October 19, 2021 James Tribe
We have previously observed that life, health and pensions InsurTech investment has lagged behind General Insurance investment; but of the three, health is pulling away. There have been several $100m+ investments into healthtech – technology designed to enable or promote health that is consumed outside of a clinic or hospital environment – and a crowded market of smaller players has emerged.
Using the News & Insight feature on Magellan™, our insurance technology navigator, the following collection highlights 9 healthtech companies that have recently announced new investment or partnerships. Click on each company below and navigate to News & Insight to learn more.
Ottonova is a German ‘full stack’ digital private health insurer who has recently raised 60 million euros of extra funding.
Ottonova’s app provides policyholders with a digital concierge service (allowing policyholders to book appointments, get support when abroad, etc.), a personal medical timeline (e.g. past appointments, prescriptions) and an automated claims handling process, including the ability to make claims by photographing receipts and uploading them.
Dacadoo develops technology solutions for digital health engagement and health risk quantification. Dacadoo has recently partnered with HSBC Life, integrating into their recently launched health and wellbeing platforms.
Avaamo provides a cloud-based platform that automates the conversational AI lifecycle to solve specific and high impact business problems faced by enterprises.
Avaamo has embedded four variations of its virtual assistant to interact with the patients whose information is stored by on medical record firm Epic. More than 250 million patients have some data on Epic’s servers. The voice assistant will help reduce some of the demand on healthcare workers, especially as telehealth skyrocketed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Verifiable is a provider data engine that automates credentialing and provider network management. The company have recently secured $17 million for its API.
Talkiatry provides personalised mental healthcare solutions to allow its customers to choose a suitable diagnosis package as per their subscribed insurance policy. The company has raised a $20 million Series A to scale their strategy to ring psychiatry services in-network with insurance providers.
BestDoctor offers private medical insurance as well as health support and medical consultations via its app – which gives recommendations on preventive care and online support from physicians. The startup recently raised $26 million in a Series B funding round from Winter Capital Partners.
Human API connects health insurers with medical data. They have recently partnered with CLEAR. Human API’s health data platform provides a private, secure and transparent way to link COVID-19 health data to CLEAR’s Health Pass.
Prenetics offers genetic testing and digital health solutions that enable insurers to personalise and strengthen their health and wellness propositions.
Offering Covid-19 testing, Prenetics is providing health screening to more than 100 companies – including investment banks based at Canary Wharf in London – to help get staff back to work safely.
Square Health offers digital health and wellbeing technology solutions for the insurance industry. They have recently partnered with IptiQ – Swiss Re’s leading digital white-label insurance provider – to bring an end-to-end solution to the healthcare provision market.
Using Square Health’s “Clinic in a Pocket” app, they provide integrated healthcare services alongside IptiQ’s insurance products.
We believe that health insurance is the market most likely to be significantly impacted by technology-led innovation (including InsurTech) in the next few years. This is for three main reasons.
First, the health ‘ecosystem’ has many different innovative participants, besides insurers, engaging with consumers (e.g., telehealth providers, digital pharmacies, etc.). Any one of these ecosystem participants could innovate the customer proposition in a way that disrupts insurers. Second, our experience suggests that more consumers are willing to engage deeply on the topic of health than for other lines of business. That means that they are likely to notice and respond to new propositions (as Vitality has successfully demonstrated). Third, the volume of data in the health ecosystem is enormous and arguably much greater than in any other line of business. This provides huge potential to innovate.
The opportunity is huge, especially post-Covid. Populations are engaged with their health and, almost uniquely in insurance, are prepared to engage with their insurer for the right rewards. We believe that for insurers, the winners will be those who don’t settle for simply more data, but are able to utilise new data sources and distribution methods to create genuine customer engagement.
Browse the Healthtech Collection on Magellan™
If you enjoyed this collection and would like a curated shortlist of vendors tailored to your exact business goals, please contact the Magellan™ team here.
About the author
James Tribe, Content Manager - Magellan
James manages the content and data for Oxbow Partners’ insurance technology navigator, Magellan. He has previously worked in a similar role building a database of high growth UK start-ups. James has a first class degree in English Literature from the University of Exeter.
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