The Pulse by Wharton Digital Health

In this episode, we sat down with Clara Burtenshaw, Partner and Investor at Neo Kuma Ventures. We discussed: -The evolution of the psychedelics industry from a stigmatized counterculture phenomenon to a scientifically robust industry with support from the FDA for fast-tracking drug development -The clinical potential of psychedelics to treat illnesses ranging from mental illness to pain management and other nervous system disorders -Neo Kuma's focus on investing in early stage companies backed by sound science and building a strong founder network -Predictions that psychedelics as medication is here to stay, and the growing commercialization opportunities in the space

Julian Harris, M.D., is a Partner on the Healthcare Services team at Deerfield and Chairman & CEO at ConcertoCare. Launched in 1994, Deerfield Management Company is an investment firm dedicated to advancing healthcare through information, investment and philanthropy — all toward the end goal of cures for disease, improved quality of life and reduced cost of care. ConcertoCare was formed recently by a combination of the assets of ConcertoHealth and Perfect Health. ConcertoCare is one of the nation’s leading risk-based health care companies focused on providing integrated care for seniors where they are best served: in their homes. Before Deerfield, Dr. Harris was the founding President of CareAllies, Cigna’s family of multi-payer provider services and home-based care businesses. Previously, he led US Strategic Operations for Cigna and managed a $500M internal investment portfolio focused on technology and innovation. Dr. Harris was also an Adviser to Google Ventures (GV) focused on tech-enabled health care services. Before GV, he led the health care team in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). As the federal government’s chief health care finance official, he oversaw a $1 trillion budget and provided management and policy oversight for a range of programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, FDA, NIH and CDC. He also served as the chief executive of the $11 billion Massachusetts Medicaid program. Dr. Harris trained in internal medicine and primary care at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital and practiced as a hospitalist at Cambridge Health Alliance and as a clinical consultant for BestDoctors. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Health Policy & Medical Ethics from Duke University and holds an M.Sc. from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He is also a graduate of The Wharton School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine, where he currently serves as an Adjunct Professor. Dr. Harris is a trustee of the New York Academy of Medicine and a member of the advisory boards for the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics at Penn and the NYU Department of Population Health.

Michelle Davey, Co-Founder and CEO of Wheel, discusses the importance of access to healthcare, challenges in building a telemedicine provider network, scaling virtual care, and the ongoing rise of online mental health services. She also shares her excitement for building for clinicians and the industry, focusing on new care models and treatment areas.

In this episode of The Pulse Podcast, we interview Connor Hailey, CEO and Co-Founder of Axle Health, a software platform that enables any company to add in-home visits to their patient offering. We cover Connor’s penchant for startups and entrepreneurship, Axle Health’s founding story and early product journey and how they have scaled to thousands of in-home visits in just one year of launch. Founded in 2020, Axle Health eliminates the complexity of delivering in-home care by offering a simple API that dispatches in-home professionals to provide clinical service offerings. Axle Health recently announced their seed fundraise led by Pear VC, joined by a talented group of investors including Wisdom Partners, Rebel Fund, Pioneer Fund, Soma Capital, and Company Ventures and YCombinator. Along with institutional investors, the seed fundraise also includes angels including the founders of Eden Health, CareRev, and Quit Genius, and Nikhil Krishnan of Out of Pocket and former executives at One Medical. This funding will expand service offerings to meet more customer needs and attract top talent to Axle Health.

In this episode, we sat down with Sangu Delle, the Chairman and CEO of Africa Health Holdings. Africa Health Holdings is focused on building a sustainable healthcare ecosystem in Africa through its network of healthcare facilities that it owns and manages. To date, Africa Health Holdings portfolio companies have served over 510,000 patients through malaria treatment, family planning, community outreach programs, and more. Africa Health Holdings currently has 40 facilities across Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana serving 200,000 patients every year. What we discussed: From a young age, Sangu Delle developed a pan-African consciousness and the desire to create sustainable and positive change in Africa in part from early exposure to African refugees through his doctor and human rights activist father. Given the disproportionate disease burden the African continent faces and the brain drain of Africa-born healthcare workers practicing outside of Africa, Africa faces large gaps in healthcare. The private sector must supplement fiscally-constrained African governments to improve healthcare access, quality, and affordability. Africa presents an attractive investment opportunity given secular population growth in the region outpacing every other country in the world. Investments in Africa have picked up traction recently through major funding for African startups such as FlutterWave, and the acquisition of Nigeria-based payments startup Paystack by Stripe.

