LRVHealth

The numbers are in on #DigitalHealth investing trends for the first half of 2024 and Rock Health recorded $5.7 billion invested across 266 deals. As Keith J. Figlioli told MedCity News, LRVHealth believes this indicates that we’re entering “an active and steady market, which will be the new normal.” Good companies will find their way to solid growth, and capital will be available for those with proven, durable business models and attractive unit economics. Here’s the story via Katie Adams https://lnkd.in/ezSkmhnP

It’s hard to believe we’re already halfway through 2024! Time is flying by. With six months behind us, we are reviewing the first half of the year as we plan for a busy second half. In April, we held our Annual Meeting bringing together our strategic limited partners, executive advisors, and portfolio company CEOs for the opportunity to convene our network in an intimate setting (highlights recapped here: https://bit.ly/4f8N4mg). We also invested in two new companies – Humata Health, an AI-enabled prior authorization company, and an early-stage AI company in stealth. HSBC Innovation Banking released its mid-year Venture Healthcare Report this week and we’re proud to be recognized again as one of health tech’s most active investors. We were named alongside an impressive group of peers in this report after also being named in the year-end 2023 report as well. (Full report here: https://bit.ly/3y6WrSJ) There’s no slowing down for our team in the second half of the year. We’re excited about new investments we are reviewing and will be traveling extensively to attend the Oliver Wyman Health Innovation Summit, Health Evolution CONNECT, HLTH USA, and many other conferences. We are always eager to meet entrepreneurs, so if you are attending any of these events or would like to connect with us, please reach out!

AI will most certainly transform healthcare, and it’s imperative for the industry to develop guidelines and guardrails for this powerful technology now, at the early stages of adoption.    Brian Anderson, MD is leading the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI) to make sure it happens, and he spoke to Keith J. Figlioli about bringing the industry together on the latest episode of the Healthcare Is Hard podcast.    Listen here: https://lnkd.in/egAst7bh   #AI #Healthcare #HealthcareIsHard

Earlier this month, Ellen Herlacher joined Andrea Linna for a session on executive leadership in venture-backed digital health companies at #DHISEast in Boston.    They covered a lot of ground during the discussion, hitting on topics ranging from the dynamics of a founding team and how they complement each other (or don’t), to the need for everyone in the industry to challenge the stereotypes of a good founder. The truth is, exceptional founders come in all ages, races, genders and personalities, and having diverse perspectives will significantly strengthen the system overall.     Here's a quick recap compliments of Kristin Parran Faulder – thanks for the writeup!  https://lnkd.in/etXpd-33 

LRVHealth’s Christiana DelloRusso moderated a panel on #womenshealth last month at MedCity News INVEST. She was joined by Melissa Dennis MD MHA FACOG of Partum Health, Joe Connolly of Visana Health, and Melissa Rabin Lederer of mHUB . The group noted that the funding landscape for women’s health companies is getting better, partially due to more women getting promoted at VC firms.   Check out this MedCity News article by Marissa Plescia for more details on how women’s health conversations with investors have evolved. https://lnkd.in/gcz6XXvj

We are excited to have Humata Health join the LRVHealth family! Congratulations to Jeremy Friese, MD and the entire Humata Health team for closing a $25M investment. We led this investment alongside The Blue Venture Fund with participation from Optum Ventures, .406 Ventures, and Highmark Health Ventures. We are thrilled to be part of this group of strategic investors to accelerate the expansion of Humata’s AI-driven prior authorization solutions and expand its customer base. Humata Health’s platform offers a scalable, automated, end-to-end solution that not only reduces administrative burden and cost for both providers and payers but can also serve as the “automated handshake” between providers and payers on the best care for the patient. Leveraging its proprietary database, machine learning, AI, and other tools, Humata helps ensure that the right clinical documentation to meet payer requirements is submitted for every required prior authorization, improving first pass approvals for providers with less human touch for all parties. We are proud to be a part of Humata’s journey to help them transform the end-to-end experience of prior authorizations for payers and providers so more time and energy can be focused on patient care rather than paperwork. Read more about Humata Health’s funding announcement here: https://lnkd.in/gGzyDtAk

Mass General Brigham is the nation’s largest academic research enterprise and a leader in #Healthcare #Innovation. Over the past decade, with Chris Coburn as CIO, MGB has spun-out more than 300 companies while balancing adoption of innovation from outside its walls too. For the June episode of the #HealthcareIsHard podcast, Keith J. Figlioli interviewed Chris live on stage at #DHISeast where they discussed the unique environment for healthcare innovation right now, and so much more. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/eAdJ6pzV

💡 With over $40 billion in US public funding and billions more in private funding globally over the last 10 or so years, how much has healthcare changed despite all of this investment? Keith J. Figlioli kicked off Day 2 of DevDays with a thought-provoking keynote about the impact AI could have on global healthcare. Over 70% of healthcare executives are reporting a lack of clear ROI from digital health tech investments, which can take 5-10 years to be fully realized. But are we looking at all of this in the wrong way? Keith compares healthcare to the travel industry, which looked to get rid of a manual booking system way back in 1960 and only became a reality decades later. Healthcare is still near the beginning of its journey to digitization. So what’s next? The second wave of digital health solutions. The healthcare industry will begin to see really meaningful ROI when it is able to scale using AI to combat things like unstructured data, waste (e.g. to alleviate time and money spent on repeated admin and operational tasks), and healthcare worker burnout. What could this look like? In the short run, admin and operational use cases gain traction, such as prior auth and clinical documentation. In the long run, “frictionless” transactions between payers and providers and expanded clinical decision support. However, Keith stressed the importance of AI governance as we head down that road. What are your thoughts? Health Level Seven International #FHIRDevDays #FHIR #AI

Technology has not truly transformed #healthcare – yet – but AI-driven transformation is just beginning. Catch Keith J. Figlioli’s keynote at the #FHIRDevDays conference this week, where he’ll talk through the potential impact #AI will have on healthcare, the timeline, and what needs to happen in order to get there. He’ll be on the main stage for the opening session tomorrow, June 11.   https://lnkd.in/ef6HctBy  

Congratulations to our portfolio company, Sware, for raising its Series B, bringing its total raised since inception to $26M! This funding will accelerate life sciences innovation by automating FDA-mandated software validation.     Every time software that pharma, medical device and biotech companies use for development and manufacturing gets updated, the FDA requires it to be validated for data integrity, reliability, and patient safety. In a world filled with SaaS companies, where updates happen all the time, the manual process of validating software can add time and up to 30% more to the cost of a project. The complexity will only increase as these companies rely more on AI, which will have to be validated too.     Through its cloud-based Res_Q platform, Sware allows pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology companies to automate, integrate and scale their validation processes. Res_Q is built with an open API architecture that allows organizations to control all validation processes while performing intelligent risk assessments to initiate workflows and assign workloads based on risk profile.     LRVHealth is proud to be a part of Sware's journey and to support their mission of rescuing life sciences companies from the grip of validation debt; the unpaid cost of release, testing, GxP, and business requirements. Congratulations to CEO Ellen Reilly and the entire Sware team on this milestone.     Read more about Sware's Series B funding announcement here: https://lnkd.in/eQnStqas