Digital Health Forward

In this episode, we meet Adam Odessky, CEO and Co-founder of Sensely. Sensely is an empathy driven conversational platform that introduces an always on connection between insurance companies and healthcare systems and their members or patients. By incorporating the Sensely toolset, enterprises are able to influence behavior, increase engagement, lower costs, and enhance the member experience. Sensely is currently deployed in 10 countries, serving over 3 million users to-date.

Sensely has partnerships around the world with organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, the NHS, AXA, Allianz, Nippon Life and more to provide customizable solutions for patient navigation and care management. Sensely is a Series B company, having raised $27M to-date, backed by Aflac Corporate Ventures, NMC, Nippon Life Insurance Company, Susquehanna International Group, and more.

In this episode, Adam and I chat about:

In this episode, we meet Julia Bernstein, General Manager of Platform at Thirty Madison. Thirty Madison provides virtual specialty care through a mix of direct-to-consumer and reimbursable models that includes doctor consults, treatment delivery, and ongoing care. They’re on a mission to make specialized care and treatment accessible to everyone. First with Keeps, a men’s hair loss solution, then with Cove, which focuses on migraine, followed by Evens which treats GI symptoms, and most recently, Picnic for allergies, Thirty Madison is continuously expanding their offerings to find answers to chronic conditions. With a patient-first approach that provides care and support from diagnosis to treatment and tracking, they work to improve how millions of people manage their chronic conditions. Thirty Madison has raised over $70 million from Polaris Partners, Johnson and Johnson Innovation, Northzone, and Maveron, to name a few.

Prior to Thirty Madison, Julia was COO of Tempest and held strategy, operations, and sales leadership roles at Beacon Health Options, Institute on Aging, and Ginger. Julia spent her early career serving healthcare companies on new business innovation at McKinsey and Company. Julia is also a Board Member of PharmaCCX and an advisor to Care + Wear. She holds an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a bachelor’s from Dartmouth College.

In this episode, Julia and I chat about:

In this episode, we meet Matt McCambridge, CEO and Co-Founder of Eden Health. Eden Health, offered through employers and commercial real estate building landlords providing health coverage to tenants, combines telehealth, in-person primary care, behavioral health and insurance navigation with what Matt calls a “‘medical home” method, centered around creating trusted relationships between the patient and a dedicated care team. Since launching in 2017, the company has partnered with more than 100 employers and has more than 40,000 covered members. In 2020, recurring revenue grew by 800 percent year-over-year, in part due to the company’s COVID-19 response.

Eden Health recently announced a $60 million Series C round, led by Insight Partners, bringing the company’s total funding to $100 million in the span of two years.

In this episode, Matt and I chat about:

In this episode, we meet Natasha Prasad, Chief Customer Officer of Cleo. Cleo is a family benefits platform and support system for working families. With its integrated family benefits platform, Cleo combines proactive, expert guidance with an intuitive engagement hub to help connect families with the support they need to be their best at home and at work. Representing over 55 countries and 100+ enterprise clients — Cleo is reinventing how forward-thinking employers support families that work around the world. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Cleo has raised $44M and is backed by NEA, Greylock Partners, Felicis Ventures, and Forerunner Ventures. Cleo was recently honored by Fierce Healthcare as a 2021 Fierce 15 company.

Prior to Cleo, Natasha served as country manager for ClassPass in Australia, where she built and oversaw regional operations, including sales, success and marketing. Previously, she was the founder and CEO of a fitness technology startup that was acquired by ClassPass, and held product management roles at enterprise and consumer technology companies (Rent the Runway, Paperless Post), most recently Atlassian in Sydney. Natasha spent her early career as an investor in the private equity group at Goldman Sachs in London and New York. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and degrees in economics and mathematics from Cambridge University and Delhi University.

In this episode, Natasha shares her insights into:

In this episode, we meet Luke Hejl, Chairman and CEO of TimelyMD. TimelyMD is a telehealth company focused on transforming healthcare in higher education by improving student health, optimizing campus clinic resources and granting peace of mind to both students and parents. TimelyMD currently partners with over 80 campuses, including Duke University, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Notre Dame and more. With a recent $60M investment from JMI Equity, TimelyMD plans to continue to tackle the unmet need in higher education for on-demand medical, mental health, and well-being telehealth solutions.

TimelyMD has experienced unprecedented growth as the demand for telemedicine and teletherapy increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic, transforming the way college students receive care now and in the future. With licensed providers available 24/7 in all 50 states, its success stems from offering a differentiated solution to higher education that includes on-demand medical, immediate and scheduled mental health counseling, psychiatry and health coaching services — all designed specifically for students and offered at no cost to them, without the hassle of traditional health insurance. 

