Mercato Leads $31 Million Series B Investment in Vivante Health
Vivante Health, headquartered in Chicago, announced the closing of $31 million in Series B funding led by new investor Mercato Partners, based in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. The round also includes new capital from Health Catalyst Capital (New York) as well as returning investors 7wireVentures (Chicago), Intermountain Ventures (Salt Lake City), Distributed Ventures (New York), Human Capital (New York) and SemperVirens Venture Capital (San Mateo, CA).
The latest investment brings the total capital raised by Vivante to date to $47 million, following a $16 million Series A round in late 2021. It will support the continued development of Vivante’s GIThrive platform that is designed to improve patient outcomes at scale and reduce medical costs in an area that typically ranks among an organization’s top five healthcare expenses.
“Vivante is reinventing the management of chronic gut conditions through its ‘right care at the right time’ triage methodology,” said Joe Kaiser, a Managing Director at Mercato Partners. “This approach to patient-centric, digital GI management bridges the gap that exists between generalist and specialist care, giving patients back time, money, and quality of life lost to gastrointestinal issues as well as delivering a compelling ROI to employers.”
The new funding comes on the heels of recent GIThrive enhancements that spotlight the platform’s unique ability to provide the right care at the right time. In addition to food and symptom logging, online educational resources and 24/7 access to dietitians, health coaches and nurses, users now receive AI-driven personalized care plans that dynamically adjust to their symptoms and other variables; access to a nationwide network of internists and gastroenterologists for diagnosis, treatment, lab test orders and prescriptions; and other new services that help bridge the gap between virtual and real-world care.
The Series B capital will support continued technology upgrades designed to predict the onset and progression of GI conditions and provide complete virtual care for digestive disorders. It will also be applied to ongoing expansion of the company’s commercial and client support teams along with onboarding support for new employers, health plans, and channel partners seeking better solutions for reducing the personal and financial toll of digestive disease.
“We are thrilled to have the support of industry-leading capital partners as we execute on our vision at Vivante,” said Bill Snyder, Vivante Health CEO. “One in four Americans suffers from a digestive disorder or undiagnosed digestive symptoms that affect their quality of life as well as their healthcare costs. We have proven that our scalable technology platform paired with our comprehensive care team results in better health, lower costs, and a much better experience for the members we serve.”
GIThrive uniquely provides care across the digestive disease spectrum, from common yet often debilitating conditions like IBS and GERD to complex conditions such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease needing high levels of care coordination.
More than 90% of GIThrive users report that the platform’s digital resources and 24/7 human support help them relieve digestive symptoms and improve their quality of life. Employers that have adopted GIThrive have seen decreases of 15% or more in digestive-related healthcare spend due to increased medication adherence and behavior modification that reduce emergency room visits and inpatient admissions. Employers also benefit from claims filing handled by Vivante and a fees-at-risk structure based on a reduction in medical claims.
These benefits are driving Vivante’s strong growth in the highly competitive health benefits space, including adoption by Fortune 500 and other enterprise clients representing millions of covered lives as well as partnerships with leading health plans and benefits solution providers that have selected GIThrive as their preferred digital digestive health platform.
