Xealth, a Seattle-based startup offering a digital prescribing platform, has secured an $11 million Series A round. Novartis, Philips, McKesson Ventures and ResMed participated, as did existing investors Threshold Ventures (formerly known as DFJ), Providence Ventures, UPMC and Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health Network.
The money will help the startup expand its platform. Via email, Xealth co-founder and CEO Mike McSherry added that the funds will go toward recruiting additional engineers and product professionals.
McSherry said Xealth has been working with ResMed and Philips for more than a year, and that his company expects “to work with McKesson and Novartis as many treatment plans will be combining both traditional methods and products with digital therapeutics.”
Xealth, which was spun out of Providence St. Joseph Health in 2017, allows clinicians to prescribe and monitor digital health tools from their EHR workflows. These tools include patient education information, device monitoring, online third-party apps and non-clinical services like food delivery and ride shares.
The ultimate goal is to improve patient care and enable care teams to monitor patient engagement. Physicians can also analyze the effects of more engaged patients, as well as the outcomes of different prescribed content.
The Seattle company’s customers include Duke, UPMC, Hennepin Healthcare, Providence St. Joseph Health, Baylor Scott and White Health and the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
McSherry said Xealth has raised a total of $19.5 million to date. That includes the $8.5 million it nabbed in 2017.
Earlier this week, the startup announced it teamed up with Proteus and the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network to provide a digital medicines offering that’s integrated into the EHR. Through the partnership, Froedtert patients with diabetes, hypertension and hepatitis C can be prescribed Proteus digital medicines. These include DigiMeds, medications with FDA-approved Proteus sensors, a wearable sensor patch, a mobile app for the patient and an online portal for the doctor.
“Proteus is one of several digital health tools that the Xealth platform has integrated for [Froedtert], along with SilverCloud and Glooko, which address different health concerns,” McSherry said. While SilverCloud addresses behavioral health, Glooko has a diabetes management platform.
So what’s next on the horizon for Xealth?
McSherry pointed to keeping up “with the pace of development in digital health,” since the field is quickly growing. “We will continue to add health systems to our platform, and the vendors that they select, which seems to be growing at an increasingly rapid pace.”
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