatically sends glucose readings to the patient’s physician; now, thanks to this partnership, it will send that data to Lark as well, whose Diabetes Care program tracks medical appointments, A1c tests, kidney disease screenings, eye exams, flu shots, blood pressure tests, and cholesterol tests, while its AI-based digital coaching also tracks medication adherence for patients.
• Privia Health announced a new partnership with Community Medical Group (CMG) to launch Privia Quality Network of Connecticut (PQN CT). The company says this will be the largest Clinically Integrated Network (CIN) in Connecticut, with approximately 1,100 multi-specialty providers, including more than 430 primary care providers, caring for patients in over 450 practice locations. Going forward, Privia Health will be the majority owner of PQN CT, which contracts with Commercial and Medicare payers covering approximately 180,000 patient lives attributed to value-based care arrangements. Its total attribution includes approximately 29,000 Medicare beneficiaries, of which over 10,000 are participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program for the 2023 performance year. All current and future CMG providers will access all fee-for-service and value-based care payer contracts through PQN CT, and have the option to implement and leverage Privia’s technology and services platform.
• Stanford University and VinBrain partnered to design an AI-enabled platform to advance medical diagnosis and treatments. The DUA grants Stanford University and VinBrain the collaborative power to improve efficiency in radiology reports and advance AI in healthcare by sharing relevant de-identified data for model training and testing, while tackling complexity, ambiguity, and limitations in medical image interpretation. Starting with 240,000 anonymized medical images and report pairs provided by Stanford through this DUA, VinBrain will work to improve the accuracy of the RadGraph method through a research collaboration with Stanford to extract clinical entities and relation annotations from a large dataset of full-text radiology reports.'
• MindMaze, developer of AI-driven digital neurotherapeutics, announced the US and EU launch of Izar, a smart peripheral for patients with impairment in hand motor function. Izar is designed to fill a critical gap in neurological care today and aims to be the most effective hand dexterity and strength treatment in a wide range of neurological conditions. This proprietary peripheral is a significant step forward in MindMaze’s efforts to deliver more effective patient care through combinations of smart peripherals with its growing portfolio of Digital Care and Digital Medicine solutions. Izar is part of a comprehensive omnisite approach to the treatment and maintenance of neurological diseases, including Stroke, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Traumatic Brain Injury, among others.
• CancerCare released an Employer Toolkit on Biomarker Testing, to help those involved in benefit design make optimal decisions about covering cancer biomarker testing for their employees. It includes explainers, case studies and actionable tools and recommendations based on evidence-based guidelines from independent, expert organizations. CancerCare's Biomarker Toolkit is designed to help employers understand the role and benefits of cancer biomarker testing, so they can ask their consultants and insurance providers the right questions, avoid coverage provisions that could negatively impact covered employees, and design coverage that best meets the needs of employees facing a cancer diagnosis. The Toolkit explains the basics of biomarkers, their role in guiding treatment decision-making, the biomarker testing landscape, and the current gaps in biomarker testing coverage. It also includes a video series explaining biomarkers, biomarker testing, and highlighting the real-life stories of cancer patients who have benefitted from biomarker testing.
• Viz.ai, a provider of AI-powered disease detection and care coordination, announced a collaboration with BIOS Clinical Trials Coordinating Center at Johns Hopkins University, to expedite patient enrollment for the National Institutes of Health funded Biomarker and Edema Attenuation in IntraCerebral Hemorrhage study1. With this partnership, BEACH research teams will have access to Viz.ai’s clinical trial acceleration platform, Viz RECRUIT software, which has demonstrated a 3X2 acceleration in clinical trial enrollment. Viz.ai’s cloud-based technology broadens the recruitment funnel in both size and diversity by identifying patients at trial-eligible hospitals. Viz RECRUIT identifies trial-eligible patients by scanning patient images in real-time, allowing for around-the-clock automatic identification of potential study subjects with notifications sent to research teams.
