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 last month's women's health investments plus...
- Hims/Hers goes Hybrid
- A Provider-focused Approach to Healthcare Disruption
- Startup Spotlight 🌟
- And more!
Femtech Investment Round-up: March 2022
As every month we share an overview of all the fundraising news we covered on Femtech Insider with you, our Inner Circle audience. Check out our March 2022 Femtech Investment Round-up here or visit our Investment Round-up Archive in the Inner Circle Member Hub.
🌟 Some Highlights:
Wildflower Health raises $26M to support the national expansion of its value-based maternity care offering.
Private Equity firm Yellow Wood Partners launches a new sexual wellness platform after acquiring several brands from Clio.
Alife raises $22M in Series A funding to modernize and personalize fertility care with AI.
Provider-focused Healthcare Innovation
Last week Sean Doolan, Founder and MP at Virtue, an early stage healthcare VC fund, and avid investor in the femtech space (Evvy, Allara, Veera), wrote an op-ed for STAT in which he argues that many healthcare innovators are missing the mark trying to disrupt the industry by taking aim at the wrong components of the industry: its practicioners.
💬 "For years, tech behemoths and digital health innovators have attempted to “reinvent” health care, but they’ve ignored the institutional infrastructure issues that plague the people who deliver care — doctors, nurses, physician assistants, and others — or tried to replace their function altogether. The results have been only small gains and larger skepticism.
Investors and innovators should instead aim to disrupt health care’s legacy IT companies, which move slowly and keep providers operating in IT antiquity."
The post led to quite a bit of discussion and we thought we'd share it with you today as well! #foodforthought
Hims & Hers goes Hybrid
Well.. It really was only a matter of time.. Last week Hims/Hers announced a new partnership with Carbon Health and is officially going hybrid as it plans to refer patients "with complex medical histories, conditions, or concerns that require further clinical attention" to Carbon for (in-person) primary care.
Given our industry's shift in the direction of "one-stop-shops", the company's newest partnership isn't all that surprising and it seems like Hims/Hers is getting increasingly comfortable in this role as the "digital front door" for other healthcare organizations like in this case Carbon.
👉 Read: Hims & Hers and Carbon Health Partner to Expand Care Options for California Customers
"Licensed medical professionals on the Hims & Hers platform will provide patients with an option to connect to Carbon Health if they require additional primary care follow-up or evaluation, due to complex medical histories, symptoms, or risk factors for conditions for which Hims & Hers does not currently offer treatment."
Was "digital only health" just a "short pandemic-induced hype" that is now replaced by "virtual first care" as more companies add in-person healthcare capabilities to the mix and more M&A and partnerships are happening in our space? Time will tell... 🤔
👉 Related: Is it time we retire the term digital health?
Startup Spotlight! 🌟
Wanna know which startups get us excited these days? Below are a few of our recent (femtech-healthtech-ish) discoveries.
Craniometrix: We diagnose Alzheimer's 3x more accurately - all from your cellphone.
Soteri Skin: D2C Skincare for Eczema
Sophys Health: Analytics Platform for EHR Data
Spot: At-home lab tests via API
Ankr Health: Full-stack patient support platform for cancer clinics
