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A new study underway at Toronto’s University Health Network (UHN), a group of working research hospitals in the city, could shift our approach to treatment in an area of growing concern in human health. The study, led by Dr. Heather Ross, will investigate whether the Apple Watch can provide early warnings about potentially worsening health for patients following incidents of heart failure.
The study, which is aiming to eventually span around 200 patients, and which already has a number of participants enrolled spanning ages from 25 to 90, and various demographics, will use the Apple Watch Series 6 and its onboard sensors to monitor signals including heart rate, blood oxygen, general activity levels, overall performance during a six minute walk test and more. Researchers led by Ross will compare this data to measurements taken from the more formal clinical tests currently used by physicians to monitor the recovery of heart failure patients during routine, periodic check-ups.
The hope is that Ross and her team will be able to identify correlations between signs they’re seeing from the Apple Watch data, and the information gathered from the proven medical diagnostic and monitoring equipment. If they can verify that the Apple Watch accurately reflects what’s happening with a heart failure patient’s health, it has tremendous potential for treatment and care.
“In the US, there are about six-and-a-half million adults with heart failure,” Ross told me in an interview. “About one in five people in North America over the age of 40 will develop heart failure. And the average life expectancy [following heart failure] is still measured at around 2.1 years, at a tremendous impact to quality of life.”
The stats point to heart failure as a “growing epidemic,” says Ross, at a cost of some “$30 billion a year at present in the U.S.” to the healthcare system. A significant portion of that cost can come from the care required when conditions worsen due to preventable causes – ones that can be avoided by changes in patient behavior, if only implemented at the right time. Ross told me that currently, the paradigm of care for heat failure patients is “episodic” – meaning it happens in three- or six-month intervals, when patients go into a physician’s office or clinic for a bevy of tests using expensive equipment that must be monitored by a trained professional, like a nurse practitioner.
“If you think about the paradigm to a certain degree, we’ve kind of got it backwards,” Ross said. “So in our thinking, the idea really is how do we provide a continuous style monitoring of patients in a relatively unobtrusive way that will allow us to detect a change in a patient status before they end up actually coming into hospital. So this is where the opportunity with Apple is tremendous.”
Ross said that current estimates suggest nearly 50% of hospitalizations could be avoided altogether through steps taken by patients including better self-care, like adhering to prescribed medicinal regimens, accurate symptom monitoring, monitoring dietary intake and more. Apple Vice President of Health Dr. Sumbul Desai echoed the sentiment that proactivity is one of the key ingredients to better standards of care, and better long-term outcomes.
“A lot of health, in the world of medicine, has been focused on reactive responses to situations,” she said in an interview. “The idea to get a little more proactive in the way we think about our own health is really empowering and we’re really excited about where that could take us. We think starting with these studies to really ground us in the science is critical but, really, the potential for it is something that we look forward to tackling.”
Desai, has led Apple’s Health initiatives for just under four years, and also spent much of her career prior to that at Stanford (where she remains an associate professor) working on both the academic and clinical side. She knows first-hand the value of continuous care, and said that this study is representative of the potential the company sees in Apple Watch’s role in the daily health of individuals.
“The ability to have that snapshot of an individual as they’re living their everyday life is extremely useful,” she said. “As a physician, part of your conversation is ‘tell me what’s going on when you’re not in the clinic.’ To be able to have some of that data at your fingertips and have that part of your conversation really enhances your engagement with your patients as well. We believe that can provide insight in ways that has not been done before and we’re really excited to see what more we’re learning in this specific realm but we already hearing from both users and physicians how valuable that is.”
Both Ross and Desai highlighted the value of Apple Watch as a consumer-friendly device that’s easy to set up and learn, and that serves a number of different purposes beyond health and fitness, as being key ingredients to its potential in a continuous care paradigm.
“We really believe that people should be able to play a more active role in managing their well-being and Apple Watch in particular, we find to be — and are really proud of — a powerful health and wellness tool because the same device that you can connect with loved ones and check messages also supports safety, motivates you to stay healthy by moving more and provides important information on your overall wellness,” Desai said.
