Signify Premium Insights - Digital Health: Round-Up from April 2024
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Written by Mark Lazell | Editor of Signify Premium Insights – Digital Health.
This article provides several links to our Signify Premium Insights, evaluating recent industry-shaping events. To access these articles you will need a subscription or can simply request a 30-day free trial below.
The month kicked off with a look at the latest move by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to support primary care provision in the US.??
The ACO Primary Care Flex Model is designed specifically to address issues with health equity and inequalities among sections of the population. It’s the latest initiative aimed at enabling Accountable Care Organisations (ACOs) to offer higher quality care at lower costs to Medicare and Medicaid populations.
On the surface, the model looks very similar to Making Care Primary (MCP), a programme that will launch in the next couple of months, in that they’re both designed to help small practices transition to value-based care.
But the rules around participation are different. With MCP, primary care practices that are already part of an ACO or the Medicare Shared Savings Program for VBC cannot sign up. The ACO PC Flex Model has no such restrictions.?
That’s music to the ears of the ACOs, who were worried about primary care practices simply switching to MCP’s upside risk-only environment.
What does this mean for MCP’s prospects before it has even launched?
Also in the US we explored the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy latest draft federal health IT plan for 2024-2030. There’s four goals to the plan: promoting health and wellness, enhancing care delivery and experience, accelerating research and innovation?and connecting the health system with health data.??
What jumped out is that while there are some similarities to the 2019-2024 plan (which was derailed and distracted by COVID), the latest draft plan puts the emphasis on the patient rather than health systems. All four goals have data interoperability as a theme, and it’s clear that the ONC is, more than ever, determined to finally bash down any remaining barriers preventing data exchange. A wake-up call to the few that continue to block info for sure.
Other takeaways? That the draft reflects strides made in value-based care and reimbursement models (especially around speeding up payment authorisations) over the last five years.
Acquisitions were in the air in April and while Mahana Therapeutics recent acquisition of German digital app Cara Care may not have been the biggest out there, it does hint at how US digital therapeutics solutions vendors might approach new markets.
Mahana’s specifically stated that it sees the acquisition of Cara as easing its entry into Europe. What Cara lacks in size - it’s a very small company with a single IBS app - it more than makes up for in strategic potential. It’s one of a rare breed of approved Digital Health Applications (known as DiGAs) in Germany. Getting approval is no mean feat and Cara’s done the hard yards, meaning Mahana won’t have to. And as a German company, Cara offers Mahana a rapid route into Europe’s most advanced digital therapeutics reimbursement environment. That makes it a great launch site into other European markets.
Mahana surely won’t be the only US vendor to take this fast-track route into Europe. We expect the directory of approved DiGAs to be a beauty parade for potential suitors from across the Atlantic and elsewhere.
There are some parallels in the above story with another tie-up that we explored in April. This time Japanese heart monitoring device manufacturer OMRON Group ’s purchase of Dutch remote patient monitoring (RPM) IT vendor Luscii - an OMRON Healthcare service .
In this case, the two companies know each other well. OMRON was a seed investor in Luscii six years ago and has been a guiding hand in the Dutch vendor’s portfolio development since.
The acquisition fits like a glove strategically. OMRON wants to move away from being just a device manufacturer and bring software and digital services into its portfolio mix, which Luscii can offer. For Luscii, its scaling challenges could well be solved by OMRON’s impressive size, reach and capabilities.
So there are clear synergies. But there are also issues around market access that these loved-up companies will need to address. How will they do that?
Finally on the acquisition front, Swedish device manufacturer PMD Solutions (PMDS) purchase of the intellectual property and technology portfolio of the US subsidiary of Coala Life , a Swedish cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) provider-cum-medical device developer and reseller that filed for bankruptcy in March.
The $330k deal provides PMDS with a useful route into a US market that Coala’s subsidiary knew well, but couldn’t crack in terms of profitability. The fact that PMDS’ CEO has come out and said it aims to make a profit in the US by Q2 2024 raises some eyebrows. Especially when you consider that there are tonnes of RPM vendors in the market all chasing the same piece of pie, and profitability is but an elusive dream for most.
Talking of profitability, we took a look at the fortunes of EHR vendor CEGEDIM and booking management system Doctolib as part of a wider dive into the French primary care IT market.
Two companies with very different backgrounds, pedigrees and, perhaps, futures. Doctolib the poster-child of booking management platforms, accelerating from start-up to unicorn to disruptor in just a decade. And Cegedim, second only to CompuGroup Medical SE & Co. KGaA (CGM) in the French primary care pecking order but which is facing profitability challenges. It’s 2023 loss came despite group revenue rising 10.9% in 2023 to €616M ($661.7M), and 8.2% and 7.5% increases in its Software & Services and Data & Marketing revenues respectively in the year. Around a third of its value was wiped off the Paris Stock Exchange over the 2023 financial year.?
