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In a push to transition more health organizations from volume- to value-based care, Intermountain Healthcare has established a new company, Castell, which seeks to help clients provide higher-quality and more affordable care to their patients.

“Intermountain’s day-to-day frontline experience and success in value-based care management programs make us uniquely prepared to extend our services to others through Castell. We are energized by this opportunity to simplify value-based care and help set the direction for the healthcare of the future,” Rajesh Shrestha, president and CEO of Castell, told 

While value-based care systems are designed to prioritize the health of the consumer, they bring new operational burdens to providers, health systems and payers. Without the right level of support, it’s difficult to thrive in a value-based healthcare world, according to Intermountain.

Castell claims to usher in the transformation and improvement of value care through its platform of tools and services. These tools are headlined by Intermountain’s “Reimagined Primary Care” model, which allows physicians to spend more time with patients and to learn more about them on a personal level. The model also enables physicians to assess the problems before them with an expanded care team.

Castell intends to streamline affiliated network management.

“Affiliated network providers manage multiple types of contracts with varying degrees of financial risk, performance measures and other requirements,” Shrestha said. “Castell will streamline value-based contracts, so providers access a single point of information across their patient panels. Providing streamlined information will ensure providers can care for each patient consistently and focus on what’s best for the patient in front of them.”

After looking at past failures and successes of Intermountain, other local provider networks and population health programs, Castell claims to boast the most comprehensive suite of value-based care offerings in the nation.The company plans to serve providers, payers, health systems and accountable care organizations.

The move toward value-based care, though wrought with risk, could prove lucrative for these clients.

“Healthcare’s ongoing shift from volume- to value-based systems of care enables providers, health systems and payers to take a more holistic approach to managing the health of their patients, but also creates more financial risk or rewards,” Shrestha said.

Intermountain Healthcare, of course, is known for  delivering high-quality, high-value care. The health system awards physicians for more effective value-based care and tries to remove incentives for ineffective care.

Its preventive approach to patient wellness could allow for care to be assessed and administered before an emergency, creating a means of more effectively treating those with special needs, such as chronic illnesses, through prevention. Physicians can then work 

 with patients in an effort to lower recovery time.

Castell claims that this model has resulted in a 60% reduction in Medicare Advantage admissions, 25% fewer commercial insurance admissions and 20% decreased per-member per-month costs.

Castell plans to deliver similar results to its clients, through a technology and analytics platform to guide care and digital tools to address virtual care, the patient experience and social determinants of health.

“Intermountain Healthcare’s mission is to help people live the healthiest lives possible. This commitment is the same no matter where, when or with whom people get care,” said Marc Harrison, M.D., Intermountain president and CEO.

Castell will continue to grow its arsenal, drawing upon new innovations, care pathways and clinical practices from Intermountain Healthcare in the future.

“Castell is a critical component of Intermountain’s broad vision for healthier communities,” Harrison added. “It creates a new path for providers to access the support they need to provide high-quality, affordable care to their patients across the nation.” 

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While value-based care is appealing, a lackluster support system can cause hesitance. Castell hopes to assuage concerns.

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Mahmee, a maternal healthcare management platform, has raised $3 million 

, including investments from entrepreneur Mark Cuban and tennis star Serena Williams, who see potential in the digital health company’s push to optimize maternal health records and ensure the health and lives of mothers post-pregnancy.

The maternal and infant health-tech company connects the maternal health industry by using IT infrastructure to ensure physicians are connected to their patients and don’t overlook important health issues, all through a web-based application. This could potentially prevent unforeseen complications and save lives, Mahmee claims.

“This industry is lacking the IT infrastructure needed to connect these professionals from different organizations to each other and to follow and monitor patients across practices and health systems,” Melissa Hanna, CEO and co-founder of Mahmee, J.D., MBA, said in a statement. “This missing element creates gaps in care. Mahmee is the glue that connects the care ecosystem and closes the gaps.”

To improve the IT infrastructure, Mahmee captures large amounts of previously inaccessible data and provides a platform for the data to be incorporated into the care plans of new mothers.

The technology could benefit health systems, physicians and patients alike.

“Mahmee can help any health system looking to reduce complications and drive engagement with patients,” Hanna told 

She said that Mahmee does not only provide the technology but also the “playbook” for creating maternal programs. During an implementation period, Mahmee analyzes health systems’ current maternal care operations and delivers guidance. This is not necessarily revolutionary for healthcare at large, but it is, however, in maternal care.

The company’s network already includes more than 1,000 providers and organizations, including Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, AltaMed, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the University of California, Los Angeles.

By working with private and Medicaid-focused health plans, Mahmee also measures the rising clinical risk of a patient and alerts physicians to the issue and how to carry out the proper course of care. Mahmee said it has already properly identified and made physicians aware of more than 1,000 critical care issues, with some cases resulting in life-saving intervention.

“Mahmee’s mission is to increase access to comprehensive care for all mothers and babies,” said Linda Hanna, co-founder, chief nursing officer and Melissa Hanna’s mother. “We work as an extension of the care team. In doing that, we help providers listen to mothers, better understand their needs and stay one step ahead of medical crises.”

The personalized, HIPAA-compliant dashboard allows patients to ask questions and input data such as the baby’s weight. The main feature, however, is the “Care Feature,” which is essentially a list of user-specific directives based upon the best course of action for the mother’s recovery and the baby’s health. These directives can include joining a support group of other mothers or simply how to wash the infant.

