How our healthcare companies have risen in a time of crisis

By David Singer, Ambar Bhattacharyya, Matt Kinsella, and Prateesh Maheshwari

These are unprecedented times. They have been challenging and uncertain. In healthcare, all industry subsectors — employers, payers, providers, and pharmaceutical companies — have been affected by COVID-19.

As the situation with COVID-19 continues to develop at a rapid pace, we wanted to take a pause and acknowledge the incredible work the healthcare companies in our portfolio have done to date. Across the board, we’ve seen these companies step up in the face of uncertainty by quickly adapting their business models to respond to customer needs during this global pandemic. We are tremendously grateful for and awestruck by their efforts.

Below, we have highlighted the new products and services launched by our companies in response to COVID-19 over the past month. If you would like to get in touch with any of them, please let us know.

One Medical, the membership-based and technology-powered primary care platform on a mission to transform healthcare for all, has expanded its virtual care offerings. The expansion of virtual care offerings includes Remote Visits, scheduled video appointments with a primary care provider, and Mindset by One Medical, a virtual therapy and coaching program to support behavioral health. You can access both here. One Medical’s model allows the company to triage patients remotely, test for COVID-19 physically, and follow-up on care plans and test results digitally.

Essential workers will receive complimentary access to the One Medical platform for screenings and test services.

As the current state of COVID-19 in India begins to unfold, headlines have touted severe job losses, especially with wage workers, in a country that is unprepared for a pandemic. 1mg, which is India’s biggest online healthcare platform offering e-pharmacy, e-diagnostics, and telemedicine services, is viewed as one of the few essential businesses in India during the nationwide shutdown. 1mg has launched an emergency response to help provide security to the most vulnerable.

Additionally, 1mg is working with state and central governments to assist in this battle against COVID-19 as a partner of the administration. In partnership with the Prime Minister’s office, they have developed an application that helps track the spread of the virus and that has already been downloaded by 10 million people since its launch two days ago. Through donations, they are providing minimum wage in cash to those affected, as well as delivering pharmaceuticals and providing telemedicine to millions of people. To support families in India, you can donate here.

In order to provide employers and advisors around the country with ways to cope and mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, Artemis created a COVID-19 resource page including on-demand webinars and other helpful content. Viewers will learn how benefits data can help you manage risk within your organization and employees, leading with data and not fear. Those interested can click here.

Better Life Partners, which was built to bundle medical and behavioral care for chronic disease, has transformed its substance abuse treatment model given shelter-in-place rules and now provides care through virtual visits. They’ve also compiled a thorough list of resources including phenomenal webinars, informational links, medication guides, and provider forms here.

Castlight, the navigation platform that guides individuals to the best healthcare and benefits resources available to them as part of a comprehensive health and wellbeing experience, has built a Coronavirus Test Finder to help people find the nearest testing center in their city and state. Castlight also leveraged its 2.5 billion claims asset to develop a heat-map analysis that identifies at-risk individuals and maps them against Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds to predict high risk areas, thereby informing resource allocation and response.

In response to the current COVID-19 public health crisis, Centivo is responding immediately to ensure that clients can provide their employees with COVID-19 testing and treatment coverage by altering their plan allowances. For other employers in the U.S., Centivo offers mid-market companies the ability to cut their healthcare costs by 15% or more without cutting coverage levels by offering a Centivo plan to their employees — a move that is becoming even more critical in this financially unstable period of time.

Cityblock, a tech-driven provider built for underserved communities, reoriented its entire operation to focus on keeping its members home and safe in response to COVID-19. Cityblock cares for the most vulnerable people in low-income communities with its largest footprint in New York. They are providing access to 24/7 virtual care for medical and behavioral health needs, food, pharmacy, and housing support, in addition to in-home medical services for people with complex medical conditions. More information can be found here.

Collective Health, the cloud-based, integrated health benefits platform, has seen telehealth visits jump by 23% since February. The company continues to prioritize its services for addressing large spikes in COVID-related inquiries from its members. Collective Health has created a number of resources for its members, employers, and the community at-large.

In an effort to help people stay safe, healthy, and informed, Collective Health launched a COVID-19 Online Resource and a 60-second Risk Assessment tool, which aims to reduce the burden on hospital systems in addressing individual concerns around symptoms and exposure.

Collective Health has also launched an information series via weekly webinars in order to provide businesses with insights, ideas, and best practices on managing the COVID-19 crisis. The weekly series brings together leaders from Collective Health clients like Box, Live Nation, and Activision Blizzard, as well as digital health partners like Lyra and Cleo.

A leading ADT-based network for real-time care collaboration, Collective Medical rapidly deployed support to aid the public health response at no cost. For frontline providers, it is surfacing real-time alerts of patient history including positive diagnoses and lab values to aid in care decisions and provider protection practices. For the extended care continuum (i.e., health plans, ACOs, and primary care), Collective is flagging emerging risk patients and members (e.g., an ED visit for a COVID-19 workup) so that providers can direct resources to support patients in their time of need.

By leveraging its nationwide network, Collective Medical is ideally positioned to assist officials in tracking, identifying, and locating individuals who are at high risk of exposure, as well as in understanding real-time acute hospital bed availability.