• The San Francisco Department of Public Health announced that the City’s COVID-19 public health emergency declaration and Health Officer Order No. C19-07y, “Safer Return Together”, along with additional health orders, will end on February 28 in alignment with the end of California’s COVID-19 State of Emergency. While the San Francisco Health Officer will rescind the Safer Return Together order, the Health Officer intends to issue two orders that will affect hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and other healthcare and jail settings. Under the first order, staff in these settings will still be required to wear a mask when interacting with patients, clients, or people who are incarcerated. Masking requirements for the general public in these settings will end. In addition, masking requirements in homeless shelters for both the general public and staff will also end. These changes will go into effect on March 1.
• MedCrypt, a proactive cybersecurity solution provider for medical device manufacturers, announced its work with six diabetes care technology providers, including manufacturers of insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors, to enable the next generation of diabetes technology to get to market faster with security built in by design. MedCrypt currently provides enhanced security products and services for seven of the top 10 medical device manufacturers and startups and mid-sized companies, including the leading manufacturers of surgical robotics technologies and virtual reality applications for minimally invasive surgery.
• Caregility, an enterprise telehealth company dedicated to connecting care for patients and clinicians everywhere, announced Mary Washington Healthcare as one of the first organizations to implement its new Inpatient Virtual Engagement solution at Stafford Hospital. The Virginia-based not-for-profit health system will leverage IVE to support a new Virtual Nursing program that will allow Registered Nurses working from a virtual nursing hub located on Stafford Hospital’s campus to field patient care tasks that do not require hands-on care using synchronous, video-enabled engagement at the patient bedside. Building upon the health system’s success with virtual Intensive Care Unit (tele-ICU) support during the pandemic, the Virtual Nursing program aims to improve patient safety and reduce strain on clinicians so bedside RNs can focus on direct patient care and their full scope of practice.
• The Humana Foundation, philanthropic arm of Humana, announced a new strategy to advance health equity by eliminating unjust and unnecessary barriers in health and healthcare. The Foundation will invest in community-centered partners and evidence-based programs that support seniors, veterans and school-aged children in living connected, healthy lives. In particular, efforts will focus on creating healthy emotional connections, as a vital part of a holistic approach to care and shaping a healthier approach to nutrition in order to support lifelong health and wellbeing.
• Centura Health, the 20-hospital joint venture between CommonSpirit Health and AdventHealth, is being dissolved after a 27-year run serving Colorado and western Kansas communities. The breakup will leave AdventHealth operating and managing Centura’s five Adventist hospitals as well as their affiliated clinics, all of which are located in Colorado. CommonSpirit will be operating and managing the remaining 15 hospitals and other locations.
• Aya Healthcare, a medical staffing company based in San Diego, formed a partnership with UC San Diego Health to recruit nurses and other hospital workers to help deal with ongoing shortages of hospital personnel. The company still connects travel nurses with UC San Diego Health, but since last year, has been finding nurses and other workers to fill permanent positions.
• Davis Health System and Vandalia Health announced a strategic partnership agreement that will increase access to certain highly-specialized services and care for patients in the DHS service area. Together, the health systems have identified immediate needs for support in certain service lines: the CAMC Cancer Center, which treats more patients with cancer than any other hospital in West Virginia, will support DMC’s Cancer Care Center in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients; and Telemedicine Centers at DMC, Webster and Broaddus Critical Access Hospitals, will bring easier access to CAMC specialists. Advanced technology will allow patients to connect with specialists without leaving their community.
• ChristianaCare announced the launch of a new clinically integrated network, the ChristianaCare Clinical Alliance. ChristianaCare Clinical Alliance is a formal partnership among clinicians who work collaboratively to deliver well-coordinated, evidence-based care to improve quality, efficiency and health outcomes. Participants in the ChristianaCare Clinical Alliance will have access to new value-based care arrangements with payors that provide financial rewards for improving quality and reducing unnecessary utilization. The Clinical Alliance will give its members the tools to be successful in these arrangements, including ChristianaCare’s CareVio®, which has been recognized as one of the nation’s most innovative care management programs. The network also will provide expert support for quality, reporting and practice optimization.