“This is a powerful health care tool bundled into a device that people just love for all the reasons Sumbul has said,” Ross added. “But this is a powerful diagnostic tool, too. So it is that consumer platform that I think will make this potentially an unstoppable tool, if we can evaluate it properly, which we’re doing in this partnership.”
The study, which is targeting 200 participants as mentioned, and enrolling more every day, will span three months of active monitoring, followed by a two-year follow up to investigate the data collected relative to patient outcomes. All data collected is stored in a fully encrypted form (Ross pointed to Apple’s privacy track record as another benefit of having it as a partner) and anyone taking part can opt-out at any point during the course of the research.
Even once the results are in, it’ll just be the first step in a larger process of validation, but Ross said that the hope is to ultimately “to improve access and equitable care,” by changing the fundamental approach to how we think about heart failure and treatment.
SailPoint, an identity management company that went public in 2017, announced it was going to be acquiring Intello today, an early stage SaaS management startup. The two companies did not share the purchase price.
SailPoint believes that by helping its customers locate all of the SaaS tools being used inside a company, it can help IT make the company safer. Part of the problem is that it’s so easy for employees to deploy SaaS tools without IT’s knowledge, and Intello gives them more visibility and control.
In fact, the term ‘shadow IT’ developed over the last decade to describe this ability to deploy software outside of the purview of IT pros. With a tool like Intello, they can now find all of the SaaS tools and point the employees to sanctioned ones, while shutting down services the security pros might not want folks using.
Grady Summers, EVP of product at SailPoint says that this problem has become even more pronounced during the pandemic as many companies have gone remote, making it even more challenging for IT to understand what SaaS tools employees might be using.
“This has led to a sharp rise in ungoverned SaaS sprawl and unprotected data that is being stored and shared within these apps. With little to no visibility into what shadow access exists within their organization, IT teams are further challenged to protect from the cyber risks that have increased over the past year,” Summers explained in a statement. He believes that with Intello in the fold, it will help root out that unsanctioned usage and make companies safer, while also helping them understand their SaaS spend better.
Intello has always seen itself as a way to increase security and compliance and has partnered in the past with other identity management tools like Okta and Onelogin. The company was founded in 2017 and raised $5.8 million according to Crunchbase data. That included a $2.5 million extended seed in May 2019.
Yesterday, another SaaS management tool, Torii, announced a $10 million Series A. Other players in the SaaS management space include BetterCloud and Blissfully, among others.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/19/sailpoint-is-buying-saas-management-startup-intello/
Podcast advertising company Acast is announcing that it has acquired RadioPublic, the startup that spun out of public radio marketplace PRX in 2016.
At first, RadioPublic’s main product was a mobile app for podcast listening, and it still supports the app. But co-founder and Chief Product Officer Matt MacDonald said that over time, the team’s focus shifted to products for podcasters, specifically its Listener Relationship Management Platform, which includes an embeddable web player, custom websites called Podsites and more.
“We had a whole roadmap of things we wanted to build, but we recognized that at our scale, we could be better served by partnering up with bigger organizations,” MacDonald said.
And ultimately, they decided Acast made sense as not just a partner, but an owner. Acast’s business still revolves around podcast advertising, but it’s also expanded with new tools like the Acast Open hosting platform, and it says it now hosts 20,000 podcasts, collectively reaching 300 million monthly listeners.
“The acquisition of RadioPublic is fundamentally a partnership of values,” said Acast’s chief business and strategy officer Leandro Saucedo in a statement. “We both firmly believe in the open ecosystem of podcasting and have a shared commitment to aid listener discovery and support all creators. We’re impressed by what RadioPublic has achieved and we believe that now — as podcasting is gaining more momentum than ever before — is the ideal time to bring RadioPublic’s talented team and company missions into the Acast fold.”
