Do We Need More HealthCare Startups?

healthcare
Redesign Health raises $65 million to create more health care companies 


Redesign Health announced it has secured an additional $65 million funding in a round led by Catalyst Health. This latest round peaks the health care company’s fundraising to a total of $315 million.
Redesign Health is the brain behind many health care finetech companies, telehealth apps and some comprehensive care service providers.

 Based on New York, Redesign Health was founded in 2018 to serve as an in-house central base for creating health care companies. The company may be described as a venture capital farm which also doubles as an incubator for companies.
A slight deviation from the norm however is that Redesign Health take 100% management of the offshoots it creates. 

Redesign Health currently in charge of at least 20 companies adopting its comprehensive care to manage acute medical conditions. Amongst them is Calibrate. Calibrate is a weight loss and metabolism company that uses medication and lifestyle coaching manifesting in the form of a curriculum crafted for exercise, improved sleep, and an improved mental health. Redesign Health also has Proper in its register. Proper is an oncology company which specializes in the provision of sleep aiding supplements and sleep coaching.

Another subsidiary is Motto. Motto helps rheumatoid arthritis patients by providing a team comprising of rheumatologists and dieticians, and an app to monitor diets and the body’s reactions. 

This approach to health care is what is ideal. Health specialists should monitor symptoms to identify problems and manage the health of their patients with more precision. However this is not always the case.
The truth is that accessing the medical records of most patients over an extended period is always difficult leading to instability and lack of uniformity in the medical advice received from different physicians. A report from 2015 revealed that specialists struggle to reach the general practitioners in charge of their patients, and as a result patients did not follow their advice.

What’s all the excitement about comprehensive care?
Redesign Health is getting a headway in its transformational agenda for the ecosystem due to the popularity and wide acceptance that telehealth has gained in recent times. The vision to grant patients access to companies that can provide different specialists to handle one health issue is now more realistic. 

In 2021, Within Health, a startup offering eating disorder treatments launched promising patients professional help through psychiatrists, therapists, dieticians and an actionable meal plan for treating earing disorders like orthorexia, binge eating disorder, and night eating syndrome.
There is also Polygon, a company which monitors for learning disabilities in children and adults, and offers treatment through its in-house specialists. This company also collaborates with educational institutions to set up an inclusive accommodating learning programs for patients suffering from learning disabilities.
So far Polygon has secured $4.2 billion in seed funding.

The advantage these companies offer is that every medical assistance they need is assess from one single location. This eliminates the need for multiple payments or appointments with healthcare providers. Considering all these pros, what are the cons of this very attractive model?
Many companies in this space are early stage startups which are not yet accepting insurance. Patients who are confronted with multiple chronic health issues may be forced to hop from one provider to the other and the back and forth maybe overwhelming and too exerting.