• WELL Health Technologies, a company focused on positively impacting health outcomes by leveraging technology to empower healthcare practitioners and their patients globally, announced that it established a combined goal of donating $50,000 to support the Red Cross in its efforts to support the millions of Turkish and Syrian citizens who have been impacted by the earthquake. WELL will be matching the first $15,000 of donations. WELL's CEO and members of the senior management team will be contributing to this donation appeal and have invited the Company's entire network of employees, consultants, friends, family, shareholders, vendors, healthcare providers and patients to also donate to this cause.
• Zymtronix, a developer of cell-free process technologies, and Ginkgo Bioworks, which is building the leading platform for cell programming and biosecurity, announced a partnership to optimize enzymes used in Zymtronix's proprietary cell-free platform for the production of important ingredients in food, agriculture, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Ginkgo Enzyme Services offers partners end-to-end support for the discovery, optimization, and production of enzymes for diverse applications. Through the partnership, Ginkgo will leverage its suite of enzyme services to engineer enzymes for Zymtronix's applications using metagenomic enzyme discovery as well as improve enzyme expression and production host performance.
• Uwill, a teletherapy solution for colleges and students, announced a partnership with Grand View University to complement campus counseling and enhance individuality of options. Grand View students will have access to Uwill's mental health and wellness environment, including immediate appointments with licensed therapists who meet each student's unique needs and preferences. Utilizing its proprietary technology and counselor team, Uwill pioneered the first student and therapist matching platform. The solution offers an immediate appointment with a licensed counselor based on student preferences, all modalities of teletherapy, a direct crisis connection, wellness events, realtime data, and support. Uwill partners with students from all 50 states, including 2 other Iowa institutions: Mercy College of Health Sciences and Drake University.
• Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and King’s officially opened their new MedTech laboratory, the HK MedTech Hub, in Hong Kong. The HK MedTech Hub is a joint partnership with the vision of creating a world-class academically led collaboration that will bring together complementary strengths in medical devices research, surgical robotic and AI for healthcare research. The partnership has been developed to provide the maximum opportunity for rapid and close integration of research endeavours between CAIR and King’s with a focus on accelerated translation and commercialisation.
• Veradigm, a provider of healthcare data and technology solutions, and HealthVerity, a provider of Identity, Privacy, Governance, and Exchange for real-world data, announced a collaboration that will advance real-world research and improve patient care for those with cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The collaboration makes Veradigm’s data from their Cardiovascular and Metabolic Registries fully interoperable with de-identified patient data from HealthVerity Marketplace, the nation’s largest healthcare and consumer data ecosystem. The HealthVerity IPGE platform is an integrated technology and real-world data infrastructure that allows disparate data to be accurately resolved to unique privacy-protected identities, then linked in a HIPAA-compliant manner and exchanged for a myriad of use cases. By connecting Veradigm’s Cardiology and Metabolic registries with broad scale healthcare and consumer data from HealthVerity, the collaboration provides clinical researchers with unprecedented access to regulatory-quality, HIPAA-compliant and research-ready data to advance analytics and treatments for these prevalent conditions.
• Modular Devices,, a provider of mobile and modular medical imaging equipment labs and cleanroom solutions, partnered with Interim Diagnostic Imaging, a provider of mobile CT and MRI medical imaging labs in the United States and Canada. The addition of Interim Diagnostic Imaging significantly increases Modular Devices’ fleet while providing diversification and improving its product offering. The combined company will now offer  customers a full range of medical imaging labs including catheterization, cleanroom, PET/CT, MRI, and CT. We are excited to better serve our customers and execute our expansion strategy.
• Curia, a biometric technology solutions company, and FITGMR, an esports performance and player development company, partnered with Augustana to monitor and analyze the physical and mental performance of Vikings esports players during training and competition. The biometric technology will allow coaches and trainers to develop more effective training and performance-enhancing strategies for the team.
• Klick Health, an independent commercialization partner for life sciences, announced the debut of its venture studio btwelve, providing entrepreneurs with commercial expertise and investment to bring emerging concepts to the health market. The new venture studio confirmed it is already working with a number of clients, including Seed Health and Ostro.
