Digital health news, funding roundup in the prior week; April 4, 2022

Hims & Hers and Carbon Health partner; White House's new COVID website; FDA approved second booster

Top Health News

• CMS announced it will offer more than $110 million to expand access to home and community-based services through Medicaid’s Money Follows the Person program. First authorized in 2005, MFP has provided states with $4.06 billion to support people who choose to transition out of institutions and back into their homes and communities.
• Quanterix Corporation, a company digitizing biomarker analysis with the goal of advancing the science of precision health, partnered with the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation to accelerate development of a multi-analyte plasma test for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. As part of the partnership, the ADDF will fund a series of prospective clinical trials to validate the test in collaboration with Amsterdam University Medical Centers.
• Multi-specialty telehealth platform Hims & Hers Health partnered with Carbon Health, a company that combines telehealth and in-person care, to enable broader access to a broader range of care options through the Hims & Hers platform. This collaboration will allow medical professionals on the Hims & Hers platform to direct patients to Carbon Health if they present with complex medical histories, conditions, or concerns that require further clinical attention.
• The Biden administration launched COVID.gov, a website to help people get better access to lifesaving tools like vaccines, tests, treatments, and masks, as well as get the latest updates on COVID-19 in their area. 
• The FDA authorized a second booster dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for older people and certain immunocompromised individuals.
• CVS Health Corp entered into an agreement with the state of Florida to resolve claims related to prescriptions for opioid medications for $484 million to be paid over a period of 18 years.

M&A

• Linus Health, a digital health company focused on brain health, completion its acquisition of Kinesis Health Technologies, a provider of physical function assessment for older adults
• Thomas H. Lee Partners, a private equity firm investing in growth companies, entered into an agreement to acquire a majority interest in Intelligent Medical Objects, a healthcare data enablement company
• Fresenius Kabi, a company specializing in medicines and technologies for infusion, transfusion and clinical nutrition, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ivenix, a medical technology company with a vision to eliminate infusion-related patient harm
• UnitedHealth Group's Optum acquired LHC Group, a patient-focused provider of in-home health care services
• Eight Sleep, a smart mattress company, acquired Span Health, a data-driven, health coaching company
• Mednow, an on-demand virtual pharmacy, completed its acquisition of online pharmacy Mednow East 
• TELUS Health, a healthcare software provider, acquired Sprout Wellness Solutions, a company that inspires people to improve their health through behaviour change
• Mon Health System and CAMC Health System signed a letter of intent to create a new single health care system to serve the people of West Virginia  
• Pharmacy consulting firm Visante acquired The Robertson Group, a pharmacy informatics and technology consulting group
• Lifesupply Health Supplies, an online retailer of medical, health and safety products, acquired Smart Move Medical, an importer and distributor of health and medical products from manufacturers in Asia

Funding Roundup

• Reema Health raised $8 million to help patients with their social determinants
• PocketHealth raised $16 million to give patients control over their imaging scans
• Nurse chat support platform Nurse-1-1 raised a $2.3 million seed round
• Players Health, a youth sports technology platform, raised $28 million
• Zephyr AI, a company using AI and data for precision medicine and drug discovery, raised $18.5 million
• Brightline, a provider of virtual behavioral health care for children, adolescents, and families, raised $105 million
• Brightside Health, a telemedicine platform for mental health, raised $50 million
• Med247, a Vietnamese telemedicine app, raised $4.5 million
• Qure.ai, which uses AI to enable accessible, affordable and timely care across the globe, raised $40 million
• Jeenie, a virtual interpreting platform that connects clinicians and patients to live interpreters on-demand, raised $9.3 million
• Altibbi, a Middle Eastern AI-based digital health platform, raised $44 million
• Altoida, a company performing brain health measurement and neurological disease diagnostics with AI and augmented reality, raised $14 million
• SoundMind, an audio-visual mental health app, raised $800,000
• AmplifyMD, a telemedicine platform connecting medical institutions with specialist doctors, raised $23 million
• AristaMD, a care management company that provides eConsult and referral management solutions, raised an undisclosed amount of funding
• Arzeda, which discovers and design new enzymes, raised $33 million
• Gozio Health, a location-aware mobile patient engagement platform, raised an undisclosed amount of funding
• Decisio Health, a clinical decision support platform designed to aggregate and prioritize real-time data, raised $18.5 million
• Wearable data-analytics startup VivoSense raised $25 million
• Sano Genetics, a personalised medicine research platform, raised $11 million

(Image source: pixabay.com)