The Froedtert & the Medical College health network was among a group of investors in Seattle-based digital health startup Xealth’s recent $11 million Series A funding round.
Xealth is a digital health prescribing and monitoring platform that allows clinicians to prescribe customized digital health care content, apps, and services as easily as they do medications.
Froedtert & MCW, located in Wauwatosa, has been using the Xealth platform, which is integrated into its electronic medical records system, for 13 months.
It’s one of the investments that has emerged out of Inception Health LLC, the innovation arm of Froedtert & MCW. Since its launch in 2016, Inception Health has invested in several digital startups and developed homegrown innovations in an effort to solve health care problems.
Xealth announced this week that Froedtert & MCW was among the investors in its recently completed financing round. Other investors included Threshold Ventures, Providence Ventures, UPMC and Health Network, McKesson Ventures, Novartis, Philips and ResMed. Froedtert & MCW did not disclose the amount of its investment in Xealth.
Xealth was spun out of Providence St. Joseph Health in Washington in 2017.
Froedtert & MCW said this week it is partnering with Xealth and Redwood City, California-based Proteus Digital Health Inc. to offer digital medicines that are integrated into patients’ electronic health records.
Proteus produces FDA-cleared ingestible sensors that are co-encapsulated with medicine. When swallowed, the sensor communicates with an adhesive patch on the user’s stomach and transmits information to a mobile app. Froedtert & MCW have been an early adopter of the technology for patients with diabetes, hypertension and Hepatitis C.
Through Xealth, Froedtert & MCW patients who qualify for digital medicines are automatically recognized, and Proteus Digital Medicines are presented to the clinician as part of the normal electronic health records prescribing workflow. Once patients use Proteus, the data is automatically linked back to the patient record through Xealth.
“We are proud to see Froedtert & MCW health network use the Xealth platform in this way to empower patients,” said Mike McSherry, chief executive officer of Xealth. “Although the Xealth platform can be used to prescribe anything from digital content and applications to non-clinical services such as e-commerce product recommendations, feedback on use of medications and effect on activities and daily living is a critical need for patients and providers, making the Digital Medicines offering by Proteus a great example of how technology can improve that vital connection between provider and patient, and ultimately enable more people access to tools that can help them improve their health.”
