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The Summer Health board of directors (from L to R): Alfred Lin, Deena Shakir, Ellen DaSilva, Alyssa Jaffee, Chelsea Clinton.
Summer HealthThe U.S. healthcare system is not set up to take care of a kid with a rash or a fever at 2 a.m. who may not be sick enough for the emergency room, but whose parents could use a doctor. That’s where Summer Health comes in. The New York-based startup, which announced an $11.65 million Series A this week, offers 24/7 message-based nationwide access to a pediatrician within 15 minutes. “Our mission was to radically simplify access to care,” cofounder and CEO Ellen DaSilva told Forbes. “We wanted to make it dramatically easy to get care for your kids in a moment of need.”
DaSilva is a mother of three kids and so are the investors who co-led the round: Alyssa Jaffee of 7wire Ventures and Deena Shakir of Lux Capital. Both are regular users of Summer Health. Jaffee, Shakir and two other investors – Chelsea Clinton of Metrodora Ventures and Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital – are joining the startup’s board. Summer Health has raised around $19 million to date.
DaSilva said the company is also moving beyond just urgent care and has started offering specialty care, such as lactation consultants, sleep specialists, nutritionists and child behavior experts. Thousands of families have completed over 30,000 visits with Summer Health. The bulk of the business is currently cash pay and a subscription is $45 per month per family. But Summer Health has also started contracting with a few employers and is exploring ways to expand. DaSilva hinted at the Medicaid market in a blog post. She told Forbes the company is also expanding into other services, such as home-based diagnostics, like an ear infection tool that attaches to a smartphone.
The idea isn’t to replace pediatricians and the in-person well visits that are core to children’s health but to help overburdened practices in between these appointments. “We see a deep synergy,” said DaSilva. “This is not a competitive product. We are not taking business away from pediatricians. We are helping them.”
How A Decades-Old Medical Records Company Made A Huge AI Bet To Save Itself
Veradigm interim CEO Yin Ho (L) and ScienceIO CEO Will Manidis (R) in New York City.
WestThirdFilmsRemember Allscripts? The 38-year-old electronic medical records company rebranded as Veradigm following a series of crises and then was delisted from Nasdaq in February. Now interim CEO Yin Ho has an audacious plan to use the $140 million acquisition of AI startup ScienceIO to tap into its one major competitive advantage over other EHRs: data rights.
Pipeline & Deal Updates
Pediatric Cancer: The FDA has approved tovorafenib, marketed by Day One Biopharmaceuticals as Ojemda. This is the first approved treatment for relapsed pediatric low-grade glioma, which is the most common type of brain tumor in children. The approval serves what CEO Jeremy Bender says is the company’s goal of “bringing new medicines to children with life-threatening diseases.”
Women’s Health: Midi Health, a virtual clinic focused on menopause, has raised a $60 million Series B led by Emerson Collective. The California-based startup said it has served tens of thousands of patients nationwide and will use the funds to hire an additional 150 clinicians by the end of the year.
Maternal Health: Sibel Health, which offers wireless patient monitoring devices for maternal health, has received a $17.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for labor triage and monitoring in lower- and middle-income countries.
Bladder Cancer: The FDA approved ImmunityBio’s Anktiva plus BCG for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. The treatment works by activating the body’s own immune responses, T-cells and natural killer cells, against tumors.
AI For Drug Discovery: Xaira, an AI for drug discovery company that was jointly incubated by Arch Ventures and Foresite Labs, announced it has raised over $1 billion in capital, with backing from Arch, Foresite, Lux Capital, Menlo Ventures and many more.
Immune Disorders: Incyte announced that it is acquiring biotech startup Escient Pharmaceuticals for $750 million, giving the company access to Escient’s pipeline of treatments for immune disorders.
Bird Flu Virus Remnants Found In U.S. Milk Supply—FDA Says Milk Remains Safe
Though pasteurization kills harmful viruses, it is not expected to remove the presence of all viral particles.
Portland Press Herald via Getty ImagesThe Food and Drug Administration said samples of pasteurized milk from around the U.S. tested positive for remnants of the H5N1 bird flu—a finding that comes about a month after the infection began spreading in dairy cows across multiple states, though the agency says the U.S. milk supply remains safe.
Other Healthcare News
Health insurer Humana reported $741 million quarterly profit and boosted its Medicare Advantage enrollment forecast.
Support for legal abortion has climbed to a record high with 66% of voters believing abortion should be legal in either all or most cases, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments as to whether hospitals must provide abortions in emergency situations under federal law—even in states where abortion is banned.
Patients treated by female doctors fare better than patients treated by male doctors, according to new research.
Surgeons at NYU Langone Health completed the world’s first successful combined heart pump and gene-edited pig kidney transplant surgeries.
Across Forbes
Meet The Fintech Billionaire Making A Fortune Rewarding Home Renters
In Las Vegas, A Billionaire’s Blueprint For Building Bullet Trains
Anatomy Of A $46 Million Renewable Energy Swindle
What Else We are Reading
Monkeypox virus: dangerous strain gains ability to spread through sex, new data suggest (Nature)
Trump surrogates hint at how he could reshape U.S. health care policy (STAT)
FTC Chief Says Tech Advancements Risk Health Care Price Fixing (KFF Health News)