Concerto HealthAI, a real-world evidence company focused on oncology, is using its data science capabilities to accelerate monitoring and clinical studies. In collaboration with ASCO and their CancerLinQ program, Concerto is working on a U.S., and eventually global, COVID-19 registry that will provide specially prepared EMR and claims-linked data in the company’s eurekaHealth AI environment for accelerated insights into protective and therapeutic strategies and ongoing monitoring. Additionally, based on prior history of Corona class infection cancer patients undergoing treatment, Concerto is using its tools and research-grade data to define AI models predicting patients with the highest vulnerability and potential needs of physical treatment segregation and alternative treatment approaches.

Cylera is a cybersecurity and analytics company that is assisting healthcare providers during the ongoing COVID-19 health emergency. Cylera enables hospitals to safely and remotely have real-time operational intelligence, inventory monitoring, and cybersecurity of critical medical devices and equipment such as ventilators, infusion pumps, imaging devices, and laboratory equipment. This situational awareness allows public health agencies and healthcare providers to identify opportunities to increase capacity to treat more patients in a safe and secure way.

Decent, a company that offers affordable health insurance for self-employed people, has opted to cover all COVID-19 testing and extended their grace period for payments. The company also bought 800 respirator masks for primary care doctors in Austin.

Devoted Health, a new Medicare Advantage “payvidor,” has been proactively reaching out to every single one of its members to walk them through staying safe at home. Additionally, Devoted has set up Virtual Visits with its in-house medical group while also helping members navigate providers with telehealth capabilities. The company has been providing ongoing useful information to members through texts and emails (choreographed and tracked via Devoted’s software), a dedicated website covering tips, resources, & coverage, and Q&A webinars to get advice from experts.

Docent Health has been working with its health system and health plan partners to quickly adapt its tech-enabled personalized navigation services to meet the urgent response needs of COVID-19. Docent is sending broad community-based SMS campaigns enabled by AI-conversations to communicate updates, triage needs, promote new testing sites, and provide telehealth services in an effort to help manage the appropriate utilization of critical healthcare resources.

Non-clinical navigators are providing guidance and support for non-elective procedures and helping patients with COVID-19 who are recovering at home feel engaged and supported by their health systems and plans. The patient-reported data, interactions, and escalations are being tracked in real-time client dashboards to bring critical insights related to emerging needs. You can find more information here.

Elektra Labs helps organizations safely, securely, and effectively deploy connected products — everything from blood pressure cuffs, smartwatches, and thermometers ranging from brands like Dexcom, Phillips, Actiwatch, and Apple — to advance clinical trials and remote health monitoring.

As the COVID-19 outbreak continues, healthcare practitioners and researchers are searching for better options to provide quality care and research for patients who are travel-constrained and urged to stay at home. Recently, the FDA has released meaningful guidance — one on clinical trials that are getting disrupted by COVID-19 and another on remote monitoring in routine care.

To support those fighting COVID-19, Elektra is making a subset of their Atlas catalog and evaluation framework (which was published in Nature npj Digital Medicine this month) available to qualified researchers and clinicians — you can sign up here.

hims x hers has launched a virtual primary care practice and expanded their telemedicine offering to include mental health. Users can gain access to complete digital primary care through the telehealth platform, thereby bypassing waiting rooms and slow responses, and receive prescriptions to local pharmacies. Mental health offerings include anonymous support sessions, individual therapy, and psychiatric evaluations and medication.

The company has also launched an easy-to-use COVID-19 Symptom Tool to help users parse through information. This tool, backed by a clinical team, can help you assess whether you want to seek testing or consultation with a physician about COVID-19. You can start your free self-assessment here.

Mon Ami launched a program with Mayor Breed in San Francisco to enable volunteers to call isolated seniors for friendly check-ins and to coordinate errand runs for groceries, prescriptions, and other essentials. Their National Volunteer Phone Bank is also connecting seniors with volunteers across the country who are able to call on a regular basis for the duration of the crisis.

Notable Health, the AI-powered digital medical assistant used in physician practices and health systems, has released a COVID-19 Virtual Triage and Remote Monitoring solution to support clinical staff in their efforts to pre-screen ambulatory patients, limit the spread of COVID-19, and provide remote care for at-risk individuals. They are also providing free services for new partners through this time.

Notable’s hands-free digital assistant automates and enhances routine workflows in healthcare, freeing up time, energy, and capacity for medical professionals to focus on high complexity functions. For COVID-19, Notable has created a mobile screening solution that virtually screens all patients to assess their probability of having COVID-19, stratifies and triages high-probability patients based on risk profile, and performs daily remote monitoring of at-risk individuals. To date, Notable’s digital assistant has screened thousands of patients across many states for COVID-19 and has triaged hundreds of at-risk individuals to the most appropriate care destination, protecting clinical staff and ensuring patient safety.

All of us at Maverick are grateful for the efforts of our founders and their teams in fighting this crisis, and we will continue working side by side with them as we navigate the future as best we can.

The views expressed herein are solely the views of the author(s) and are not necessarily the views of Maverick Capital, Ltd. or any of its affiliates. They are not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment advice.