New York City-based HealthReveal, which uses remote monitoring and data analytics to help payers and providers make sure patients get the treatments that line up with evidentiary guidelines, has raised $10.8 million in first-round funding. The round was led by GE Ventures with contributions from Greycroft Partners, Flare Capital Partners, and Manatt Ventures.
HealthReveal was founded by CEO Dr. Lonny Reisman, who previously founded ActiveHealth Management and sold it to Aetna for $400 million. He then served as Aetna's CMO for nearly a decade.
"I think everybody agrees that some 86 percent of medical costs are associated with complications from chronic disease, things like strokes and amputations and end-stage renal disease and end-stage cancer, which is obviously awful for the patient but also very costly," Reisman told MobiHealthNews in an interview. "What’s less known is 50 percent of the time we don’t provide patients with care that’s consistent with the best guidelines. ... So the simple proposition is if, in fact, more than half of our medical costs are associated with chronic disease and we only do the right thing half the time, what would be the benefit to patients and to costs if we did the right thing more frequently?"
To accomplish that goal, HealthReveal works with risk-bearing entities including self-insured employers, payers, and providers using value-based care models. The company applies powerful machine learning algorithms to monitoring those patients using claims data, EHR data, and, in groups they've identified as high risk, remote patient monitoring. But they also turn their algorithms on best practice guidelines -- both the recommendations from specialist societies and well-regarded, robust clinical trials in the medical literature. The system identifies patients whose care doesn't line up with the best practice for their exact situation.
"The difference between what we’re doing and what the health plan is generally doing is that we’re actively engaging the treating physician," Reisman explained. "We’re not assuming that what was prescribed diagnostically or therapeutically is necessarily correct. And we’re sort of -- with all due humility -- simply pointing out aspects of the literature that are discordant with the treatment that’s being provided and asking doctors to consider that. We're ... building an analytic bridge that creates an analysis of the patient’s unique physiologic characteristics against the literature that’s germane to that patient’s physiology, and highlights variances which are then communicated to the treating doctor."
The company has been around for two years and has a handful of customers, including Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. But up until now its been mostly self-funded by Reisman. With the $10 million raise, HealthReveal will continue to build the team of both technical and clinical experts to program additional features into the platform. Beyond that, the raise will support sales, marketing, and operations. Reisman says it's been easy to attract strong team members because people are drawn to the vision.
"This is different," he said. "We’re not talking about bed days, discounts, or transitions of care. We’re ensuring that the clinical guidelines are being followed. This is about efficacy. Efficiency is great, but I would argue that it doesn’t matter much if, at the most fundamental level, you’ve been misdiagnosed or you’re not getting the right therapeutics."
