Twin Health raises $50m, and other digital health financings

Twin Health has raised $50 million in funding for the continued development of its ‘digital twin’ platform, which aims to provide a model of a patient’s unique metabolism.

The company’s artificial intelligence-powered Whole Body Digital Twin platform draws on data collected daily from wearable sensors, clinical lab testing, and patient self-reporting, and is designed to help people prevent and manage metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes.

In a randomised clinical trial published in the journal Endocrine Practice, the technology was shown to reduce weight, improve a marker of glucose control and reduce the need for diabetes medicines over one year compared to a control intervention.

Chief executive Jahangir Mohammed said the cash would help the company to “scale the availability of our transformative technology and the way it’s deployed to even more health plans and employer partners, achieving lower costs, better outcomes and higher satisfaction among their members and employees.”

The round comes two years after Twin Health raised $140 million in a Series C, and was led by Temasek with additional backing from existing investors Sofina, ICONIQ Growth, Helena, and Peak XV.

Other recent financings in the digital health arena in the last couple of weeks include a $43 million top-up for Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is developing an implantable brain implant device that could function as a brain-computer interface and potentially treat patients with spinal damage or neurodegenerative diseases and got FDA approval to start human trials earlier this year.

The round added to the $280 million in financing led by the Founders Fund formed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel that was announced in August, taking the total to $323 million. A total of 32 investors participated, according to a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Singapore telehealth specialist Doctor Anywhere has closed a $40.8 million third-round extension, adding to $66 million in the original Series C in 2021. Square Peg and Novo Holdings contributed to the funding, which will be used to expand its services overall, and particularly in secondary care.

Its eponymous app connects patients with doctors and also gives them a view of their healthcare history by providing consultation records, prescriptions, health screening reports, and medical certificates, and can also provide analysis of data to help direct their care via an AI algorithm called BigQuery. From its start in Singapore, the company has expanded into additional markets, including Thailand and Vietnam.

Online addiction and mental health counselling company PursueCare has raised $20 million in a Series B and acquired three digital therapeutics for substance use disorders originally developed by Pear Therapeutics, which went bankrupt earlier this year – raising questions about the commercial viability of prescription DTx even if they have FDA approval.

Connecticut-based PursueCare formerly offered Pear’s reSET, reSET-O, and reSET-A therapies to patients treated in its network before the digital health specialist was folded, and is keen to keep them available. The company told Behavioural Health Business that prices would be kept low and bundled with its other services for health plans.