We discuss:

In this episode, we meet Lauren Li, Global Head of Digital Health at Ipsen. Ipsen is a global biopharmaceutical group focused on innovation and Specialty Care in three key therapeutic areas — Oncology, Neuroscience and Rare Diseases. As Global Head of Digital Health, Lauren leads a team to deliver “beyond the drug” solutions for patients, caregivers, physicians, and payors through human-centered design, cross-functional collaboration, and value-based partnerships.

Prior to Ipsen, Lauren drove Digital Innovation at Amgen, led Strategy & Operations at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, co-founded a successful family business, and was a consultant at McKinsey & Company in the Toronto office. Lauren holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University.

Lauren shares her perspectives on what makes a successful digital health-biopharma partnership, how digital health solutions can effectively demonstrate value to payors, employers, and pharma, and the challenges that remain for digital health adoption. Lauren also shares her reflections and guidance to early career professionals and MBAs interested in pursuing a career in the intersection of digital innovation and biopharma.

In this episode, we meet Emily Hochman, Founder + CEO of Wellory. Wellory is a health tech company reinventing personal nutrition to create a long-lasting, healthier relationship with food. After experimenting with fad diets for years, Emily built Wellory to create an accessible and affordable solution that bridges the disconnect between losing weight and eating healthy. Through Wellory’s user-friendly app, clients match with a Wellory Nutrition Coach to receive ongoing, concierge-level support based on their specific health goals. The mobile service offers science-based, personalized meal planning, photo-based meal logging, and daily communication through its community of nutritionists, certified health coaches and registered dietitians.

Wellory has raised a $4.5M seed round, led by Story Ventures, with participation from Harlem Capital, Tinder co-founders Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, Ground Up Ventures, NBA player Wayne Ellington, Hannah Bronfman and others. Emily has been featured in Business Insider, Thrive Global, Well+Good, named Bucknell University’s 13 Under 35 and Forbes 30 Under 30.

We discuss:

In our latest episode, I had a chance to chat with Kelsey Mellard, Founder and CEO of Sitka. Sitka is a peer-to-peer, asynchronous video messaging platform and specialist network. Sitka connects clinicians to top specialists, alleviating the challenges of scheduling and geographic limitations and compressing the cycle of care by enabling rapid decision making. Sitka is backed by  Optum Ventures, First Round Capital, Rock Health, Homebrew, Box Group, and Lifeforce Capital.

Kelsey shares insights into the role telehealth plays in the transition to value-based care, how Sitka is bringing specialty expertise to the front lines, and the importance of trust, transparency, and reliability in healthcare delivery. We also reflect on Kelsey’s personal career journey prior to founding Sitka, where Kelsey held positions at Honor Homecare, naviHealth, UnitedHealth Group, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In this episode, we meet Chaitenya Razdan, Founder and CEO of Care+Wear. Care+Wear is the leading provider of innovative healthwear, focused on bringing humanity into healthcare. In partnership with designers such as Oscar De La Renta, Care+Wear has designed highly functional alternatives to traditional patient gowns, PICC line covers, chest port access tops, recovery bras, and more. In 2020, Care+Wear shipped more than 15M units, creating positive and effective healing experiences for patients and clinicians alike.

We discuss Chat’s experiences and lessons learned in establishing a robust approach to designing and developing innovative healthwear. Chat shares stories from the early days of finding product market fit, integrating the needs of patients and clinicians into an iterative design process, and scaling hospital partnerships. We also reflect on impactful patient stories and what motivates Chat and the team to continuously innovate and solve unmet needs for patients globally.

In our latest episode, I had a chance to chat with Nick Hu, an early member of the Global Operations team at Zipline. Nick led the launches of Zipline’s operations in Rwanda and Ghana and continues to drive expansion strategy across Africa. Zipline has built the world's fastest and most reliable delivery drone and the world's largest autonomous logistics network to help provide instant access to life-saving medical supplies in Rwanda, Ghana, and the US. Founded in 2014, Zipline is a Series D company most recently valued at $1.2B, featured on CNBC’s Disruptor 50, and slated by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies of 2020.

Nick shares stories and lessons learned from building and launching Zipline in Rwanda and Ghana: how they worked with local government (Aviation Authority, Minister of Health) and their customers (healthcare providers) to build the first just-in-time logistics network at national scale. Nick reflects on how these experiences have shaped his perspectives on how to create sustainable change in healthcare delivery, and the power of technology to transform healthcare supply chains and ultimately, improve healthcare access. We also chat about Zipline's COVID-19 response in Ghana, from delivering PPE to poll workers in the last election to on-demand vaccine distribution.

Prior to Zipline, Nick co-founded First Derm, a teladermatology service, Medbikes, a motorbike ambulance program in rural Tanzania, and Noisy Savage, a boutique storytelling firm. Nick holds a Master's of Science in Global Health from UCSF and an undergraduate degree in Global Health Access from UC Berkeley.