Behind the Term Sheet: How French HealthTech Resilience is Reinventing How We Treat Cancer through Digital & Remote Medical Monitoring
By: Jacky Abitbol & Costanza Carissimo
Unfortunately, most of us know someone that has battled or is battling cancer. It is, in fact, the second leading cause of death in the world. And while the number of cancer patients has dramatically increased, with conservative global estimates pointing to 27.5M new cases by 2040, recent breakthroughs in medicine mean has evolved the disease from acute to chronic — with patients now living with cancer over many, many years. The increase in life expectancy is obviously a positive — but the oncology market hasn’t been able to keep up.
Consider this:
➔ There are 67K oncologists worldwide for 18M new cases per year
➔ Each oncologist has to tend to over 1k patients
➔ Patients typically only see their oncologist 7 minutes on average every 6 months
➔ With so many new treatments (with strong side effects that can negatively impact quality of life) combined with a lack of follow up, more patients are deviating from treatments plans with 30% choosing to stop treatment altogether
Not only are resources limited, but access to medicine remains unequal. What we need is a more human-centric approach to help both doctors and patients treat cancer for the long term.
Last week, we announced that we led Resilience’s €40M Series A, the French healthtech company specializing in remote monitoring and therapeutic follow-up for cancer patients. The startup was founded in 2021 by successful tech entrepreneurs Céline Lazorthes and Jonathan Benhamou, who were brought back onto the scene by the meaningful goal of supporting patients and caregivers at every stage of cancer treatment. We’ve been impressed with both the significant progress in just one year of existence, as well as the strong mission of this purpose-driven company — reinventing the way we treat cancer through digital and remote medical monitoring.
Remote patient monitoring — using technology to improve outcomes
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) consists of 3 verticals: teleconsultation, connected devices and patient reported outcomes (PRO). While the benefits of RPM have been discussed for years (see this 2010 article from Medical Oncologist and Researcher Ethan Basch, MD, MSc: The Missing Voice of Patients in Drug-Safety Reporting), hospitals have only recently started using RPM to treat patients — particularly those with chronic disease. And with the onset of COVID-19, adoption has rapidly accelerated with the global market expected to grow from $23B in 2020 to $117B by 2025 — that’s a 5x increase.
Why now? Thanks to recent clinical trials from the likes of Basch and Gustave Roussy’s (one of the top 5 cancer institutes worldwide) CAPRI Study, there’s now scientific proof around the benefits of PRO and RPM — impacting both quality of life and patient survival. By frequently following the status of patients, RPM can help by flagging high risk patients, better managing side effects, growing adherence to treatment, and at the end of the day, lengthen life expectancy.
Payors are also getting on board with governments strongly pushing forward RPM reimbursement schemes in countries like the US and Germany or in France where full RPM reimbursement in oncology is expected within the next year through the new French Social Security Financing Bill (PLFSS 2022).
Still, barriers to widespread adoption persist with most solutions on the market focusing on either patients or doctors — not both. On one side, patients need comprehensive, yet easy to use, and specialized tools to encourage adherence. On the other side, doctors need a solution that maintains the relationship with patients while being easily integrated and managed in daily workflows — particularly given the low-bandwidth of doctors and staff shortages.
Enter Resilience — supporting patients & doctors at every stage of cancer treatment
Similar to what Livongo (valued at $19B) did for diabetes, Resilience is quickly becoming the leading RPM for oncology. While still at an early stage, the company has shown impressive traction by partnering with Gustave Roussy, with exclusive rights to their research and RPM algorithms, building a world-class scientific committee including Ethan Basch (who conducted the first RPM clinical study mentioned above), and acquiring Europe’s leading B2B RPM solution Betterise.
Resilience is looking to democratize RPM with its centralized, patient-centric platform and one-stop-shop that addresses the needs for patients, doctors, nurses and the entire health system.
A B2C app for patients: an all-in-one application, featuring personalized educational content and scientific resources, to self-assess and report symptoms, track evolution and directly connect to doctors, oncologists and nurses along with a community of other patients.
A 360-degree platform for doctors, oncologists and nurses: a single dashboard of patients that allows practitioners to stay up-to-date, provide proactive care, prioritize high-risk cases and recommend better treatments. It also solves major workflow and staff pain points with nurses performing the first triage, answering patients and passing urgent cases to doctors.
For a better health system: benefits reverberate across the entire health value chain from patient to payor and institutions both private and public. This includes better operational efficiency for hospitals, cost-savings with less hospitalizations, an easy-to-use reimbursement system — all with better care.
The ambition is threefold: create a worldwide leader in RPM to improve the quality of life and overall survival of cancer patients; help providers improve treatment guidelines and streamline care; unlock the potential of data-driven, value-based care with all healthcare stakeholders including pharma companies and payors.
Today, Resilience already works with some of the top health centers in Europe such as the Centre Hospitalier (CH) Côte Basque, CH Valenciennes, Centre de cancérologie Les Dentellières (Valenciennes), Gustave Roussy and CHU Bordeaux. With this new funding, we’ll see the company accelerate deployment of its medical devices (CE Class IIa) with healthcare institutions, leveraging key partnerships such as Ramsay Santé, ELSAN and Vivalto, and enrich its application with new functionalities dedicated to the well-being of patients.
Parting thoughts — a profound transformation in the fight against cancer
As a global venture capital firm dedicated to the startups looking to make a positive impact on this world — transforming industries and society for the better — we are extremely grateful to have crossed paths with Celine and Jonathan. We look forward to joining the important and ambitious journey of revolutionizing personalized oncology.
