Carbon Health, a hybrid care provider, is looking to the remote monitoring space with its purchase of Alertive Healthcare. 

This new acquisition comes just months after the company closed a $350 million investment round, which boosted its valuation to $3.3 billion. 

Alertive’s remote monitoring tools are designed to help clinicians manage patients in various specialities including primary care, cardiology, neurology and nephrology. Patients are enrolled into a virtual remote monitoring clinic. When a patient’s condition is deteriorating, the system is able to alert doctors. 

According to the company’s website, the tool gives updates for medication refills, dosage, adherence and side effects. Alertive pitches its remote monitoring as a way to help clinicians drive revenue as well. 

WHY IT MATTERS

This acquisition helps expand Carbon’s business model into the remote monitoring space. Carbon said it plans to integrate Alertive with its multimodal care and expand its home-based care with remote monitoring tools like wearables and sensors. 

“Carbon Health has already seen the power of RPM tools throughout the COVID pandemic in enabling better care for patients remotely with blood pressure cuffs, glucometers and scales,” Myoung Cha, chief strategy officer and president of Home-Based Care at Carbon Health, said in a statement. “Based on this early success, we believe that delivering great care in the home is critical to providing accessible healthcare for everyone, which is why we are making investments in hardware as a key pillar of our omnichannel care model. Combined with our recent acquisition of Steady Health for diabetes care, Alertive Healthcare now allows us to expand our existing RPM offerings to multiple chronic diseases affecting the heart, brain, lungs and kidney.”

THE LARGER TREND 

This isn’t Carbon’s first acquisition this year. In June, the provider snapped up integrated diabetes care platform Steady Health. Then in August, the company purchased two major clinic chains, Southern Arizona Urgent Care and Med7 Urgent Care, to further its primary care expansion. 

Remote patient monitoring is a hot topic in healthcare today. A 2019 American Medical Association study found that remote care tools are the technology with the highest likelihood of adoption over the next three years. 

Millions of investor dollars have poured into the remote patient monitoring space as well. For example, BioIntelliSense scored $45 million for its wearable technology that collects patient data outside of a hospital setting. UK-based remote monitoring company Huma landed $130 million in Series C funding in May.