Providence St. Joseph health spinout Xealth, which aims to create a prescribing infrastructure for digital health apps, has raised $3 million in new funding, an add-on that brings its previously announced Series A up to $14 million and the company’s total funding to $22.5 million.
The three new investors in the round are all health systems who will be using the app with their doctors and patients as well. These include the Cleveland Clinic, Atrium Health and MemorialCare, through its MemorialCare Innovation Fund.
WHAT THEY DO
Xealth offers an EHR-embedded platform that allows physicians to prescribe apps and devices to patients for education, engagement or remote patient monitoring. The platform lets doctors monitor app usage in their existing workflow and connect patients to apps via existing patient portals.
The platform currently accommodates more than 30 different digital health apps and devices, and strives to make onboarding additional products as low-effort as possible.
“Fast becoming the preferred digital health formulary, Xealth works with stakeholders across all areas of healthcare, including providers, payors, pharma, devices and supply chain,” Mike McSherry, CEO of Xealth, said in a statement. “This gives Xealth insight and perspective that advances digital health strategies in a way that optimizes outcomes and assists physician workflows. By investing in Xealth and working with the company to advance their own digital health strategies, Atrium Health, Cleveland Clinic and MemorialCare are demonstrating their commitment to the patient experience.”
WHAT IT’S FOR
At the time of the first part of the round in March, McSherry told MobiHealthNews that Xealth will primarily be using the money to continue building out the platform. Similarly, this time around the company said the funds would be used to advance development and deployment of the system.
MARKET SNAPSHOT
App formularies and app prescription products have been a much-talked-about goal for many years in digital health, including ill-fated efforts like Happtique around five years ago. Those efforts may have come too early for an industry that’s finally starting to see traction for digital health apps and tools, and therefore for digital health “middlemen” as well.
These days, most of the succeeding efforts, like Xealth, have come out of health systems’ in-house shops. For instance, Mount Sinai in 2016 launched its system-wide RxUniverse platform of curated health apps. A few years later, spinoff Rx.Health raised $1.8 million in seed funding for RxUniverse and other digital patient engagement tools.
Other examples, which health systems haven’t tried to commercialize, include Ochsner’s O Bar and Kaiser Permanente’s Project Chamai. Across the pond, the UK’s National Health Service is continuing to expand its accredited health app library.
ON THE RECORD
All three new investors and users of Xealth offered their comments on the platform.
"Atrium Health is committed to using innovative solutions to provide the best care for our patients, both inside and outside the clinical environment,” Dr. Rasu Shrestha, EVP and chief strategy officer for Atrium Health, said in a statement. “By enabling our care teams to prescribe and monitor digital health solutions directly from within their clinical workflow, Xealth is the de facto standard for bridging the digital divide between our clinicians’ workflows and our patients’ everyday lives, enabling strategies that will improve health and dramatically better the consumer experience.”
“Patients who are well-informed are generally more engaged in their care, creating deeper partnerships with their providers,” added Dr. Peter Rasmussen, medical director of distance health at Cleveland Clinic. “Technology can enable us to incorporate digital health tools into clinical workflows, improving overall patient experience. Delivering the right materials to the patient and having the analytics to know the information was viewed fits nicely with our goal to deliver access anytime, anywhere.”
“The move to value-based care necessitates deeper coordination between providers and patients,” Brant Heise, managing director of MemorialCare Innovation Fund, said in a statement. “In addition to encouraging collaboration, Xealth tracks results and engagement from digital health programs, making it easier for healthcare organizations to report on outcomes. We believe Xealth’s value lies in how it works with health systems to empower them in efficiently delivering better care.”