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Acast says it will not affect RadioPublic operationally.
MacDonald and his co-founder/CTO Chris Quamme Rhoden are both joining Acast (CEO Jake Shapiro departed last fall to lead creator partnerships for Apple Podcasts), and although they’ll be working to integrate RadioPublic features into the Acast platform, MacDonald said the startup will continue to support its own products and mobile apps for “the foreseeable future.”
He added that as RadioPublic works with Acast, the team will remain focused on “strengthening and deepening that relationship, that bond, that affinity between the podcaster and the listener.” In his view, that’s where RadioPublic’s opportunity lies, even as big platforms like Spotify invest in podcasting.
“How do we enable you, as the creator, to control the relationship you have with your audience?” MacDonald said. “We believe that a podcast’s listeners are the podcast’s listeners. They are not the platform’s customers.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/19/acast-acquires-radiopublic/
Podimo, the Copenhagen-founded subscription service for short form audio stories and podcasts, has raised an additional €11.2 million in funding.
The round is led by Chr. Augustinus investment fund, and comes just 8 months after announcing its €6 million Series A. Existing investors, and the Spanish VC Aldea Opportunity Fund also participated.
Founded in 2019, Podimo is a podcast and short-form audio platform which offers personalized recommendations to listeners, while offering creators a share of revenue via premium subscriptions.
Premium members gain access to over 600 shows that are exclusive to Podimo and membership fees are shared directly with the podcast creators they listen to each month. The service is currently live in Germany, Denmark and carious Spanish speaking markets.
Co-founded by Morten Strunge, who has a track record in subscription media products via audio books service Mofibo (which he sold to Storytel), more broadly, Podimo is hoping to capitalise on the rise in consumption in podcasts. The startup’s other founders are Nikolaj Koppel, Andreas Sachse and Sverre Dueholm.
“Our dream is to address two challenges in the developing podcast industry,” explains Strunge. “The first is discoverability, where we intelligently match listeners to the content they love. And the second is monetization, where we provide a new stream of revenue for creators, allowing them to focus on creating and invest into great storytelling”.
By offering a freemium model, where a paid version provides unlimited listening and features, Strunge believes there is an opportunity to work closely with podcast creators to strengthen the podcast ecosystem and make it less reliant on advertising revenue.
“We want to become the preferred partner for creators, by both working closely with their content, curate and match it with each individual user, but also by offering a superior monetisation model,” he said when Podimo announced its Series A. The hope is that a more robust revenue stream will enable new content producers to enter the market and allow existing ones to earn more. In turn, that would provide the financial headroom to invest even more time and effort into high quality content.
“We have seen strong traction on our podcast and short form audio subscription service… and now more than 50% of our growth comes from our international markets,” Strunge tells me. “Our exclusive catalogue has grown to more than 600 exclusive productions, and our vision of building out revenue streams to creators of short form content really seems to be getting traction”.
Antler is an early-stage venture capital firm which can also be described as a “company builder.” It helps founders build complementary co-founding teams, provides support with deep business model validation and a global platform for scaling their businesses. To date, Antler has invested in and helped build over 250 companies. Of these companies, 40% have at least one female co-founder, and the founders represent more than 70 nationalities.
Founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur, Marcus Grimeland, and a team of experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and company builders worldwide, Antler has raised more than $75 million to help entrepreneurs spread across nine of the world’s major entrepreneurial hubs. They include Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Nairobi, New York, Oslo, Singapore, Stockholm and Sydney.
Antler’s only office in Africa is in Nairobi, and it is run and led by women.
Marie Nielsen, founder of a paper recycling company in Ethiopia called Penda Paper Recycling, is a partner at the firm. She was an associate partner at Mckinsey & Company responsible for opening their Addis Ababa office. Melalite Ayenew is the firm’s tech partner. Her prior experience includes Oracle, Bain & Company, and Princeton Consultants. Selam Kebede is the firm’s director and leads operations. Before joining Antler, she worked for a couple of VCs and entrepreneurship support organizations.
