The Series A-3 investment was co-led by SV Health Investors’ Medtech Convergence Fund and Aspire Healthtech Partners.

One of the company’s largest goals after the funding round is to connect with more home-based care providers. It already partners with home care companies like Griswold, Right at Home and BrightStar Care. It wants to expand those partnerships, but also form more partnerships with home health providers.

Satish Movva, the CEO and founder of CarePredict, is a home-based care veteran. He previously served as chief information officer for Interim HealthCare before starting his own company. CarePredict is his second startup.

While caring for his parents, Movva found it overwhelming and nearly impossible to monitor their conditions in between his visits with them. He started CarePredict to find a solution to that problem.

“I was the primary caregiver for them,” Movva told Home Health Care News. “I used to talk to them every day. But when I showed up in person, I would find new things about them that either caused me to take them to the ER that day or to specialist appointments the following week. It was highly disruptive and unpredictable. They needed something that would give me some indication about what’s really going on with my parents without having to rely on self reporting, because as we age, self reporting becomes very unreliable.”

Based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and originally founded in 2013, CarePredict identifies those changes in a senior’s conditions autonomously. Specifically, it is able to track urinary tract infections, fall risk, malnutrition and depression. Doing so has allowed it to reduce hospitalizations for patients by 39% and falls by 69%. It also is able to increase length of stay in lower care settings by 67%, according to the company.

Fundraising for digital health companies has been incredibly challenging of late, making the $29 million raise for CarePredict all that more impressive.

It wasn’t easy, though. External economic factors forced the company to pause fundraising at times or rely on individual or inside investors. Eventually, the money came through.

“We persevered, and finally found folks that were much more strategic in nature versus just venture capital,” Movva said. “That is really what made the breakthrough happen for us. I think in tough times like this, a company’s value is better discerned by a strategic investor than by a purely financial investment.”

CarePredict is paid for mostly by operators, such as the aforementioned home care companies, senior living companies and assisted living facilities.

The company also works with health plans, namely Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. In some instances, it’s able to work with plans and providers in shared savings programs.

As home-based care providers work more with MA plans – and shift more toward value-based care in general – Movva sees CarePredict as the perfect platform to augment their care plans.

“We plan to be very active in home care and in home health,” Movva said. “Those home care companies [that use] our solution have found that it has immense value for their business. Once you have this level of predictive capability and understand what’s going on with a client, you can be the one to react and not necessarily have to put the the family in the way of reacting.”

Greg Madden, managing partner at SV Health Investors, added that he believes CarePredict is “well positioned to expand into the aging-in-place segment.”

“Aging has become a black box in between medical encounters,” Movva said. “If we can have this observation model when there’s nobody around, we should be able to find the same predictors in that [home] setting as well.”

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The Florida-based health tech startup raised $9.5 million in Series A funding and has rolled out a new direct-to-consumer product, unveiled at CES.

The in-home product uses machine learning, wearables and kinematics to identify troublesome changes in seniors’ behavior. The goal is to prevent what could follow, whether depression, falls or UTIs.

The launch of CarePredict Home comes after the company pioneered similar technology in roughly 20 different senior living communities across North America and Japan, according to CarePredict Chief Business Officer Gerald Wilmink.

“After we commercialized this in the independent living, assisted living and memory care communities, we started getting a lot of interest in email from seniors and their loved ones in order to see if we could install this in their homes,” Wilmink told Home Health Care News. “Given that interest, we created a consumer version.”

The technology requires seniors to wear a sensor-laden device on their dominant wrist to track their movements and other environmental factors. After two weeks of learning the senior’s behaviors, such as eating and bathing, the device can notice changes.

Data then goes to an app, where loved ones can view it. The notion is changes to eating, sleeping or bathing patterns can act as red flags before vitals decline or falls occur.

Already, pilot partners are testing the consumer product. For example, CarePredict has partnered with Kindred Healthcare’s Lacuna Health, which is a 24/7, RN-led nurse hotline, Wilmink said.

“We’ve partnered with them given that the loved one taking care of this senior might not be constantly looking at data that’s provided on the CarePredict app,” Wilmink said. “This service would allow the Lacuna nurses to look at the data and make a call to the family in advance — or to the senior — and serve as an additional safety net.”

The technology also has further applications for home health companies.

“It’s essentially continuous data on the health of the senior, so when [caregivers] typically would show up once or twice or three times a day, they just would get individual data points on what’s going on there,” Wilmink said. ”Now [companies] would have continuous observation that would fill in the gaps and allow them to provide much better care.”

Combining seed funding, Series A and grant money, CarePredict has raised a total of $19.7 million.

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Aiva Health, a Los Angeles-based startup looking to provide a hands-free operating system for health care organizations, has secured investment from the Google Assistant Investment Program. The investment amount was not disclosed.

Founded in 2016, Aiva Health uses Google Home, Amazon Echo and other “smart speakers” to better connect patients, particularly older adults, to caregivers. By leveraging the capabilities of voice commands, the platform is meant to free up clinicians to deliver faster and more personal care.

The Google Assistant Investment Program works with early-stage companies in the voice assistant space. In addition to Aiva Health, its investment portfolio includes Go Moment, which created an AI-powered travel chatbot, and Maison Me, which sells AI-designed, made-to-order clothing.

Aiva Health plans to use the investment to accelerate platform development and deployment.

The startup’s other investors include Act One Ventures, Mucker Capital, Techstars and the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator Powered by Techstars. Aiva Health has also reportedly received investment funds from Amazon’s Alex Fund.

Health care executives widely see Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) as the biggest disrupter for the industry, followed by other tech giants such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOGL) and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL).

Aiva Health is specifically eyeing the home as part of its business model.

Mon Ami Launches New Companionship Model

A new startup aimed at combatting senior isolation in the San Fransisco Bay Area has launched, adding competition to a niche market.

Mon Ami is an online marketplace that connects seniors with college students for non-medical companionship visits for $25 an hour. The startup is focused on preventing unhealthy social isolation.

“Family members are desperate to address the social and emotional needs of their loved ones, but the market to date has offered solutions purely focused on caregiving and the logistics of daily living,” Mon Ami Co-Founder Joy Zhang said in a statement. “Mon Ami answers that need by using technology to end this social isolation and match our companions with families desiring help.”

Maverick Ventures and Felicis Ventures are among Mon Ami’s early investors.

In launching, Mon Ami becomes a potential competitor of Papa, a Miami-based “grandkids on-demand” startup that provides similar services. Papa recently announced raising $2.4 million during a series B round.

Zhang previously worked for the World Health Organization’s Innovation for Aging team.

CarePredict to Use Lacuna Health’s Call Center Solutions

CarePredict, a leading AI-driven digital health company dually based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Menlo Park, California, has selected Lacuna Health, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kindred Healthcare, as part of an AI-powered wellness platform collaboration.

CarePredict develops remote-sensing technologies, including wearables, that help trigger care for seniors aging in group living facilities or at home. In doing so, the company is able to help identify signs of depression, urinary tract infections and increased fall risk, among other outcomes or conditions.

Based in Louisville, Kentucky, Lacuna Health is a care management platform that offers its services to clients on a white-label basis. Its main solution is a nurse hotline service, which provides nurse-led support to patients and caregivers throughout the country.

CarePredict will have access to Lacuna Health’s clinical staff, trained by registered nurses, to offer care-management-enabled predictive health technology products designed at engaging and supporting seniors and their caregivers.

Written by Robert Holly

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