Mahmee also enables patients to book appointments with practitioners and to communicate with the app’s own lactation consultants, registered nurses and nutritionists. Patients can join online classes and webinars.

The application differs for physicians and providers, for they have to be registered as part of the mother’s care team. Once granted access, physicians join a system to communicate and collaborate with others in the patient’s network.

 Mahmee’s open line of communication solves the problem of “too many cooks in the kitchen” and allows mutual collaboration between physician, patient and provider, Melissa Hanna said.

She claims that engagement and personal interaction have resulted in a high user retention rate. She also claims that the lifetime value of the web-based application doubled when patients engaged with the interface by booking appointments or seeing their questions answered within Mahmee’s messaging system during the first 48 hours of using the app.

Arlan Hamilton’s ArlanWasHere Investments led the round of funding, with support from Revolutions’ Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Cuban and Williams. They joined existing investors Cross Culture Ventures, Acumen America, The Helm, Backstage Capital, Bumble Fund, Pipeline Angels and others.

“Given the bleak data surrounding maternal death and injury rates,” Williams said in a statement, “I believe that it is absolutely critical right now to invest in solutions that help protect the lives of moms and babies.”

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 each year in the United States alone, Williams knows all too well the complications that can ensue with inadequate health records. Last year, she became the first mother to play in the Wimbledon final in 38 years. Just months earlier, during her own pregnancy, she almost died when unforeseen blood clots, information not visible in her health record, had settled in her 

Cuban said he’s confident in the company’s ability to helm innovation in the space.

“This tech solution is helping usher in the future of maternity healthcare,” Cuban said in a statement.

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BlackThorn Therapeutics, a company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to aid in behavioral health drug development, closed a $76 million 

The company hopes the money will further advance its work in combating mental health through precision medicine. BlackThorn develops next-gen AI technology that furthers drug development for brain disorders. The company has also created its own psychiatry and data platform to efficiently analyze multimodal data.

BlackThorn’s new investors include Polaris Partners, Premier Partners, Scripps Research and Vertex Ventures HC. They will round out the already notable list of backers, which includes Alexandria Venture Investments, Altitude Life Science Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, Biomatics Capital, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Johnson & Johnson Innovation — JJDC, Inc. and Mercury Fund.

BlackThorn also expanded its board of directors and executive management team. Brian Chee, a managing partner at Polaris Partners and Lori Hu, a managing director at Vertex Ventures HC, and Julie Sunderland, a managing director at Biomatics Capital, joined the board.

Shoring up its executive team, BlackThorn appointed Jane Tiller, who holds the equivalent of an M.D., chief medical officer and Laura Hansen, Ph.D., vice president of corporate affairs.

“I am thrilled to join BlackThorn, particularly at this time when the nexus between artificial intelligence and the latest advances in neuroscience promises to modernize the way we understand and treat behavioral disorders,” Tiller noted.

The new hires and injection of capital mark a jump by BlackThorn toward the intersection of high tech and biotech. The company and its executives share a vision to bring these disciplines together and to create a greater patient outreaching as well as a more accurate responsiveness in clinical studies, according to BlackThorn.

™ spoke with Laura Hansen, Ph.D., vice president of corporate affairs, who said the data analyzed by BlackThorn’s AI is multimodal and has a number of features. Such data can be used for clinical scales and can aid in the behavioral task assessments assigned to a number of neurological diseases.

In terms of further uses of such data, Hansen said, “predictive models can be created and divide patients into different subtypes in terms of which patients should receive placebos or actual medicine.”

What does BlackThorn’s AI and its potential for drug development mean, however, for health systems, particularly those involved in clinical research? Within the patient enrichment process, Hansen said, the AI allows for patient heterogeneity, which enables researchers to predict ahead and to have more successful clinical studies. Such examples would include knowing which test patients are more likely to respond to placebos.

“Being able to predict a patients’ response,” Hansen added, “addresses a major challenge found in patient heterogeneity in a clinical setting.”

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Nym, the creator of autonomous medical coding technology, 

 that it has received $6 million in seed round financing in a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Through its automatic, accurate and real-time medical coding, Nym claims it has seen early success in optimizing revenue cycle management processes for several healthcare organizations. Evidently, investment firms are taking notice.

“The company’s innovative approach to language understanding — combining computational linguistics with medical language and knowledge &mdash; provides the missing link for a healthcare system in need of reliable and real-time medical coding and billing,” said Adam Fisher, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.

Fisher is, of course, referencing Nym’s automatic medical language understanding technology, which generates billing codes in real time with no human involvement. This is a process currently done manually by 250,000 coding specialists in the U.S., meaning Nym has the potential to cut costs and billing cycle times.

Nym claims its work also eliminates the AI black box problem. The startup does this by generating a concise and transparent audit trail, accompanied by an explanation of the code-selection process.

Founders Amihai Neiderman and Adam Rimon set out to create Nym with the vision of using clinical language understanding to create a unique patient-physician experience. The company aims to serve patients by providing a clearer understanding of pay-on site and billing, while physicians could see increased cash flow and reduced operational costs.

“This accelerated and simplified process improves both the patient experience as well as a clinic or hospital’s cash flow,” Neiderman said in a statement. “We are proud to offer our transformative technology, providing the solution that revenue cycle management has been missing.”

For health systems, Nym could be the first step toward a more streamlined health operation. With less direct human involvement, patients might benefit from its transparency and ease of use, and physicians have one less concern on their hands at a time when 

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