Livongo has acquired Retrofit, a weight and diabetes prevention management company. The deal will give Livongo the ability to provide a wider spectrum of services for employer wellness and health plan members. The acquisition also reflects the steady drumbeat of consolidation in the digital health sector.
Mary Pigatti, Retrofit CEO, will join Livongo, along with her 80 staff, and continue to oversee Retrofit. In a phone interview, Pigatti reflected on Retrofit’s beginnings as a direct-to-consumer business that later provided its personalized weight management and later, diabetes prevention tools to employer wellness and health plan customers.
“From a market perspective, the demand is for outcome-based solutions that address high-level pain points. Both of our companies’ products do that,” she said.
Livongo’s business also involves work with health services and pharmacy benefit management companies.
Retrofit has been a legacy portfolio company for Cambia Health Solutions. Through Cambia’s joint venture investment business with Mosaic Health Solutions, Echo Health Ventures manages this and other Cambia legacy portfolio companies. Echo Health Ventures also took part in Livongo’s $105 million Series E funding round as part of a strategic partnership.
Other Retrofit investors have included Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), Chicago Ventures, Hyde Park Ventures, Correlation Ventures, and Pritzker Group Ventures.
The plan is to integrate Retrofit Diabetes Prevention program with Livongo’s product offerings. For example, Retrofit’s Diabetes Prevention program is now available from Livongo as Livongo DPP powered by Retrofit. Livongo also plans to blend its technology-driven contextual ‘nudges’ with an expanded nationwide team of health coaches to support members with a wider range of weight management and nutrition services, such as personal coaching from certified diabetes educators who are also nutrition counselors, according to a news release.
Livongo’s acquisition of Retrofit follows its purchase of Diabeto last fall. Diabeto provides connectivity to glucose meters through Bluetooth. Livongo has an FDA-cleared. Livongo received FDA clearance for its blood glucose meter in 2014.
Among the companies that compete in the diabetes prevention space are Omada Health and to some extent Twine Health, which was acquired by Fitbit earlier this year.
There have been several significant digital health acquisitions since the start of the year. But the one that is most similar to the Livongo-Retrofit deal is Fitbit’s acquisition of Twine Health, which provides health coaches for people with chronic conditions.
