Every Monday we share a quick “best of” from the week that was with our Inner Circle members. What’s trending in the Femtech Insider community and beyond? We’ve got you covered! In this week's brief we talk about...
- Highlights: LGBTQ+ Health & Kindbody acquires Phosphorus Labs
- DAOs in Healthcare
- Biotech's Path Through the Downturn
- Startup Spotlight: Juna, Solarea Bio & Tinto
- And more!
Highlights
➡️ Kindbody acquires Phosphorus Labs
It's been only a few months since fertility scale-up Kindbody acquired Vios Fertility, a network of fertility clinics, and earned unicorn status. And last week the company was back with some more acquisition news: The company is reportedly acquiring Phosphorus Labs, a preventative genomics company, which allows Kindbody to bring genetic testing and screening in-house. The Phosphorus team will join a newly created division at Kindbody: KindLabs.
➡️ LGBTQ+ Health
Last week we covered the launch of imi, a new digital mental health tool designed to support LGBTQ+ youth. And since it's pride month, we thought it'd be a great time to share a couple of other companies also innovating in this space with you in our LGBTQ+! Here it goes! 👇
Folx Health is a digital-native health platform designed specifically for the Queer Community.
Plume provides online access to HRT for the trans-community at the touch of a button from the comfort and safety of home.
Included Health is a comprehensive health platform partnering with employers to connect LGBTQ+ members to culturally competent, quality providers who understand the unique needs of the community.
LVNDR is giving LGBTQ+ people equal access to healthcare
Luvie connects the LGBTQIA community to vetted sexual wellness professionals, support and care
Queerly Health helps its users to connect with LGBTQ+ friendly health and wellness practitioners on their own time, from anywhere.
Lighthouse helps its users to find the right LGBTQ friendly healthcare and wellness providers for them
P.S. Wanna learn more? We authored a 5-Minute Brief dedicated to LGBTQ+ Health last year.
➡️ In other news...
Noteworthy this week was also Nabla's pivot from B2C to B2B and Anthem's new partnership with Happify Health in the maternal health space! 👀
DAOs in Healthcare
his week we took a look at DAOs in healthcare and stumbled upon a piece authored a few months ago by Kim Bellard, which we though was quite insightful.
"You may have seen the news that Kaiser Permanente has signed on to be an organizing member of Graphite Health, joining SSM Health, Presbyterian Healthcare Services, and Intermountain Healthcare. Graphite Health, in case you missed its October launch announcement, is “a member-led company intent on transforming digital health care to improve patient outcomes and lower costs,” focusing on health care interoperability.
That’s all very encouraging, but I’m wondering why it isn’t a DAO. In fact, I’m wondering why there aren’t more DAOs in healthcare generally."
Biotech's Way Through the Downturn
A market downturn is upon us and understandably many are wondering how it will impact the femtech and healthcare innovation ecosystem at large.
Peter Kolchinsky is the Founder and Managing Partner at RA Capital Management & Author of The Great American Drug Deal and has imho written one of the most insightful pieces on the topic: Biotech’s Dulcius Ex Asperis: The Way Through This Downturn.
Yes. it may be focused on biotech, but it sure has many interesting take-aways for anyone in the business of healthcare aka many of you in our Inner Circle community! 👇
An excerpt:
We appreciate why investors might be worried that the broader markets, including biotech, could be in for a protracted downturn and things could still get worse. We would urge them not to think about biotech in the same way they think about other technology sectors.
Healthcare is non-discretionary and therefore essentially deflation-proof. People don't generally put off medical treatments, at least not for long. And great medicines have pricing power earned by virtue of the fact that they are extremely valuable to patients and payers and often cut costs incurred elsewhere in healthcare, like hospital stays. So if one worries about inflation, essential medicines have more pricing power than most products and are likely to be among the goods whose prices are inflating.
Startup Spotlight
Wanna know which startups get us excited these days? Below are a few of our recent (femtech-healthtech-ish) discoveries. This week we want to share some companies we've seen that make us go "Oh. Well that's interesting!" 👀
Juna is on a mission to revolutionize clinical care for Gen Z & Gen Alpha with an initial focus on sexual health and wellness.
Solarea Bio is a clinical-stage biotechnology company harnessing the microbes naturally colonizing fruits and vegetables to develop products that enhance human health. The company's first product addresses osteoporosis and RA. Osteoporosis is 4x more common in women than men.
Tinto is a a community-based maternal health platform, that uses health and wellbeing experts as well as smart AI to support moms with actionable advice that is scientifically validates and clinically credible.
