Tag: telehealth

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On-demand telehealth company Tyto Care adds Sanford Health, Itochu and Shenzhen Capital Group as strategic investors

Tyto Care, a telehealth company that enables physicians to conduct on-demand remote exams, announced today that it has added $9 million to its Series C, bringing the round’s total to $33.5 million. The new funding comes from strategic investors Sanford Health, Itochu, and Shenzhen Capital Group. First announced last year, the oversubscribed Series C was led by Ping An Global Voyager Fund, run by the Chinese financial conglomerate.

Itochu, Shenzhen Capital Group, and Sanford Health, the largest rural not-for-profit health care system in the United States, will serve as Tyto’s new strategic partners as it expands in Japan, China, and the U.S., its largest market. The New York-based company has now raised $54 million to date.

Tyto’s telehealth service combines a set of connected hardware that patients keep at home and video calls with doctors. Called TytoHome, the small handheld tools are used to examine the heart, lungs, throat, ears, skin, abdomen, heart rate, and body temperature of a patient, enabling doctors to assess their condition remotely and decide if they need further medical care. Tyto also integrates with third-party tools for blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation, and weight scales. Patient data can be aggregated into Tyto’s data platform, which the company says will eventually be used to help with diagnosis and health alerts.

Remote health exams are especially helpful for children, elderly people, patients with chronic conditions, and patients recovering from operations who need frequent monitoring. In an email, CEO and co-founder Dedi Gilad told TechCrunch that the company also targets rural areas that have limited access to healthcare facilities or are affected by the global shortage of physicians.

The U.S., Japan and China “are all turning to digital health technology to help solve a myriad of public health issues, including expensive healthcare and aging and dense populations,” Gilad said.

Founded in 2012, the company launched in the U.S. in 2017 after receiving clearance from the Food and Drug Administration, and in 2018 in Canada after it also received regulatory approval there. Because of different healthcare systems and regulations in each of its markets, the company expands in new markets like Japan and China through strategic partnerships with health systems, telehealth companies (including Ping An Good Doctor in China, which has 170 million users), large private practices, and self-insured employers. So far it has struck partnerships with 50 health organizations.

Tyto’s new funding will be used to find new partners in the U.S. and expand into new markets in Europe and Asia. It also plans to add new modular exam tools for home diagnostics and remote monitoring.

In statement, Shenzhen Capital Group chairman Zewang Ni said “Tyto Care’s mission of making high-quality healthcare accessible from the comfort of home is crucial, especially in China. We believe that telehealth will significantly improve the lives of Chinese consumers, whether they are parents with sick children at home, elderly patients facing chronic illnesses, or citizens living in remote areas with less access to medical care.”

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FirstVet swipes $6M to expand its pet advice telehealth service

Pet services can be serious startup business. Witness the likes of dog walking startups Rover and Wag, for example. At the same time digital health is a major area of interest for entrepreneurs, thanks to reliable demand meeting tech’s disruptive potential.

Well, Sweden’s FirstVet is dabbling in both — offering remote video consultations and advice for pet owners wondering if they should worry about their furry friend’s latest bout of coughing/sneezing/vomiting, or whether that chocolate bar the dog snarfed when you weren’t looking is a cause for real concern.

As the name suggests, the niche FirstVet is looking to carve out is a pretty specific one — focused on first layer pet owner concerns which essential boil down to asking a qualified professional whether you really need to take Fido to the vet or not. So it’s main competitor is probably Google search.

“We are a supplement to physical clinics rather than a substitute to them,” says CEO and co-founder David Prien. “The most common problems we help pet owners with are gastrointestinal questions, wounds, skin/fur/ears. Our main objective is to be the natural first point of contact for pet owners.”

True to his word, a note on FirstVet’s website warns prospective customers: “If your pet is acutely ill or severely wounded you should always seek veterinary care immediately.”

“We really don’t want to be the party that pet owners turn to in real emergency cases and always refer them directly to physical vet clinics, we always make the medical journals available for both the clinic receiving the referral and pet owner directly after each consultation,” adds Prien.

The startup launched in 2016, and now claims around 60,000 registered users in its home market of Sweden — saying it’s answered close to 4,500 calls after slightly over a year on the market. Business has been growing 25 per cent month over month, it adds.

Prien says the price point for the service is set at about 30-40% of the starting fee for a physical vet visit in the market.

Which is still 30-40% more expensing than Googling symptoms — i.e. assuming you’re happy to ignore the risk of the free info you found online being entirely bogus.

While FirstVet intended to offer a b2c service, its route to market has been via partnerships with insurance companies who offer the service to their customers as a way to potentially reduce the risk of more major pet insurance payouts, or as a touchpoint for reaching pet owners who don’t have insurance cover and thus could be persuaded to sign up.

“What happened was that we quickly found that it made sense to collaborate with the insurance companies since it saves money for both them and the end customer,” says Prien. “The service is very popular amongst un-insured pet owners as well, and the share of uninsured pets using the service corresponds with the insurance penetration for each market so far.”

