True to our name–we think of ourselves not as investors but as catalysts–agents of change — accelerating the digital transformation of the world in ways that solve real problems and improve lives and livelihoods for people everywhere. Nowhere is this more important than in healthcare, where we are committed to achieving our vision of ‘Health Assurance’ — creating a resilient system that is value-oriented and enhances quality, access, equity, and affordability.
Today we’ve achieved another milestone in that journey with the close of our $670 million Health Assurance Fund II. Since March 2020, through our Fund X and Fund XI groups of funds, GC has invested over $1.7 billion in companies aligned with GC’s vision of Health Assurance. This new fund, coupled with the announcement of our first Health Assurance focused fund in April 2021, underscores the commitment we have and the opportunity we see for driving widespread and meaningful change in this sector.
When we first unveiled our Health Assurance vision in 2020, our goal was to create an alternative category of consumer-centric, data-driven healthcare designed to help people stay well, while bending the cost curve. In the midst of the global pandemic, we felt it imperative to re-architect our system against these guiding principles to align the interests of all healthcare stakeholders.
And we’ve made great strides: amassing an extraordinary broad and deep portfolio of companies that comprise our current Health Assurance network; building a talented and dimensionalized team of who we believe to be extraordinary investors and executives-in-residence; and forging a unique go-to-market model based on strategic partnerships with leading healthcare systems and payers to ‘radically collaborate’ on their digital transformations.
This new fund will allow us to continue to accelerate our work on building a value-oriented system and focus on the new innovation frontiers we see:
- Enabling the true convergence of digital and physical care, especially in a post pandemic world
- Accelerating health equity and consumer centric care for underserved populations at a time of ever greater disparity
- Promoting a truly integrated approach to mental health at a time when there is greater demand and strained supply
- Developing the category of infrastructure as a service at a time when collaboration, integration, and transparency are even more integral to achieving outcomes
- Supporting workforce transformation at a time when the healthcare workforce is at a breaking point
- And, bringing bio and pharma into the fold as key stakeholders in our overall work as we seek to explore novel, integrated approaches to drug development, distribution and care management.
These are massive platforms that need to get built — not in silos — but as part of a deeply embedded and integrated next generation healthtech ecosystem. Creating a true consortium of companies that co-create the infrastructure required to make Health Assurance a reality and accelerate our partnerships with healthcare ecosystems around the world is a key area of focus for us moving forward. Daryl Tol, our new head of health assurance partnerships and former CEO of Advent Health in Central Florida, is playing a critical role for us. He’s creating the ‘magic in the middle’ between our health assurance network companies and existing and new partners in the space by unearthing business insights and fostering understanding and empathy. We anticipate many new strategic collaborations on the horizon.
On behalf of Hemant Taneja, Holly Maloney, Elena Viboch and the whole GC Health Assurance team, GC is proud of the impact our companies have already made, although they and we are still early in our journey. We are deeply optimistic about our prospects to accelerate meaningful change in the US and internationally. And we are grateful to our LPs for backing our efforts.
