Virta burst on to the digital health scene recently boasting a $37M funding round and a tech-heavyweight CEO Sami Inkinen who previously co-founded Trulia, the online real-estate platform.
Virta is the latest digital health star to follow the trend of what I’m now beginning to identify as tech-enabled care management. Think of it as a healthcare service delivery model where traditional care providers’ interaction with patient is enhanced (in terms of quality and quantity) using modern technology infrastructure like sensors, mobile, machine-learning.
Virta focuses on Type II diabetes management. They offer a dedicated health coach (someone who can help mentor and guide the patient through the health choices they need to make), a personalized nutrition plan and an overall physician supervision of care. All these service experiences are supported by technology that definitely includes a mobile app; and probably includes the needed wearable sensors (for weight, BP, etc. monitoring) along with relevant biomarker tests (like HbA1c).
Diabetes is a complicated multifactorial lifestyle condition that is often made worse with neglect of one/more aspects like exercise, weight, nutrition, mental health, medications, stress, BP, etc. So a comprehensive, closely-monitored program can surely make a difference. And technology is key for scaling services while keeping them personalized. So this kind of solution approach makes sense.
Omada (for diabetes) was an early player in the tech-enabled care management space. Livongo (also diabetes), Lantern (mental health), Hinge Health (musculoskeletal disorders) are some other examples. It’s a good sign to see standardizable niches of healthcare service delivery being scaled up with clever technology use. Of course all this still needs to pass the muster of traditional third-party payment machinery in our healthcare system. Given the accountable care trend I’m optimistic about the viability of such companies as long as they show real outcome improvements.