Big Health, the global leader in digital therapeutics dedicated to helping millions back to good mental health, announced it has raised $39 million in a Series B financing, led by Gilde Healthcare and joined by co-lead Morningside Ventures; existing investors Kaiser Permanente Ventures (KPV) and Octopus Ventures; and Samsung NEXT.
Janke Dittmer, general partner at Gilde and Isaac Cheng, partner at Morningside, will join the Big Health board, which also includes Liz Rockett (KPV), Alliott Cole (Octopus) and Arun Gupta (Founder, Quartet). Big Health will use the funds to invest in new product development, expand its distribution channels, and scale its commercialization activities.
“We’re excited about the mission of Big Health to provide fully automated mental health solutions to millions of people worldwide,” said Janke Dittmer of Gilde Healthcare. “Our investment philosophy is to support fast-growing, global businesses that deliver better care at lower cost and Big Health is a perfect fit.”
“We’re very pleased to add Big Health, the leading digital therapeutics company in mental health, to our therapeutics portfolio,” said Isaac Cheng, M.D., of Morningside Ventures. “Big Health has led the market in their commitment to clinical evidence, and in pioneering innovative go-to-market strategies. We believe the company is ideally positioned to dominate the digital therapeutics space, and to help millions back to good mental health as a result.”
This news marks another in a series of important milestones for Big Health:
In June 2019, Big Health announced a partnership with CVS Health, to streamline customer adoption of its digital therapeutics; the first step was to add Big Health’s Sleepio™ — for poor sleep — to the CVS pharmacy benefit management formulary, which simplifies employer sign-up and reimbursement.
In early April of this year, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the company announced its Community Access Program, which enabled companies and their employees to sign up for free access to Sleepio and Daylight. To date, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), Boston Medical Center, AmeriGas and more than fifty other companies have signed up for this program, adding more than six million covered employee lives in a matter of weeks.
Big Health also recently announced key findings from a health economic evaluation of Sleepio at a Fortune 500 company, which compared two groups of employees — a group of Sleepio users and a matched control group — and their respective healthcare costs over an 18-month follow-up period. The results demonstrated 28% lower total annualized healthcare costs in the cohort of Sleepio users, as compared to the matched control group.
“We entered 2020 having doubled our revenues in 2019,” said Peter Hames, Big Health co-founder and chief executive officer. “That’s because customers such as Target, Comcast and The Home Depot recognize that our digital therapeutics can fill a growing gap in their portfolio of mental health benefits. With this funding and with Janke’s and Isaac’s strategic insights, we are well positioned to accelerate our new product innovation, and add more sales and distribution capacity to meet increasing demand.”
About Big Health
Big Health was founded by entrepreneur Peter Hames and Professor Colin Espie, the world sleep expert whose published research helped Peter overcome his insomnia. Our purpose is to help millions back to good mental health. Our “digital therapeutics” — Daylight™, for worry & anxiety, and Sleepio™, for poor sleep — are fully automated, scalable cognitive and behavioral programs. Our products combine the intimacy of the human voice, engaging animation, and clinically rigorous techniques to help people overcome their mental health challenges. Big Health’s products are backed by 50 published clinical papers including 13 randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and are cited in leading clinical guidelines including the American College of Physicians and NICE. Today, millions of people worldwide have reimbursed access to Big Health’s products, via leading employers in the US and the UK’s NHS.
About Gilde Healthcare
Gilde Healthcare is a specialized healthcare investor managing over €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) across two fund strategies: venture & growth capital and private equity. Gilde Healthcare’s venture & growth capital fund invests in fast growing companies active in digital health, medtech and therapeutics. The venture & growth companies are based in Europe and North America. Gilde Healthcare’s private equity fund invests in profitable European lower mid-market healthcare companies with a focus on the Benelux and DACH region. The private equity fund targets healthcare providers, suppliers of medical products and service providers in the healthcare market.
About Morningside Ventures
Morningside Group was founded in 1986, by the Chan family of Hong Kong, to make private equity and venture capital investments. The group is managed by investment professionals who are entrepreneurial, have deep industry knowledge and are effective in the local environment in which they operate. In addition to its investment activities, Morningside Group is strongly committed to social responsibility.