Turning professionals to founders
Similar to other locations around the world, Antler East Africa runs two cohorts in a year. The firm is particular about adopting a people-first approach, and they bring together professionals with, on average, 10 years of experience in their respective industries. These professionals who become founders ideate, iterate and create solutions typically based on insights they have gathered or problems observed during the course of their past professional experience in their respective industries. After six months of incubation, the firm invests in the teams they can help further. Typically in the pre-seed stage, Antler cuts $100,000 checks for a 20% equity in each selected team.
“Our process is very hands-on; by working with the co-founders over several months, we get the opportunity to help shape the business models and perform extensive due diligence before investing,” Nielsen said to TechCrunch.
The due diligence Nielsen talks about is supported by the global Antler platform, where they pull upon its network of more than 400 experts across technologies and industries. After the pre-seed investments, Antler East Africa claims to continue to support the teams as they hit the ground running and start raising funds from follow-on investors.
Ayenew adds that the firm is also exploring the opportunity to invest in pre-existing, early-stage startups developed outside its program, but early enough for them to come in and still provide value in addition to the monetary investment.
Given that Nairobi is Antler’s only office in Africa, the team looks out for founders working on pan-African problems and solutions. It has attracted founders from more than 15 African countries, which plays a large role in maintaining its cohorts’ outlook to be organically pan-African.
To date, Antler East Africa has invested in a broad range of technology companies in the B2B, B2C and direct-to-consumer space, ranging from emerging sectors like robotics and AI to sectors such as health tech, fintech, and proptech. From its last two cohorts, Antler East Africa has invested in six startups. They include:
Cooked, a subscription-based meal kit provider, helps consumers search for, shop, and cook food at home better. Cooked operates with weekly and monthly subscriptions and delivers products home to its customers on pre-agreed days of the week. The founders have more than 20 years of experience in finance, food, and restaurants industries between themselves.
UNCOVER claims to be building the continent’s most trusted skincare brand and content platform by partnering with top skincare labs in Korea. The company carried out a skincare survey with responses from 1,000 Kenyan women and claims the data obtained will help develop viral knowledge platforms and effective customized products.
Having spent its early days in FMCG, and particularly with small traders, ChapChapGo identified that the lack of simple and affordable tools tailored to the local context was a major challenge for Kenyan businesses to adopt e-commerce. ChapChapGo enables businesses to transact online in a few minutes with simple invoicing, automatic reconciliation, and faster M-PESA checkouts.
Image Credits: Antler East Africa
Anyi Health wants to improve access to financial support for primary healthcare seekers. In Nigeria and many other African countries, patients unable to pay their hospital bills are detained in the hospital or left untreated. Anyi Health aims to solve this through a mobile-based point-of-need credit facility, where patients can apply for credit directly at the hospital. The company just started its MVP pilot with three hospitals in Lagos, Nigeria and is looking to raise a $300k seed round based on pilot proof of concept.
AIFluence is an AI-driven influencer marketing platform. Founded by advertising veterans, AIfluence enables brands in Africa to make a better decision when launching, managing and evaluating their influencer marketing campaigns. The company has signed customer contracts worth more than $600,000 with leading international and African companies, including Sony and Safaricom.
Digiduka positions itself as the digital service solution for Kenya’s cash economy. Its thesis is that payment solutions in Africa have two problems shutting out millions of potential users. One is high transaction fees, ranging as high as 9% per transaction, and the other, inconvenient payment modes. With the CEO and CTO having between themselves over 15 years of experience working with leading African telcos and as a technical lead for various startups, they aim to build the unified digital services solution of choice for both consumers and smaller retailers in Kenya.
Antler East Africa’s next cohort is in April, and Kebede says by bringing brilliant and experienced people together to create outstanding businesses in Africa, they hope that Antler “will help foster organizations that change the way people think, are sustainable and innovative as well as encourage other people to realize their own business goals.”
