Becker's Hospital Review

59 INNOVATION Tech startup Circulo Health switches focus, lays off a quarter of its staff By Giles Bruce C irculo Health, a startup built to use technology to manage the care of Medicaid patients, has let go a quarter of its workforce, its president said in a June 17 LinkedIn post. "This difficult decision stems from market trends that led us to rethink our original focus on creating a new kind of Medicaid insurance company," Circulo Health's Jeff Grahling wrote. "Many of the employees who are leaving us were hired to support that purpose, which we are no longer pursuing." Instead, he wrote, the company will invest in infrastructure to serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and expand its home and community based-services offerings in Ohio, where it currently operates. Circulo Health is a spinoff company of Olive AI, a healthcare automation startup that recently froze hiring, as Becker's reported June 9. Both companies are based in Columbus, Ohio, which Sean Lane, CEO of both firms, called the "emerging insurtech capital of the U.S." The move continues a trend of health tech startup layoffs amid market uncertainty. Circulo Health raised $50 million in February 2021, when it said it planned to "disrupt Medicaid." n 10 top players in expected $132.5B wearable medical device industry By Noah Schwartz T he market for wearable medical devices is set to explode in the coming years amid the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence and 5G, the embrace of self-monitoring of health conditions and the predilection for home healthcare, a study by Growth Plus Reports found. The industry is expected to grow to $132.5 billion by 2031, up from $18 billion in 2020, according to a June 17 news release. The sector is segmented into monitoring and diagnostic devices, which track things such as vital signs, sleep and the nervous system, and therapeutic devices for care including pain management, respiratory therapy and rehabilitation. "Factors such as the increasing prevalence of lifestyle- related diseases, growing awareness about fitness and health among the population globally and increasing wearable monitoring product launches have played a key role in driving the segmental growth," the release said. Here are 10 of the top players in the market, according to Growth Plus Reports: • Philips • Apple • Fitbit • Omron Healthcare • Medtronic • Garmin • GE Healthcare • Sotera Wireless • BioTelemetry • Dexcom n for patients; conversational AI for automated routing of certain calls into our call center; and automating payer interactions. What goes into the transition to Google Cloud and how long do you expect it to take? We will be kicking this off as soon as September, and we're in the phase of forming the teams and initiating that process. It's a journey and not a destination, right? We hope to recognize a lot of the initial migrations within the next couple of years. But we hope this relationship continues beyond the initial cloud migration, which modernizes our foundation. For the innovation aspect of this, we hope this alliance will continue to iterate along that journey with new products and development opportunities to raise health. What excites you most about the deal with Google Cloud? What excites me the most is the culture that we have aligned and the energy and the vibe that we have as an organization to start this journey. We have the right people at the table (and growing beyond Google Cloud), with a laser focus on mission and vision, using the ever-evolving technology and service capabilities at our fingertips — to now leap and continuously be curious to reimagine the possibilities for healthcare. Remember that digital transformation is not technology alone. It takes people, processes and technology together to aspire change. We see this strategic relationship as part of that cultural shi to accelerate that practice together. n

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