• Prognica Labs and NeuroSpinal Hospital & CyberKnife Cancer Center entered into a partnership that aims to drive the growth of clinical research and development, public health awareness programs including screening and diagnosis campaigns and to deploy the AI based technologies to improve patient outcomes, throughout the country. With this partnership, they plan to accelerate and intensify breast cancer screening with the use of advanced AI diagnostic technology; collaborate to advance their mutual research programs with the aim of discovering, identifying or developing the innovation in technology and life science suitable for development and commercialization; collaboratively write research papers and researchbased books to be published on various peer-reviewed journals; and foster opportunities to work on research and education to the healthcare professionals and the medical students.
• Artificial intelligence specialist Sonrai Analytics signed a strategic partnership with Alliance Care Technologies, a developer of innovative solutions in digital healthcare, to bring transformational AI solutions to enhance cancer detection and biomarker discovery to the UAE market. The agreement will give UAE researchers and clinicians access to AI-supported clinical systems to assist in the accelerated detection of cancerous tumours and improve patient outcomes. Through the partnership, ACT can access Sonrai’s proprietary AI technology and expertise to bring this precision oncology capability to more oncologists, hospital systems and other medical providers in the UAE.
• The Eidos LGBTQ+ Health Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing partnered with Gaingels, an LGBTQIA+/Allies private investment syndicate, to provide their portfolio of companies access to Penn’s academic research to make an impact into the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ communities. Over the next five years, Gaingels portfolio companies will have the opportunity to engage with the academic, intellectual, and research resources of the University of Pennsylvania.
• SOPHiA GENETICS SA, the creator of a cloud-native global data-sharing network and health analytics platform, partnered with AstraZeneca to apply their multimodal technology and expertise to the biopharmaceutical company’s oncology portfolio. The multimodal approach will go beyond a single data modality, combining radiomics analysis of medical imaging data, molecular data, digital pathology, clinical and biologic data for a more comprehensive assessment of multimodal signatures leveraging proprietary AI and machine learning technology. Together, the companies will examine ways to accelerate clinical trials, support evidence generation for market access, and improve clinical decision-making, helping clinicians to select the best possible treatments. SOPHiA GENETICS is able to support this vision in practice today. In parallel, SOPHiA GENETICS launched its own real-world DEEP-Lung-IV clinical study to leverage its multimodal machine learning-powered analytics capabilities to identify multimodal predictive signatures of response to immunotherapy for patients with advanced lung cancer.
• Tachmed has teamed up with Doctor Now in a partnership that will see Doctor Now assist in the trials and roll-out of the Tachmed products. The partnership will see Doctor Now help influence routes to market across the NHS and private primary care and hospital providers. The insights that are gathered during the trials will be used to inform future deployment of the Tachmed device to consumers and organisations.
• Fountain Life, a preventative health and longevity company committed to transforming global healthcare from reactive to proactive, announced that it opened a fourth precision diagnostic center designed to help members live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives by detecting illnesses at their earliest stages. The newest center is located within Orlando's acclaimed Lake Nona community and features innovative artificial intelligence technologies to collect and assess data that can aid in diagnosing conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and neurodegenerative disease before they can cause harm. Lake Nona will also serve as the new headquarters site for Fountain Life.
• M2GEN, a bioinformatics company accelerating discoveries in oncology research through industry-leading data and analytics, and Zephyr AI, a company building novel transparent AI to address unmet needs across the full spectrum of precision medicine, announced a multi-year strategic partnership that will accelerate drug discovery and expanded use investigations for cancer treatments. This collaboration leverages Zephyr AI’s industry-leading machine learning platform, and M2GEN’s unmatched real-world data set (RWD) to create a best-in-class oncology discovery product. In this partnership, M2GEN will license its expansive RWD to Zephyr AI, providing the latter with access to the richest clinicogenomic data set available in oncology today. In return, Zephyr AI will become a bioinformatics partner for M2GEN, providing the company with AI and machine learning capabilities to enhance their products and services. Together, this partnership will yield critical insights enabling both companies to discover new cancer treatments and expanded use cases, better identify new targets, and improve clinical trial design.
