Kate Ryder, founder and CEO of Maven, with her children
Maven
For some companies—like those in telehealth—the Covid-19 crisis has brought opportunities as well as challenges.
Telemedicine has been around since the late 1960s, but it took the coronavirus pandemic to make it a mainstay of healthcare delivery, especially for pregnant women. Healthcare providers have been able to maintain social distancing best practices and still provide services.
According to the CDC, during the first quarter of 2020, the number of telehealth visits increased by 50%, compared with the same period in 2019. That soared to a 154% increase in visits noted in surveillance week 13 in 2020, compared with the same period in 2019.
When Kate Ryder, founder and CEO of Maven, raised money in 2015, it was tough to get male VCs excited about her company, even though she was a healthcare venture capitalist and had connections.
Maven’s mission is to change the health of the world, one woman, one family at a time. It provides comprehensive support via your computer or phone across fertility, pregnancy, adoption, parenting, and pediatrics.
Back then, “the concept of face-timing your doctor was still very new,” she sighed. “Telemedicine is core to our care model, for how we reimagined how to better support women and their families.” Investors, healthcare providers, employers, and healthcare plans didn’t get it.
Over seven years, Ryder and the Maven team have done a lot of evangelizing and education. It’s now well established that women are the center of healthcare, making 80% of healthcare decisions for their families. Yet, even today, with all the improvements in research and development of products and services, they are still neglected. While women started to be included in clinical trials in the early ’90s, it wasn’t until the last seven years that preclinical trials, which include rats and mice, were mandated to research female animals. But a general awakening to the market opportunity enabled Maven to raise a significant amount of capital in the last few years.
- In 2016, the company raised $2.3 million in a seed round
- In 2017 it raised $10.8 million in a Series A round
- In 2018, it raised $27 million in a Series B round.
- In 2020, it raised $45 million in a Series C round.
Maven, a telemedicine company, serving women and their families
Maven
“Pregnant women are a very tech-savvy bunch and open to telehealth,” said Jane van Dis, MD, medical director at Maven. They’re comfortable seeking information online about what’s safe for them to eat and wear. What exercises are safe to do? Can they dye their hair? They’re comfortable with video chat, webinars, messaging, or attending a Q&A session on Instagram. “They were absolutely fine moving visits over telemedicine.”
Still, the pandemic has exposed disparities in healthcare by gender and even greater ones at the intersection of race and ethnicity with gender.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, due to personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages and social distancing mandates, pregnant women skipped their doctor appointments. Policies were such that women’s partners could not be there during delivery. The restrictions were also devastating to women going through fertility treatment and were up against a ticking biological clock.
No surprise, pregnant women have many concerns about the safety of the vaccines. While information is available from the CDC, it’s not always easy to find or digest. And much misinformation is out there. Van Dis tried to research how one of the biggest myths got started, but she never did find out how the rumor that vaccines are linked to infertility began.
Women have a lot of questions and concerns. Maven addresses them using the same techniques that have been proving effective—video chats, webinars, messaging, and Instagram Q&As.
Getting Covid-19 when you’re pregnant is risky, but not getting vaccinated is, too. Over 30,000 women have enrolled in the online pregnancy registry for the Covid-19 vaccines. “They are experiencing the same reactions and side effects that we see in the general population, which we saw from both the Moderna and Pfizer trials,” said van Dis.
The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is similar to the influenza vaccine. Tons of data show the safety of this type of vaccine. This vaccine has the additional benefit that antibodies women develop are passed on to the fetus in utero. “I feel 100% confident in saying I have enough data to tell my patients that I think this vaccine is safe in pregnancy,” said van Dis.
“We’re not seeing any adverse outcomes in pregnancies or births.” said van Dis. “Pregnant women with Covid-19 show a 13 times increase in maternal death rate, two to three times increased risk for stillbirths and preterm births, three times increased rate for hypertension, two times increased ICU admission rate and being placed on a ventilator. There is also an increased risk of blood clots.”
Researchers analyzed Washington state data and estimated that pregnant women’s infection rate was 70% higher than among other adults in a similar age range. They also found that rates of COVID-19 in pregnant women from communities of color were two to four times higher than expected.
“Health plans and especially employers, have an incentive to bring healthy mothers back to work after having kids,” said Ryder. The Maven care model provides support and empowerment to do that. Finding the right partners who have the right incentives has been key to the company’s success.
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