Telecoms giant Orange and insurer AXA will become majority shareholders of the appointment booking and telehealth platform DabaDoc, which operates mostly in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. It has intentions to expand across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Outpatient group Gajda-Med has won Poland's multi-million euro contract to deliver first-contact telehealth services for the Polish NHS. It follows a recent trend of private sector companies moving to work on national hotlines, including in Sweden and Switzerland, and it is very controversial where operators already own physical clinics.
The future of the UK NHS is changing according to the recent White Paper and Queen's Speech - we're moving towards collaboration not competition and a Secretary of State for Health with wider powers. But current incumbent Matt Hancock's reputation is damaged and his political capital on the wane. HBI heard at a Kings Fund digital event that this could prove a problem for the NHS.
Attendees at the HIMSS-21 virtual conference this week heard how Covid has created a world where there is 'no such thing as telecare, just care", and how Israel's substantial successes in battling COVID were, in no small part, down to it's digital preparedness.
Global digital health platform Babylon Health will IPO through a $4.2bn merger with SPAC Alkuri Acquisition Corp. The deal gives it a 13x revenue multiple of the $4.2bn equity value and 11x a $3.6bn enterprise value. The move comes as Europe's players increasingly look to the States as a more scalable market. Despite just launching there last year, 70% of Babylon's revenues now come from the States.
HBI hears the first eight months of Germany's digital app reimbursement is viewed as "modestly positive", with statutory insurer AOK saying that it has prescribed 4,700 apps under the framework.
For Europe's digital health start-ups, the average size of a funding round has doubled since 2020 and quadrupled since 2018. New reimbursement schemes, better regulation and the pandemic have driven more and more investors to the sector.
GPs in the UK have said that telehealth has left practices feeling overwhelmed by patient demand, with some requesting e-consultations every single day. It's not the first market where telehealth has driven over-consumption of healthcare services.
The Swedish primary care sector is seeing a buying spree as big groups emerge. The future of primary healthcare in Sweden will involve a mixture of digital and face-to-face services and all major providers will operate a hybrid business model combining the two, says Nick Johansson, CEO of provider Medtanken, which was formed out of a recent large merger. HBI speaks to him to find out why.
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