It is worth noting that amid the boom of telehealth companies all around the world, we are seeing reports of major telehealth firms going down as well. Today, it was announced that Babylon telehealth which is UK’s major telehealth startup has filed for bankruptcy and is closing down its operations. It was noted that Babylon Health’s “U.K. subsidiary of the business formally went into administration. At the same time, the administrators sold a large chunk of its assets to eMed Healthcare UK, a new subsidiary of U.S. company eMed”. We must inform you that Babylon Health, once valued at $2 Billion, became worthless at the time of administration and was sold in parts.
Babylon’s official spokesperson told TechCrunch that “Babylon recently made the difficult decision to wind down its US Operations as its transaction with AlbaCore and MindMaze could not be finalised due to unforeseen circumstances. Firstly, we want to emphasize that there is no impact to the services we provide to our UK NHS GP at Hand, Direct-to-Consumer or Private patients and members. We continue to uphold the highest standards of care and service for our patients and members. Our UK business is a successful, distinct, and sustainable business, which provides high quality healthcare to many,” and added that “We are committed to continuing our day to day operations and innovating our technology capabilities and have reopened our GP at Hand list to patients effective Monday, 7th August 2023. We are in active discussions with a number of potential investors and partners to secure the financial future and continuity of the UK operation either as a standalone entity or in partnership with another body. Early interest in our business has been extremely encouraging and we will provide updates as they are available.”
TechCrunch also reports that they have information that “eMed is going to keep the Babylon business it acquired operational for now, but it’s unclear what the plans will be going forward”. It is worth noting that the same report mentions that “Babylon put the U.S. business in Chapter 7 insolvency to focus on its U.K. operations, which have been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy all month, until last night, when it finally fell.”