• SweatHouz infrared sauna and cold plunge studios kicked off a partnership with Hyperice, a global high-performance wellness brand, to elevate the in-studio experience by combining their world-class recovery and wellness modalities. The partnership enhances SweatHouz’s current offerings, including infrared sauna, cold plunge, redlight therapy and hydromassage, helping members optimize their recovery with Hyperice’s science-backed technology. Hyperice’s integration includes four products: Core, the brand’s immersive meditation experience; Normatec, dynamic air compression for faster recovery; Hypervolt, a portable percussion massager; and Venom, a complete heat and massage therapy system.
• Axxess, a technology innovator for healthcare at home, partnered with Trella Health, a market intelligence and CRM, to  enable hospice organizations to enhance their referral management and improve processes with meaningful data. Trella Health's Marketscape CRM integration clinically connects sales and marketing teams with patient data. Users will have operational insight into referral and admission totals and attribution to marketing tactics.
• Caraway, a digital healthcare company for Gen Z, announced a partnership with Ash Wellness, an at-home diagnostics and testing company, to combat the rise in sexually transmitted infections on college campuses. Caraway's members can now access complimentary, discrete and on-demand STI kits delivered directly to their addresses in New York, California, Ohio and North Carolina, with follow-up guidance and treatment by an integrated care team. The partnership provides Gen Z with the tools they need to prioritize their sexual health on their own terms.
• Aramark, a provider of food, facilities, and uniform services, announced an exclusive new partnership with the Healthcare Plus Solutions Group, which is part of the Aramark Healthcare+ strategy to drive innovative, evidence-based improvement for hospitals. HPSG will develop coaching and training to build skills for patient interaction that gives Aramark Healthcare+ managers and front-line associates the expertise to support nursing units and help improve patient care. Together, the group will create a new “Leadership Development Institute” to teach techniques that effectively connect caregivers and patients. For example, Aramark Healthcare+ managers will learn to conduct guided rounding conversations with their front-line teams and will receive similar training and tools to have rounding discussions with nurses and patients. All training will include an official certification process.
• VitalTelemetrics, a data-driven health and wellness company announced a strategic partnership with Vocare, a health monitoring company to bring a health and wellness solution to the market. The joint solution from VitalTelemetrics and Vocare will address the challenges in getting access to healthcare services in rural areas, hospice care, the Department of Corrections, and education. The joint solution will help reduce the time needed to bring the individuals together with the health and wellness professionals and will provide help in addressing the health access and equity issues that some of our communities regularly face. This solution will also provide near Realtime access to healthcare data to individuals seeking health and wellness services and their providers via a secure portal with proper consent. In corrections and education, this solution will help with the quick triaging of chronic care conditions that might need immediate notification to internal or other healthcare professionals to provide immediate attention and care needed to improve the healthcare situation and reduce liability. Most importantly this solution is aligned with value-based care, healthcare interoperability, and access to health records for patients and their healthcare service providers.
• Advocates for Community Health and Health Choice Network, a national membership organizations serving federally qualified health centers across the country, partnered to provide enhanced policy, advocacy, and technological support to drive increased resources and access to quality care in underserved communities nationwide. The partnership will harness the vision and leadership of two cutting-edge organizations that joined in a joint mission to lead health centers into a new era of impact and success. Through this collaborative effort, ACH will pursue visionary policy and advocacy and work with HCN to leverage their technological innovations and solutions to support health centers in achieving community transformation at the local and national levels.
• VisualDx, a web-based clinical decision support system, partnered with the American Medical Women’s Academy, the oldest multispecialty organization dedicated to advancing women in medicine and improving women’s health, to offer assistive technology to all AMWA members. Through the collaboration, female physicians, medical students, and other members can access VisualDx for help with diagnostic and treatment decisions. AMWA members will be granted a limited-time use of VisualDx, which includes advanced clinical search capabilities and an unmatched library of medical images of longstanding and emergent diseases, to optimize differential diagnosis and treatment, as well as patient communication. Driven by shared missions of fostering greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in medicine, VisualDx and AMWA will empower women in medicine with powerful clinical support tools to enhance patient care and outcomes.