While our Insight acknowledged the positive energy around Doctolib (we’d predicted it would be a disruptor around a year ago), we do think it has yet to really make its mark outside the comfort blanket of its home French market. Could a recent contract to develop a patient portal for a prestigious university clinic in Berlin, Germany light a touch paper under its international ambitions.
Our analysis also noted Cegedim’s decision to pull the plug almost entirely on the UK, although it will retain a presence in Scotland. This is a potentially significant development on the competitive landscape in England. As the third-largest vendor there, could Cegedim’s departure create a vacuum into which dominant duo TPP and EMIS will jump?
It was a case of another month, another round of generative AI announcements. A couple really piqued our interest. One was Oracle Health announcing it was adding a ‘new gen AI service’ to its suite of cloud applications, services and analytics. And yes, we fell for the clickbait!
Digging into the news (that’s what we do at SPI!) it wasn’t initially obvious where the gen AI bit comes in. The news appears to be a straight upgrade to the Oracle Health Data Intelligence suite (previously known as HealtheIntent) population health management platform, with gen AI being built in to summarise patient history.
Gen AI’s ability to bring unstructured data into the summary and then structure it to give a clinician a more tailored view would be a big positive for customers, but it’s hard to see this being transformative for the Oracle health business.
There’s a host of other competitive challenges the vendor must concentrate on at this time but leveraging the low hanging fruit elements of gen AI is definitely a good step.?
The other story that caught our eye was AI platform CodaMetrix closing out a $40M Series B funding round. It says the money will be used to develop its AI-powered medical coding capabilities so it can help lower care costs, ease admin burdens on providers and streamline healthcare billing.
We reckon that CodaMetrix’ solution has good potential but it’s up against at least 16 other best-of-breed vendors, some of whom are also well backed financially.
Could EHR vendors, with their huge customer bases and resources, be a competitive threat to the likes of CodaMetrix?
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Finally, news of MEDITECH integrating Suki AI’s ambient listening technology into its Expanse EHR solution.
Summarisation technology is currently at the epicentre of gen AI commoditisation and product development and Suki Assistant is one of around 40 solutions currently on the market.
It’s a pretty logical tie-up. For MEDITECH, Suki Assistant is a less expensive (than Nuance certainly!) way to add value to Expanse. But, a bit like Oracle Health’s decision to introduce gen AI onto its pop health platform, there are bigger things for MEDITECH to focus on right now. Not least a shrinking TAM and US hospital EHR buyers concentrating procurement around large single-source vendors.
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About Mark Lazell
Mark joined Signify Research in 2022 as Associate Editor to lead on the company’s Premium Insights - Digital Health service. Prior to Signify, Mark spent 25 years as an editor, publishing detailed analysis of healthcare and other high-tech sectors in the Middle East and Asia Pacific. He was the launch editor of Middle East Medical magazine, and produced detailed country reports and analyses, including interviews with regional policy makers and healthcare executives.
About the Signify Premium Insights Contributing Analysts
Signify Premium Insights rely heavily on the industry expertise from Signify Research’s expert medical imaging analyst team. This team brings with it many years of experience developing market reports, insights and providing consultancy services to the medical imaging industry.
Alex Green , Managing Director and Principal Analyst
Alex has 24 years’ experience in tech market intelligence. He leads on Signify Research’s Digital Health offerings focusing on integrated care IT, EHR/ EMR and telehealth. Prior to joining Signify he served as a Senior Research Director at IHS and as a Business Analyst/IT Project Manager in a joint NHS/ Government role.
Kelly Patrick, Research Director
Kelly joined Signify Research in 2020 as a Principal Analyst. She brings with her 12 years’ experience covering a range of healthcare technology research. Prior to joining Signify Research she was the manager of the Healthcare Technology team at Omdia (previously known as the Healthcare Technology team at IHS Markit/InMedica). Kelly is now a research Director leading the management of the research teams within the Clinical Care and Medical Imaging groups. Kelly’s core research focus has been on the clinical care space, including patient monitoring, anaesthesia, sleep & respiratory care, and infusion. Kelly has been the lead on several large custom and consulting projects, specialising on in-depth analysis across the clinical care and wider healthcare technology space.
Arun Gill, Senior Market Analyst
Arun joined Signify Research in 2019 as part of the Digital Health team focusing on EHR/EMR, integrated care technology and telehealth. He brings with him 10 years’ experience as a Senior Market Analyst covering the consumer tech and imaging industry with Futuresource Consulting and NetGrowth Consultants.
Vladimir Kozynchenko, Senior Market Analyst
Vlad joined Signify Research in 2023 as a Senior Market Analyst in the Digital Health team. He brings two years of experience in the consulting industry, having undertaken strategy, planning, and due diligence assignments for governments, operators, and service providers. Vlad holds an MSc degree with distinction in Business with Consulting from the University of Warwick.
Hamir Harbham | Market Analyst
Hamir joined Signify Research in 2022 as a Market Analyst within the Digital Health team. He holds a BSc in Economics having graduated from Loughborough University in 2022.
About Signify Research
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