A man who sold his last company for $440 million just launched a new startup to fix rural healthcare

Hello,

Welcome to Insider Healthcare. I'm Lydia Ramsey Pflanzer, and today in healthcare news:

• Aspire founder Brad Smith has a new startup focused on rural healthcare;
• We rounded up the 9 most well-funded women's health startups;
• Mixing coronavirus vaccine doses might improve protection, early evidence is showing.

If you're new to this newsletter, sign up here. Comments, tips? Email me at [email protected] or tweet @lydiaramsey125. Let's get to it…

We've made it to the end of June, and you know what that means: Today is your last day to submit nominations for our annual 30 under 40 list.

If this deadline snuck up on you – never fear. I'll leave the form open for an extra day, so you have until the end of the day on July 1. Get your nominations in ASAP!

The man who built Aspire Health and sold it to health insurance giant Anthem for $440 million is launching a new venture to fix rural healthcare

• Brad Smith, the founder of Anthem's Aspire Health, has launched a startup to fix rural healthcare.
• The startup, Main Street Health, wants to help rural doctors get paid for keeping patients healthy.
• Main Street is launching with $26.6 million in funding from Oak HC/FT and Frist-Cressey Ventures.

Get the full story>>

From birth-control delivery to online pregnancy care, here are the 9 highest-funded women's-health startups

• After Ro's Modern Fertility deal, women's-health companies are top of mind again in digital health.
• Using PitchBook and Crunchbase, Insider found the nine highest-funded women's-health startups.
• All fall into three broader categories: online prescriptions, fertility, and online and hybrid care.

Read the full list>>

Early findings indicate that mixing and matching coronavirus vaccines might improve your protection

• Mixing Pfizer and AstraZeneca doses yields a greater immune response than two doses of AstraZeneca.
• That's according to early data from a UK study, though it hasn't been peer reviewed yet.
• One expert thinks it will be beneficial to get an mRNA booster after J&J's single-dose shot.

Find out more>>

More stories we're reading:

• Moderna says its COVID-19 vaccine should work against the Delta variant (Insider)
• Walmart is selling a private label version of the insulin Novolog at $73 a vial (CNBC)
• Some experts who had Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine are now getting extra shots of Pfizer or Moderna to try to protect against the Delta variant (Insider)
• Inside the push to get Biogen's Alzheimer's drug approved (Stat News)
• Self-proclaimed 'workaholic' Fauci is seeing his daughters for the first time since the pandemic began (Insider)

- Lydia