Twine Health Closes Series A Financing, Aims to End Fee-for-Service Primary Care

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 7, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Twine Health today closed its series A financing totaling $6.75M, propelling the company's mission to make its health coaching platform the linchpin of value-based care. Twine is coming off a foundational 2015 having engineered its platform for large-scale commercial deployment, performed clinical pilots with unprecedented outcomes and made key management hires in marketing and sales. Going into 2016, Twine is poised to achieve rapid adoption of its health coaching platform by care delivery organizations that are assuming financial risk for the health of their population. This bold mission comes at a time when industry analysts are singling out health coaches (or "practice extenders") as the key to transforming patient care over the next five years¹.

Institutional investors in the round include Khosla Ventures, Provenance Venture Forum, and Tower Capital Partners. Also participating in the round are industry veterans Andy Palmer, James Pallotta and Henri Termeer.

Vinod Khosla, who led the investment for Khosla Ventures, described the unique role that Twine's platform is playing in the healthcare revolution that he envisions. "The time is coming when much of healthcare will be assumed by smart machines leveraging vast amounts of population and patient generated data to deliver personalized care. But as exciting as this is, the human connection between patients and their care teams remains critical in maximizing their potential. The melding of big data and the human experience is exactly where Twine is focused, and the team has already achieved results that are hard to ignore."

Prior to its commercial launch, Twine demonstrated effectiveness in hypertension and diabetes care. A clinical trial with Massachusetts General Hospital showed an average 26mmHg drop in blood pressure in three months, compared to an average drop under traditional care of 6mmHg in one year. A trial with Joslin Diabetes Center showed an average 3.2 drop in HbA1C, compared to an average drop in a traditional setting of 1.0 in one year. Over the last 18 months, Twine has shown that its platform can allow practices to achieve hypertension and diabetes control rates greater than 90%. Twine and its clinical partners expect to see similar results across all major chronic diseases.

Twine CEO John Moore spoke of the secrets to success, "Our clinical partners have bought into true health coaching. To us, that's having care teams who work with patients to set goals and provide continuous support to reach those goals. The key to successful health coaching is an empathetic human touch from someone who understands the psychology of health behavior change. Twine's philosophy is to revere the art of that health coach. Instead of trying to replicate or replace that human touch, we build technology that allows health coaches to scale their reach to superhuman proportions and empowers patients to build maximal self-efficacy."

Frank Moss, Twine co-founder and chairman, spoke about Twine's momentum, "We're in an ideal position to accelerate the crucial transition to value-based healthcare by as much as a decade. In 2015 we did the hard work of getting actual results with our clinical partners, which were all extremely positive. We now are embarking on a strategy to make Twine a 'must-have' for organizations of all types that bear risk for patient outcomes and are managing to the bottom line."

Twine's platform can be used to manage patients with any condition or wellness goals, not just specific chronic conditions or diseases. For more information about Twine's use in clinical trials, visit:

• Technology-Supported Apprenticeship in the Management of Hypertension: A Randomized Controlled Trial
• Utilization of a Cloud-Based Diabetes Management Program for Insulin Initiation and Titration Enables Collaborative Decision Making Between Healthcare Providers and Patients
• A New Wave of Patient-Centered Care: Apprenticeship in the Management of Chronic Disease

About Twine Health
Twine Health's SaaS-based coaching platform enables risk-bearing organizations to transition quickly and economically from episodic, office-based care to continuous, whole-person care. We believe when patients lead in their health (with the social and medical support of their care team) everybody wins. That includes the patients themselves through better outcomes and quality of life, and the providers and payers who support patients to achieve their goals.  Working with leading healthcare organizations across a variety of conditions, we have proven that patient self-efficacy produces by far the best outcomes. The Twine platform and coaching methodology improves health outcomes three-fold, at one-third the cost, with two-thirds fewer office visits. For more, visit www.twinehealth.com.

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¹ Issue 8: Physician extenders see an expanded role in patient care. (2014, December 1). Retrieved December 3, 2015, from http://www.pwc.com/us/en/health-industries/top-health-industry-issues/physician-extenders.html

SOURCE Twine Health

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