A newly formed group of women’s health companies aims to tackle gaps in care with a focus on improving outcomes while reducing costs.
Dubbed the Wonder Woman Collective, its founding members are Paloma Health, Neura Health, LEVY Health, Seven Starling and Origin. Together, they have raised a combined $35 million and represent upward of 80 million covered lives, executives said. Their success, they argue, will hinge on a collective commitment to collaboration. The announcement was shown first to Fierce Healthcare.
The group believes that no one company can serve all complex needs. It aims to deliver streamlined specialty care by driving early diagnosis and integrating treatments for conditions like migraine, hypothyroidism, polycystic ovary syndrome and more. As part of the partnership, the companies will share medical records and work to support R&D in women’s health.
“It’s a win-win for all the companies in the collective, but it’s also a win for the patients,” Guillaume Cohen-Skalli, co-founder and CEO of Paloma Health, told Fierce Healthcare.
Addressing the gender health gap could boost the global economy by at least $1 trillion by 2040, according to a McKinsey estimate. Complex conditions affecting women impact their quality of life, work and personal well-being, while payers are overwhelmed by options that are nonetheless necessary, executives said.
“There is this very clear point solution fatigue from employers, from plans, but at the same time a lot of these specialty-focused solutions are the right solution to make a real dent in healthcare outcomes and claims,” Elizabeth Burstein, co-founder and CEO of Neura Health, told Fierce Healthcare.
The initial companies in the collective were carefully chosen for their proven clinical outcomes that have demonstrated savings, Burstein explained. But the group is already seeing strong industry interest in participating, including from companies like Evvy, and plans to expand to additional members in June.
Synergies already exist between the companies in the group. For example, with 60% of Neura migraine patients having comorbid mental health conditions, the company has already been referring as needed to Seven Starling. The collective helps formalize and streamline access to such relationships for employers and payers, per Burstein.
While there is notable payer overlap among the companies already, one of the mutual benefits of the collective is an opportunity to help with payer introductions to close potential gaps in coverage, Burstein noted. And for payers, she added, the close-knit partnerships will streamline savings and ROI measurements. Together, they can provide combined savings studies, showing the overall impact of investing upfront in women’s health and proactive care.
LEVY Health, an AI-powered platform for care navigation and member of the group, offers a platform for employees to determine the right provider to see in the group based on their eligibility and symptoms.
The collective recognizes that employers may already have existing solutions they like, so, for the time being, there is no requirement for them to agree to work with every single vendor in the collective if they don’t want to.
The collective also plans to anonymize the shared medical records and make them publicly available to researchers. “We want to help people do more women-specific research,” Cohen-Skalli said. That is expected to begin happening over the next few months. Eventually, the collective might charge a small fee from joining members in order to support those research efforts.
The group also plans to engage in advocacy work at the federal level to align with existing White House efforts to advance women’s health as well as to encourage even more investment.
The companies currently work with major payers including Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare and Humana plus some government plans. Several companies, including Paloma and Neura, have a few value-based contracts.
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