Digital therapeutics specialist Omada Health announced it closed $23 million in Series B financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Kaiser Permanente Ventures and existing investors including U.S. Venture Partners and The Vertical Group.
Omada is focused on creating and delivering digital health programs that achieve meaningful clinical outcomes and help participants reverse or avoid costly chronic disease or its complications.
The company’s goal is to change the way complex diseases are treated through evidence-based digital programs that engage users in a positive and enjoyable way and sustain long-term engagement.
The company’s flagship product, Prevent, is an online diabetes prevention program for employees and the general public, based on the CDC’s National Diabetes Prevention Program.
Based on behavioral change science, Prevent integrates into everyday life, in an effort to keep participants engaged through the end, and even beyond.
Prevent’s digital programs are guided by dedicated health coaches and community social support, meaning every participant has real people, in real-time, monitoring their progress and offering 24/7 feedback and helping to ensure accountability.
One in three American adults have prediabetes (the clinical precursor to type 2 diabetes), and without lifestyle changes to improve their health, 15 percent to 30 percent of those will develop type 2 diabetes within five years.
The American Diabetes Association reports diabetics incur average medical expenditures of about $13,700 per year, of which about $7,900 is attributed to diabetes, while data from UnitedHealth shows health-care spending for diabetes or prediabetes will reach $500 billion annually by 2020.
“We’re caught in an unacceptable paradox: despite staggering technological advances in nearly every aspect of our lives, for the first time in history we find that preventable, chronic disease now kills more people than infectious disease,” Sean Duffy, CEO and co-founder of Omada Health, said in a statement.
The Omada team is an interdisciplinary group of clinicians, designers and technologists from Google, Amazon, IDEO, Harvard and Stanford.
The company also announced Andreessen Horowitz general partner, Balaji Srinivasan, would be joining Omada Health’s board of directors.
“Omada’s mission is to inspire people to alter the habits that place them at risk for serious but preventable conditions,” Duffy continued. “This vote of confidence from Andreessen Horowitz, combined with the work we’re already doing for major organizations like Blue Cross Blue Shield Louisiana and Stanford Hospital, reinforces our belief that consumers are ready for health programs that are rooted in science and tangible outcomes, yet are designed and delivered digitally as natural extensions of how we live today.”