“We have collaborations in place with all eight active insurance companies in Sweden (where the insurance penetration is about 80%),” he adds.”And are currently launching new collaborations with three Finnish insurance companies as we speak.”

FirstVet is announcing a €5.1 million (~6M) Series A today, led by Creandum with participation from existing angel investors — which is says include experts in the telemedicine space.

The funding will be used for business growth and additional market expansion in Europe, with Norway and Denmark slated as “coming soon”. It says its plan is to launch into all the Nordic countries — along with “key European markets” that have high rates of pet insurance.

“Our aim to launch in at least one central European market during 2018,” adds Prien.

Asked whether it’s taking a cut of vet visit fees for any referrals, he says not in its home region. Though his response to this question leaves a bit of wiggle room in markets where veterinary services have not been so consolidated.

“In the Nordics it’s very important for us to be independent from the big clinical actors, as they have consolidated the markets very quickly and driven the price levels. This way we can always refer the pet owner to the right veterinarian without having any other incentive than giving the right advice at the right time to all pet owners,” he tells TechCrunch.

FirstVet could face a competitive squeeze from on-demand vet startups which are operating in some European markets — such as the likes of UK startup PawSquad — which can send a qualified veterinarian to check out your pet at home. And does also offer its own 24/7 remote vet consultation option, including via video or text chats.

But Prien suggests FirstVet’s model offers pet owners the advantage of impartial advice — since it’s not incentivized to generate a physical vet visit in cases where this can be avoided. Whereas home visit services might want to encourage visits to to grab a bigger fee.

“To have a truly independent source to turn to, no matter the time or place/if you’re insured or not, really provides great value for pet owners,” he argues. “Given that the market is fully privatized, we strongly believe that it is important not to make this type of service ‘dependent on the incentive of actually generating a physical vet visit when it potentially could be avoided (as many pet owners perceive vet visits as quite stressful, time consuming and expensive).”

While it’s still early days for FirstVet, and it’s focusing on market expansion, Prien says it is also looking into ways to expand the services it can offer pet owners by creating DIY tests which they could carry out to help with remote diagnostics.

“We’re currently in the very beginning of developing self-tests for pet owners to conduct from home together with a partner as well, that indicate super interesting results,” he adds.

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Kry bags $66M to launch its video-call-a-doctor service in more European markets

Swedish telehealth startup Kry has closed a $66 million Series B funding round led by Index Ventures, with participation from existing investors Accel, Creandum, and Project A.

It raised a $22.8M Series A round just over a year ago, bringing its total raised since being founded back in 2014 to around $92M.

The new funding will be put towards market expansion, with the UK and French markets its initial targets. It also says it wants to deepen its penetration in existing markets: Sweden, Norway and Spain, and to expand its medical offering to be able to offer more services via the remote consultations.

A spokesperson for Kry also tells us it’s exploring different business models.

While the initial Kry offering requires patients to pay per video consultation this may not offer the best approach to scale the business in a market like the UK where healthcare is free at the point of use, as a result of the taxpayer funded National Health Service.

“Our goal is to offer our service to as many patients as possible. We are currently exploring different models to deliver our care and are in close discussions with different stakeholders, both public and private,” a spokesperson told us.

“Just as the business models will vary across Europe so will the price,” he added.

While consultations are conducted remotely, via the app’s video platform — with Kry’s pitch being tech-enabled convenience and increased accessibility to qualified healthcare professionals, i.e. thanks to the app-based delivery of the service — it specifies that doctors are always recruited locally in each market where it operates.

In terms of metrics, it says it’s had around 430,000 user registrations to date, and that some 400,000 “patients meetings” have been conducted so far (to be clear that’s not unique users, as it says some have been repeat consultations; and some of the 430k registrations are people who have not yet used the service).

Across its first three European markets it also says the service grew by 740% last year, and it claims it now accounts for more than 3% of all primary care doctor visits in Sweden — where it has more than 300 clinicians working in the service.

In March this year it also launched an online psychology service and says it’s now the largest provider of CBT-treatments in Sweden.

Commenting on the funding in a statement, Martin Mignot, partner at Index Ventures, said: “Kry offers a unique opportunity to deliver a much improved healthcare to patients across Europe and reduce the overall costs associated with primary care. Kry has already become a household name in Sweden where regulators have seen first-hand how it benefits patients and allowed Kry to become an integral part of the public healthcare system. We are excited to be working with Johannes and his team to bring Kry to the rest of Europe.”

As well as the app being the conduit for a video consultation between doctor and patient, patients must also describe in writing and input their symptoms into the app, uploading relevant pictures and responding to symptom-specific questions.

During the video call with a Kry doctor, patients may also receive prescriptions for medication, advice, referral to a specialist, or lab or home tests with a follow-up appointment — with prescribed medication and home tests able to be delivered to the patient’s home within two hours, according to the startup.

“We have users from all age groups. Our oldest patient just turned 100 years old. One big user group is families with young children but we see that usage is becoming more even over different age groups,” adds the spokesman.

There are now a number of other startups seeking to scale businesses in the video-call-a-doctor telehealth space — such as Push Doctor, in the UK, and Doctor On Demand in the US, to name two.