Rock Health

It seems not a day goes by without a new headline about GLP-1s—the weight care space is constantly evolving and many uncertainties remain. On November 13, Rock Health Advisory will host a webinar designed to answer the burning questions of enterprise innovation leaders interested in building, buying, or implementing solutions in the weight care space. Through conversations with our panelists Elina Onitskansky (Ilant Health), Kevin Kumler (Virta Health), Brooke Boyarsky Pratt (knownwell), and Cara Bohon (Equip), we will shed light on emerging trends in weight care and explore: • What happens with compounded GLP-1 options (and the companies that are offering them) as GLP-1 shortages are resolved?  • Are weight care drugs a “lifetime drug” or not? Is it realistic to expect to wean people off—and if so, what support will they need?  • What impact might weight care drugs have on mental health and health outcomes more broadly? 📅 November 13, 2024 ⏰ 9 AM PT/12 PM ET  ➡️ Register here: https://lnkd.in/gFXveru5 #WeightCare #DigitalHealth #HealthcareInnovation

When your panelists are this good, moderating is easy! I really enjoyed moderating a discussion yesterday at HLTH Inc. on the topic - Are GLP-1s a Miracle Cure or Healthcare’s Breaking Point? The TLDR: probably a little bit of both.  Thanks so much to Terry Gilliland, Florencia Halperin, Elliott Green, and Kavita Patel for sharing your perspectives on this critical topic! Below are a few insights from the conversation: 💵 At today's prices, GLP-1s are not affordable for our health system and we are "upside down" on ROI in a several year horizon. (At Geisinger, GLP-1s were 10% of the medical cost this year and that was just for a small percent of the population) ❓ There's a lot we know about GLP-1s (e.g. clinical trial data), but there's also a lot we don't know like who they work best for, what are the effects on pregnancy (incredibly important bc of the "ozempic babies" phenomenon and the fertility boost that comes with losing weight) and what the long term impacts will be on lean muscle mass and overall health. Dandelion Health will be digging into the data, but it will take years to know. With a huge number of GLP-1 medications in clinical trials, getting this information will be critical. 🪆 Comprehensive care to support nutrition, muscle building, and medication management (like those offered by Form Health) are a critical component of care, but many individuals are being prescribed by primary care physicians who don't have the capacity, training and resources to deliver those programs. 💉 Access and costs are driving many consumers to use compounded medications that are of unknown quality and hard to administer correctly, often from companies that are not providing oversight and care. 🧬 We need data driven pathways and phenotyping to help us build better models on what the right treatment journey is for each individual, and we also need more flexibility to prescribe the right dose and duration for each patient (today starter prescriptions are minimum six months supply despite 30% of consumers stopping after 3 months, and doses are set at fixed levels.) 🍎 Are the costs and considerations of GLP-1s distracting us from solving systemic root cause issues such as national healthy food supply and education to address our national obesity pandemic? #HLTHUSA #digitalhealth #weightcare #GLP-1s Rock Health

Another #HLTHUSA has come and gone—as always, the Las Vegas of it all offered a plethora of panels, meetings, happy hours, announcements aplenty, and many compelling moments to reflect on. Our Rock Health crew may be biased, but one of our favorites took place in the early AM hours, when we brought together a group of Rock Health Advisory clients and friends for breakfast and candid conversation. With the help of our amazing panelists Megann Watters (Labcorp), Zachary Clark (Uber Health), Ethan Fischer (K Health), and Lauren Lisher (Mount Sinai Health System), we explored: • What we’ve dubbed as the age of “consumer-native” care delivery and how healthcare expectations are evolving as a result • New care paradigms reshaping payer, provider, and pharma strategies • How retailers and big tech are leveraging consumer-centricity • How digital health innovators can “weave tapestries” to build comprehensive solutions The insights and energy from this gathering set the tone for a week filled with meaningful discussions about transforming healthcare delivery. Until next year! + Are you an enterprise innovation leader who wants to attend future Rock Health Advisory events? Email advisory@rockhealth.com to learn more!  #consumernativecare #digitalhealth #healthcareinnovation

Conference season is in full swing—who else is heading to #BioFuture2024 next week? Join us on Tuesday, 10/29 as Rock Health Advisory’s Chief Commercial Officer, Sari Kaganoff, moderates “The Next Frontier of Obesity Care.” The session will delve into this rapidly evolving landscape, focusing on the rise of GLP-1s and their potential impact on healthcare delivery and economics. Expect to learn about anticipated changes to care paradigms, potential health and financial implications of widespread GLP-1 use, and how to navigate market disruptions to healthcare system impact and beyond. Joining Sari is an incredible group of experts from across the ecosystem:  • Dianna Budgeon, SVP, Clinical Operations, knownwell • Dan Knecht, MD MBA, Chief Clinical Innovation Officer, CVS Caremark • Sloan Saunders, CEO & Co-Founder, FlyteHealth • Adam Wolfberg, Chief Medical Officer, Virta Health • Rich Yang, CEO, Biolinq If you're attending #BioFuture2024, we’d love to see you there! + for more on this topic, check out Rock Health Advisory’s insights on consumer perspectives of weight care: https://lnkd.in/ej23yeKA