In this episode, we interview Vik Bakhru, MD, former COO and CFO of ConsejoSano and the founding CMO of Circulo Health. We discuss some of the challenges that ConsejoSano faced as they strove to build consumer trust in the medical system amidst the global pandemic and what’s in store for Circulo Health, the nation’s newest managed Medicaid plan. Founded in 2014, ConsejoSano provides patient engagement tools to payers and providers to help them better connect with their multicultural Medicaid/ Medicare patient populations. Vik seeks to bring his learnings from ConsejoSano to Circulo Health where, along with their partner Olive, they hope to create a differentiated experience for Medicaid beneficiaries. Circulo Health raised their Series A in early 2021, led by Drive Capital and General Catalyst with participation from Oak HC/FT and SVB Capital.

In this episode, we interview Afton Vechery, CEO and Co-Founder of Modern Fertility, a reproductive health company making personalized fertility information more accessible. We discuss Modern Fertility’s founding story from getting to the first 100 users to finding the best GTM strategy and building the proactive fertility category from scratch. Founded in 2016, Modern Fertility is the women’s health company making personalized, proactive fertility information more accessible to women everywhere, whether they are trying for kids or not. Modern Fertility raised their Series A in 2019 from Forerunner Ventures, First Round Capital, Maveron, and many other leading investors.

Neil Batlivala is the CEO and Co-Founder of Pair Team. Neil Batlivala and Cassie Choi, RN founded Pair in 2019 after experiencing how critical a high functioning administrative team is to provide high-quality primary care by building out operations together at leading tech-enabled practices of Forward and Circle Medical. The majority of healthcare is local and fragmented, and no solutions were built to enable existing clinics. Pair came out of that need and provides a simple yet comprehensive solution that covers the front, mid, and back-office. Their automation, along with a human-in-the-loop approach provides end-to-end operations of patient outreach, scheduling, e-forms, care gap reports, record requests, referrals, lab coordination, etc., to offload the traditional job functions of the front desk and medical assistants. Pair Team (“Pair”) came out of stealth in December 2020 and raised $2.7 million in seed funding backed by Kleiner Perkins, Craft Ventures, and YCombinator, along with other prominent funds. Neil is an engineer, YC alumnus, and co-founder of Pair Team. He has spent the majority of his career in healthcare and had the honor of working with some exceptional people while building remote medical teams at Pair Team, opening primary care practices at Forward, designing medical devices at Spect, training machine learning models at Noxon, and researching pneumonia at UCSF. Neil completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. In his own words, he is 50% thrill seeker, 40% dad jokes, 15% math.

In this episode, we chatted with Dan Knecht, M.D., M.B.A., Vice President of Clinical Product at CVS Health. Prior to this, Dan served as Vice President of Health Strategy and Innovation for Medical Affairs at Aetna, a CVS Health company. What we discussed: The CVS Health-Aetna merger in 2018 has enabled the joint company to create more customer-centric care by marrying advanced data analytics across Aetna’s ~21 million members with care management and better access to healthcare for consumers via CVS Health’s extensive retail presence. CVS Health balances localized care with national scale by developing products and services that address the needs of specific patient segments while continuously improving clinical product design through broad data analytic capabilities and a robust feedback cycle from providers and patients nationwide. CVS Health continues to invest in digital offerings and homecare services to meet the patient wherever they are in their healthcare journey. CVS Health is also expanding its virtual care, chronic care and behavioral health services in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, to meet consumers where they are and support them for every meaningful moment of health throughout their lifetime.. COVID-19 has spurred CMS to expand its definition of healthcare, resulting in reimbursement for a broader range of services, including transportation, nutrition, and telemedicine. These changes will likely persist and benefit patients’ health in the long run.

Dr. Andrey Ostrovsky is the former Chief Medical Officer of the US Medicaid program. He is now the Managing Partner at Social Innovation Ventures where he invests in and advises companies and non-profits dedicated to eliminating disparities. He also advises federal and state regulators on how to incorporate human centered design into policy making. He previously operated a series of methadone clinics in Baltimore, Maryland. Prior to working on the front line of the opioid use disorder crisis, he served as the Chief Medical Officer for the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, the nation's largest health insurer, where he advocated to protect the program against several legislative efforts to significantly dismantle the program. He also led efforts to streamline Medicaid and make it more customer-centric. Before leading the Medicaid program, he co-founded the software company, Care at Hand, an evidence-based predictive analytics platform that used insights of non-medical staff to prevent aging people from being hospitalized. Care at Hand was acquired in 2016 by Mindoula Health. Before Care at Hand, Dr. Ostrovsky led teams at the World Health Organization, United States Senate, and San Francisco Health Department toward health system strengthening. Dr. Ostrovsky has served on several boards and committees dedicated to behavioral health, interoperability standards, quality measurement, and home and community based services including the National Academies of Medicine, National Quality Forum, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and the Commonwealth Fund. Andrey holds a Medical Doctorate and undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Psychology Magna cum Laude from Boston University and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Andrey completed his pediatrics residency training in the Boston Combined Residency Program at Boston Medical Center and Boston Children's Hospital where he was a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. He is currently teaching faculty and attending physician at Children's National Medical Center.