Teladoc and Livongo Focuses On Patients As The Consumer
Press release from Teladoc:
Teladoc Health (TDOC), the global leader in virtual care, and Livongo (LVGO), the leading Applied Health Signals company – today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement. This merger represents a transformational opportunity to improve the delivery, access and experience of healthcare for consumers around the world. The highly complementary organizations will combine to create substantial value across the healthcare ecosystem, enabling clients everywhere to offer high quality, personalized, technology-enabled longitudinal care that improves outcomes and lowers costs across the full spectrum of health.
Under the terms of the agreement, which has been unanimously approved by the Board of Directors of each company, each share of Livongo will be exchanged for 0.5920x shares of Teladoc Health plus cash consideration of $11.33 for each Livongo share, representing a value of $18.5 billion based on the closing price of Teladoc Health shares as of August 4, 2020. Upon completion of the merger, existing Teladoc Health shareholders will own approximately 58 percent and existing Livongo shareholders will own approximately 42 percent of the combined company.
The combination of Teladoc Health and Livongo creates a global leader in consumer centered virtual care. The company will have expected 2020 pro forma revenue of approximately $1.3 billion, representing year over year pro forma growth of 85 percent. Demonstrating the power of the combined platform and the scalability of the data driven and virtual ethos, the combined company is expected to have pro forma Adjusted EBITDA of over $120 million for 2020.
There is no question that wearable technology is on the scene, and it isn't going anywhere. Things such as apple smartwatches are a part of the Internet of Things, and they can provide valuable data for a wide range of areas. Wearable technology continues to improve in uncharted territory in healthcare technology.
Wearable technology such as the Oura ring used by the NBA to monitor the players for Covid-19 is remarkable. Products such as fitness tracking, sleep trackers, and vital sign wearables have a love or hate relationship by the clinicians. The main reason is that health professionals tend not to trust the data. However, hospitals should do a more effective job of integrating the data from wearables, especially with this announcement by Teladoc and Livongo.
Hospitals must do the following:
Integrate wearable data as a standard part of all patient profiles.
Prescribe wearables for remote monitoring and use the technology available.
Establish trust for patients providing sensitive data such as health measures, locations data, and potential shopping metrics for usage in population health management.