Continuing our series on the 2024 RockHealth.org Innovation Fellows, today we're highlighting Nicole Cook, Founder + CEO of alvee. Alvee is an AI-driven health equity platform that helps providers integrate social determinants of health into clinical workflows. The solution brings distinct value by integrating AI-driven insights and autonomous care navigation directly into healthcare workflows. Alvee's focus on health equity rehumanizes healthcare delivery, making them a pioneer in leveraging technology to address systemic disparities. https://lnkd.in/gRCKpeQG

The RockHealth.org Innovation Fellowship is an immersive cohort-based experience that supports and amplifies the work of visionary leaders who are centering lived experience in digital health innovation. The 2024 Fellows are a dynamic group of leaders pioneering advancements in food and nutrition, personalized medicine, mental and behavioral health, and more. The Innovation Fellows represent a diverse range of perspectives and expertise, and we're excited to highlight each Fellow and their work over the next few months. https://lnkd.in/dyzmrbBm We're kicking off with Emily Brown, Co-Founder + CEO of Attane Health. Emily and her team are focused on providing underserved patients, primarily Medicaid recipients, with the high-quality food, nutrition support and health coaching they need to help manage their chronic health conditions, improve health outcomes, and lower the cost of care. Emily is a former Medicaid beneficiary from Kansas who is humbled to be building a solution that ensures other families do not have to experience the challenges that she did. https://lnkd.in/g6P_jJVg

🧵Pulling the thread on the digital health “tapestries" trend While overall M&A activity in digital health has slowed in 2024 (21 deals in Q3, down from 28 in Q2, 37 in Q1), an interesting trend we’ve dubbed "tapestry weaving" has emerged. Rather than acquiring like competitors, digital health companies are using M&A to integrate new features and capabilities into their offerings. Like weaving a tapestry, these deals stitch together different solutions to create more robust solutions that address a broader range of customer needs. Why this matters: • After periods of startup valuation recalibration, acquiring built-out products can be more cost-effective than building from scratch • Companies can rapidly expand their capabilities and market reach • This approach creates more robust solutions poised to serve healthcare's biggest players While this approach doesn’t come easily—or always succeed—we expect this trend to continue as companies seek to compete for healthcare's most lucrative opportunities. Success will depend on how well these tapestries are woven, from product integration to unified go-to-market strategies. + For more on this trend, read our Q3 recap by Adriana Krasniansky, Sari Kaganoff, and Tiffany Ramos: https://lnkd.in/gMt3JuQC + Want industry-leading market intelligence, custom insights, or support identifying and evaluating opportunities in this rapidly evolving market? Rock Health Advisory is here to help. Reach us at advisory@rockhealth.com

Who’s heading to HLTH in a few weeks? The Rock Health team will be there, and we’re excited to connect with visionary leaders shaping the future of healthcare.  Our all-star Rock Health Advisory lineup attending this year includes: • Megan Zweig, President • Sari Kaganoff, Chief Commercial Officer • Chris Lew, Consulting Principal • Abigail Tarquinio, Client Experience Manager • Rachel Soffer, Client Experience Manager If you’re an enterprise innovation leader looking for support on navigating the evolving healthcare landscape, developing new strategies, and identifying winning opportunities, we’d love to meet with you! 📅 Reach out to us at advisory@rockhealth.com to schedule a meeting. We hope to see you there! 🎟️ If you plan to attend and haven't registered yet, feel free to use our discount code: 24p_rock250

📰 Hot off the press: Rock Health’s Q3 2024 quarterly funding and market trends recap is now live. The key takeaway? There’s more to the story than just the numbers—if we’ve learned anything from digital health’s recent history, it’s to avoid conflating volume of activity (e.g., venture or M&A deal counts) with quality of activity (e.g., strategic M&A). 📊 Notable insights from our breakdown of Q3: • $2.4B in digital health venture funding across 110 deals this quarter, bringing the total YTD to $8.2B • Though deal count has dropped across the first three quarters of 2024, average deal size held roughly steady at $22M, up from $20M in Q1 • These patterns indicate that investors are making fewer, more focused bets with consistent check sizes 🪡 Of particular note, the emergence of digital health “tapestries"—what we’re calling it when companies strategically weave together new capabilities through acquisitions to compete at scale. This isn't just about adding features; it's about creating robust, integrated solutions that can serve healthcare's biggest players. For the full picture, read our Q3 funding and market trends recap: https://lnkd.in/gMt3JuQC

Join Rock Health at HLTH 2024 as we dive into one of healthcare's hottest topics: the rapidly evolving GLP-1 landscape. GLP-1s have become a stress test for the healthcare system—while these drugs are exceeding expectations for treating obesity, diabetes, and more, potential annual costs are reaching into the tens of billions. Sari Kaganoff, Rock Health Advisory’s Chief Commercial Officer, will moderate a must-attend panel, “Miracle Cure or Healthcare's Breaking Point?” with industry experts: • Terry Gilliland, President and CEO, Geisinger • Elliott Green, CEO & Co-Founder, Dandelion Health • Kavita Patel, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University • Florencia Halperin, Chief Medical Officer, Form Health They'll tackle crucial questions including: How do we balance innovation, access, and affordability? What's the future of healthcare economics in the age of blockbuster therapies? 🗓️ Mark your calendar for October 22 at 10:40 AM. Hope to see you there! #HLTHUSA