• ModuleMD, an ONC-certified Electronic Health Record and Practice Management SaaS company, announced a new partnership with Fi-Med Management's Well Living Initiative. This includes service and software module that assists in improving patient health and outcomes without increasing practice provider's workload. A suite of patient services and technologies designed to facilitate care coordination and chronic care management services between appointments. This partnership will provide seamless bi-directional integration between WLI's CCM platform and providers' ModuleMD EHR system.
• Upswing Health, a musculoskeletal healthcare innovator, announced it partnered with WLT Software Enterprises, a benefit plan management solution, to deliver care to patients with MSK conditions via a delivery model that can reduce costs by up to 40%. Upswing will be available to WLT’s network of more than 65 Third-Party Administrators  nationwide. Both companies regard this partnership as an opportunity to significantly impact and enhance the delivery of value-based care for MSK patients. Upswing will be embedded in WLT’s technology infrastructure, creating a seamless path for TPAs to offer their clients and, most importantly members who need it most, access to Upswing.
• GCAP Group, Global Doctors and Nurses Network, and Taiwan Medical Tourism Development Association, announced that they will establish a strategic partnership to jointly develop innovative health medical technologies and services in the Middle East and the rest of the world provides high-quality, more effective, and efficient health care products and care services. The partnership will be officially launched in March 2023, and the three companies will start to cooperate with GDNN's Tele Urgent Call platform to bring GCAP and TMTDA high-quality smart medical services in North America, including Canada, the United States, and Asia. Products and medical services, projects that improve patient outcomes and enhance the healthcare experience in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world.
• Kare Mobile and Amerigroup Georgia partnered to provide access to dental care in areas across Georgia where Amerigroup members often struggle to find a dentist. Amerigroup donated two customized dental vans that Kare Mobile Inc. will use to travel throughout the state. In partnership with local dentists and hygienists, these mobile services will provide preventive and restorative dental care and will promote the lifelong benefits of good periodontal health and care. Additionally, the vans are equipped to perform extractions, crowns, partials, and dentures. Kare Mobile Inc.’s fully functional dental vans will begin to see patients later in February.
• Casella and BD announced they are piloting a circularity program to extend recovery efforts to BD syringes discarded by healthcare facilities. The pilot will assess the feasibility of recycling these products back into the manufacturing process, creating additional local sourcing options and alleviating pressures on the critically challenged supply chain system. The team will focus on the collection, treatment, and scaling of solutions while also evaluating a variety of mechanical and advanced recycling capabilities for processing BD products after disposal in healthcare settings. Initial results are expected in the first half of 2023.
• Cigna Corporation announced a branding to reflect its growing portfolio of businesses and best serve its customers and clients. The new holding company name is The Cigna Group, which is a global health company committed to improving health and vitality. The company and its businesses employ more than 70,000 people and maintain sales capabilities in more than 30 countries and jurisdictions. Cigna Healthcare is the health benefits provider of The Cigna Group, serving customers and clients through its U.S. Commercial, U.S. Government and International Health businesses, while Evernorth Health Services partners across the health care system to serve customers and clients, including health plans, employers, government entities and others. 
• Big Sky Care Connect, Montana’s designated healthcare information exchange, selected the Rhapsody Interoperability Suite from Lyniate, a healthcare data interoperability company. BSCC will leverage Rhapsody health solutions as a key component of its architecture to connect, classify and cleanse data from its partners, which include providers, payers, and government programs. This partnership will ultimately improve health across BSCC’s vast, distributed healthcare network in Montana.
