Wellth, a digital health startup intent on helping people with chronic conditions stick to their care plans, has raised $2 million in a new round of funding, according to a company statement. AXA Strategic Ventures led the round, but other investors participated including TB-Fore Capital, I2BF Venture Capital, Beta Bridge Ventures and AltaIR Capital.
Wellth’s app lets users track their medication adherence, register their weight and motivates them to strive to shift their lifestyles to make healthier choices with incentives. In response to emailed questions, Wellth CEO and Co-founder Matt Loper talked about its strategy and its newest investor, AXA Strategic Ventures.
What kind of milestones are you hoping to meet with this new investment?
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This investment will allow us to have the capabilities to handle full scale commercial implementations. We have a number of planned launches lined up for the next 6 months and are excited to generate data on our interventions in a number of disease states including type 2 diabetes, congestive heart failure, and post heart attack discharge. Our primary goal in the near term is to execute these implementations and publish data on our impact to adherence, health outcomes, and healthcare costs.
What did you like about AXA’s approach?
We really like how hands-on and value add AXA Strategic Ventures has been. They have been instrumental in introducing us to all the relevant AXA business lines including US Life Insurance and ex-US health insurance, and making sure that we are solving for the actual needs of these business lines. Wellth is the first digital health investment they have made out of the US (previously the Paris office invested in Medlanes and BioBeats) but it is an area of focus for them and they are actively looking for other investments in the space.
Who are your customers? How do they pay for the service?
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Our customers include any insurer or risk bearing provider, especially in the commercial and managed Medicaid markets. We work with them to quantify 12 month return-on-investment upfront in a fully transparent manner. In most cases we expect 4x+ returns. This actuarial model includes all expected incentive payouts and Wellth fees. We tend to charge on a per user basis and this fee is a small fraction of the projected cost savings.
So many companies are trying different methods to effect behavior change, particularly for people with chronic conditions? Why will you succeed?
There are a lot of companies trying to change chronic disease behavior and adherence, but behavior change is very tough and we believe that gamification, education, and connected devices do not solve the underlying issue of low patient motivation. So we leverage the growing body of behavioral economics research that proves that the right incentives structures are the most scalable and effective way to create the necessary motivation to create lasting behavior change. But we also go to great lengths to design an intuitive, painless user experience so that patients can stick with Wellth over time since it is so helpful and easy to use within their daily lives.
You’ve taken part in accelerators with Dreamit Ventures, Healthbox and New York Digital Health Accelerator. What’s some of the best advice you have received from mentors?
Michael Laskoff (who went on to join our Board of Directors) founded AbilTo which is a very successful behavior change company that counts many large health insurers as customers. He told me the story of how he got started and landed his first big national payer customer. It started with a very small implementation that went well for patients but produced almost no revenue. The payer customer was pretty pleased with the results and committed to expand AbilTo within their membership. After three months, the client had accomplished nothing. So, Michael walked in and fired them as a customer! The client couldn’t believe that this tiny startup had fired their only large customer, but realized that they hadn’t followed through with any of the agreed upon milestones. Today, that customer produces 10s of millions of recurring revenue for AbilTo.