Rand Merchant Investments, through its fintech investment arm, AlphaCode, has taken a 25.1% stake in Guidepost, a high-touch diabetes health- and insurtech innovator that is poised for international expansion. Guidepost is a technology platform that enables highly personalized, data-driven diabetes management at scale. The timing of this investment is marked by World Diabetes day on 14 November.
It achieves radical clinical improvements in just four to six months of working with patients and their data. Guidepost has achieved significant clinical, customer and business model milestones during its six years of operation with a 45% reduction in diabetes complications risk proven across more than 8 000 patients.
Guidepost allows insurers to significantly better manage their diabetes risk. People with diabetes are extremely expensive for both medical and life insurance companies when not well managed and Guidepost helps solve this business problem whilst supporting patients to achieve substantially better health.
“We’re delighted to partner with AlphaCode and RMI as we grow our business. We already work with life insurers such as OUTsurance, innovative medical schemes such as CAMAF and pharmaceutical businesses such as Novo Nordisk. The heart of our business is a network of caring diabetes coaches empowered by our technology. We look forward to supporting our coaches and patients even better with RMI’s involvement,” said Graham Rowe, CEO, and co-founder.
Dominique Collett, senior investment executive at Rand Merchant Investments added: “We believe that Guidepost’s growth will come from applying its healthtech capabilities to the insurance industry. Guidepost has already started programs at insurers where they are underwriting diabetic lives and managing these patients on the program in collaboration with Swiss Re. There is also the opportunity for the skilled leadership team to roll out this methodology for other diseases and chronic conditions.”
Diabetes, a global health concern, requires ongoing management necessitating significant behavior change by patients. Technology firms have approached this issue with apps but the target market, often aged 50 – 60, do not respond well to a tech only approach. Guidepost has therefore supplemented its tech platform with specialized diabetes coach clinicians who spend significant time building a relationship with and guiding patients for best clinical outcomes. Guidepost continuously improves its clinical processes and technology to achieve unparalleled sustained results when ranked against key global competitors.
The funding will be used to bring in key executive skills, further develop Guidepost’s differentiated clinical technology and scale the business locally and globally with insurance partners.
To date, AlphaCode has invested in Prodigy Finance (2017), Entersekt (2017), Merchant Capital (2015) and Luno (2017).