• Revuud, a healthcare IT staffing marketplace, joined forces with the Texas Hospital Association to change the game for healthcare organizations seeking top engineering talent. The duo is empowering a connected community of Healthcare Systems and highly qualified healthcare IT professionals to collaborate, without the need for a recruiter. With the growing demand for skilled engineers in the healthcare industry, this partnership provides a much-needed solution that streamlines the hiring process, saves time, and offers access to a network of top IT talent. The platform provides healthcare organizations with the ability to quickly search and connect with IT candidates, review their portfolios, and evaluate their credentials and references, all in one place.
• Wellworks for You, a global health and wellbeing management and technology company, and Spirence partnered to provide new behavioral health solutions to their existing platform. Through the Wellworks for You platform, employees can take advantage of 8 different self-paced programs. These programs range from over one hundred mental wellbeing educational videos, personalized telephonic coaching, in-person retreats and virtual or onsite seminars, family educational services, and more. The program includes access to a 24/7 Family Support & Resource Consultation hotline. This will provide employees with immediate, personalized support via a corporate wellness coordinator experienced in assisting people through mental health and substance use disorder crises.
• Central Ohio Primary Care, a physician led organization, partnered with agilon health, a company empowering physicians to transform health care in our communities, and COPE Health Solutions to design and implement a 12-month post-graduate Advanced Practice Provider fellowship program that enables newly-graduated Advanced Practice Nurses and Physician Assistants to spend a transitional year establishing themselves as successful, well-rounded primary care providers. The inaugural APP program – a first for COPC – will help Fellows develop the skills necessary to practice in a highly collaborative, interprofessional primary care setting, focused on senior care, that enables better patient care and improved health outcomes. COPC is now accepting applications for its initial cohort of Fellows to begin the program in May 2023.
• Health Transformation Alliance,  a cooperative of nearly 60 of America's largest employers, partnered with Cognoa, a pediatric behavioral health company, to offer the company's Canvas Dx diagnostic device for autism to all HTA Member organizations and their employees. HTA will offer its member organizations – some of the most influential and significant brands in the U.S. – the opportunity to add Canvas Dx to their benefit design. As the first FDA authorized diagnostic device of any kind for autism, the goal of Canvas Dx is to alleviate wait times for specialists and streamline the arduous journey for families seeking answers by giving more healthcare providers the ability to diagnose or rule out autism in children ages 18 to 72 months who are at risk for developmental delay.
• Bio-Techne Corporation and Cell Signaling Technology announced the addition of Simple Western validation to CST antibodies. This will allow researchers in various disciplines an easier way to study important molecular signaling pathways on a trusted and validated platform. Obtaining accurate data efficiently and fast is key to advancing drug discovery and development. This ongoing partnership will allow for an expanded menu of Simple Western validated antibodies for various targets across multiple disciplines.
• Clinetic, a growing healthtech startup, announced that it is contracted with 10 of the top academic health systems in the United States. These collaborations enable Clinetic to bring its cutting-edge technology to more than 65 hospitals and 2,300 care locations across 12 states. The Clinetic platform simplifies and accelerates patient recruitment for clinical studies by empowering health systems to harness the potential of their electronic health record data and patient relationships. The platform also enables researchers to surface deep, timely clinical insights for real-world data studies.
• UVA Health, community healthcare organizations and EMS agencies in seven Central Virginia counties are partnering to expand healthcare services in these rural communities, including for patients experiencing a stroke. Backed by a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the federal Health Resources & Services Administration, the new program will provide education and training opportunities on stroke, pre-hospital emergency care, and post-hospital follow-up care for paramedics, emergency medical technicians, nursing and EMS trainees, community health workers and other rural healthcare providers. Program partners include EMS agencies and community health organizations in Buckingham, Culpeper, Greene, Louisa, Madison, Nelson and Orange counties. Additionally, ambulances in these counties will be outfitted with UVA Health’s iTREAT mobile telemedicine system.
• HealthCues, a preventative healthcare platform helping employers and employees bridge the gap between preventative healthcare and positive financial impact, announced its partnership with Stayhealthy. Stayhealthy is a healthcare technology company bringing together the most advanced tools to measure, track and change the health and wellness status to millions of users. HealthCues continued expansion of service offerings is excited to partner with Stayhealthys various mobile apps and platforms that will be provided through HealthCues existing platform. This partnership allows HealthCues users direct access to a suite of resources, apps, entertainment, and games – all of which are focused on the mission to support and promote a healthy lifestyle.

M&A

• Insulet, a developer of tubeless insulin pump technology, acquired assets related to pump-based automated insulin delivery technologies from Bigfoot Biomedical, a developer of intelligent connected injection support systems
• Elation Health, a company powering innovation in primary care, acquired Lightning MD, a cloud-based medical billing and payer connectivity company
• Prosperity Behavioral Health, a provider of financial solutions for behavioral health facilities, acquired Elevated Billing, a revenue-cycle management company that serves behavioral health facilities
• 3Z Brands, a vertically-integrated manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, and direct-to-consumer distributor sleep products, acquired Nolah Sleep, a company that looks to change the health and wellness of Americans through a focus on good sleep
• Elevance Health closed its acquisition of BioPlus, a comprehensive specialty pharmacy subsidiary of CarepathRx
• Laborie, a diagnostic and therapeutic medical technology company, acquired Novonate, and its LifeBubble technology, a device for umbilical catheter protection and securement to improve safety for neonates in the intensive care setting
• Bavarian Nordic A/S entered into an agreement with Emergent BioSolutions to acquire two marketed travel vaccines: Vivotif for the prevention of typhoid fever and Vaxchora against cholera, as well as a Phase 3 vaccine candidate for the prevention of Chikungunya virus
• HouseWorks, a provider of personal care services in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Maine, signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Personal Care division at Amedisys, a provider of home health, hospice, and high-acuity care
• Alleaves, a provider of ERP software solutions to the cannabis industry, acquired Bio-Tech Medical Software, a cannabis software subsidiary of Forian, a provider of technology, analytics and data science driven solutions
• Spacelabs Healthcare, a provider of medical equipment and services, acquired predictive analytics company PeraHealth
• Lotus Bio-Technology Development Corp., a holding digital healthcare company, acquired Pioneer Digital Health, a telehealth technology company
• Select Medical partnered with nonprofit OhioHealth to acquire a rehabilitation hospital and 38 NovaCare outpatient physical therapy centers in Ohio

Funding Roundup 

• IncludeHealth, a hybrid musculoskeletal care provider, raised $11 million
• Axena Health, a prescription digital therapeutic for incontinence, raised $25 million
• MDI Health, an AI-powered pharmacology platform, raised $20 million
• Twentyeight Health, a telehealth company providing affordable access and convenience for reproductive and sexual health, raised $8.3 million
• Thatch, a platform which helps startups offer competitive health and wellness benefits in less time, launched with over $6 million
• Previa Medical, a startup specialized in developing predictive medical devices, raised €2.1 million
• Aera Therapeutics, a biotechnology company leveraging a proprietary protein nanoparticle delivery platform to unlock the full potential of genetic medicines, launched with $193 million
• Nanite, a non-viral gene delivery company, raised $6 million
• Codagenix, a clinical-stage synthetic biology company, raised $25 million
• Nextkidney, developer of a home hemodialysis device, raised €11.9 million
• Relavo, a company dedicated to making home dialysis more accessible, raised an undisclosed amount of funding
• Rhaeos, a clinical stage medical device company focused on addressing an unmet need in the care of people with hydrocephalus, raised $10.5 million
• Arbutus Medical, a medical device company developing surgical drill technology and procedure kits that improve hospital workflow and reduce costs to treat patients, raised an undisclosed amount of funding
• Doctoria, a video consultation platform for registered medical professionals, raised £50,000
• Freedom Biosciences, developer of next-generation therapeutics to treat mental health conditions, raised an undisclosed amount of funding
• FYR Medical, a medical device company working to commercialize light field electro-optical technology, raised $2.6 million
• Cydar Medical, which uses AI technology to transform the way information is provided to clinicians undertaking image-guided minimally invasive surgery, raised $11.5 million

(Image source: biglanguage.com)