Tag: telemedicine

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The Pill Club raises $51M as VCs find new opportunities in women’s health

Through telemedicine and direct-to-consumer sales platforms, startups are streamlining the historically arduous process of accessing contraception.

The latest effort to secure a significant financing round is The Pill Club, an online birth control prescription and delivery service. Consumer-focused investor VMG Partners has led its $51 million Series B, with participation from new investors GV and ACME Capital (formerly known as Sherpa Capital), and existing investors Base10 Partners and Shasta Ventures. The Pill Club declined to disclose its valuation.

Launched in 2016 in San Carlos, California, The Pill Club couples healthcare services with at-home delivery, reaching customers in all 50 states. With a team of doctors, nurses and patient care coordinators, the startup operates its own pharmacy and is licensed to prescribe medication in 35 states. With the new funding, which brings its total raised to $67 million, founder and chief executive officer Nick Chang said he plans to scale the business 50 percent and expand its prescription service across the entire U.S.

“At the end of the day, our company is about empowering women,” Chang told TechCrunch. “What does that mean? It means empowering our patients to make their own healthcare decisions and making reproductive healthcare more common — something to not be shy about or worried about.”

Chang, who has spent his career in medicine and holds an M.D. from Duke University, previously founded Ganogen. The business, which sought to facilitate patient’s access to organ donors, ultimately shut down but was a catalyst to The Pill Club’s formation, as were experiences from Chang’s youth.

“I [grew] up with an older sister who was on birth control since she was 14 for menstrual regulation,” Chang said. “She really felt embarrassed to pick up the medication and to talk to anyone about it and that was really insightful for me. There are so many hurdles in accessing birth control besides clinics being around.”

Some 67 million women between the ages of 13 to 44 live in the U.S.; 19 million of them live in contraceptive deserts, or areas that lack reasonable access to public clinics. The Pill Club wants to eliminate those deserts, as do other companies in the digital health arena.

Digital health has remained one of the hottest destinations for VC investment. In 2018, investors put about $4.5 billion into U.S. companies in the sector, a 17 percent increase year-over-year, according to PitchBook data. Telemedicine startups garnered a record $1.25 billion in funding in that timeframe thanks to large financings for industry leader Oscar, a health insurance startup that raised $540 million in 2018 alone; as well as an $88 million Series A for newcomer Roman, which offers a cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction.

Startups focused on women’s health, meanwhile, have continued to garner more attention from VCs. These companies, including The Pill Club and comepetitor Nurx, have not only benefited from the rapid rise of telehealth, but also from a societal shift sparked in part by President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers’ attempts to limit women’s access to birth control.

“People want to talk about this,” Chang said. “With so much happening from Hollywood to politics … it’s really got some people to say ‘ok, we really need to talk about what we are prioritizing as a society.'”

In addition to accelerating the expansion of its 260-person team, The Pill Club plans to use the investment to explore launching more services within women’s healthcare and to broaden the educational content it offers its customers.

“This is just the beginning of a much broader and bigger movement,” Chang said.

Nurx raises $36 million and adds Chelsea Clinton to its board of directors

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Birth control delivery startup Nurx now offers an at-home HPV testing kit

Telemedicine startup Nurx — once dubbed the “Uber for birth control” — has launched a direct-to-consumer Human papillomavirus (HPV) testing kit. The addition means its customers can in the comfort of their own homes test for the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. and a cause of genital warts and cervical cancer.

The Y Combinator graduate is backed with about $42 million in venture capital funding from Kleiner Perkins, Union Square Ventures, Lowercase Capital and others. It launched in 2015 to facilitate women’s access to birth control across the U.S. with a HIPAA-compliant web platform and mobile application that delivers contraceptives directly to customers’ doorsteps. Nurx’s telemedicine platform ensure its users can communicate with doctors and are provided the resources necessary in choosing the correct method of birth control.

Nurx raises $36 million and adds Chelsea Clinton to its board of directors

The HPV test is free with insurance, aside from the $15 shipping and lab processing fee, and $69 for those without insurance. Beginning today, the kit is available to all current Nurx users and will be fully rolled out to new customers in 2019.

In addition to birth control and the HPV test, the company also ships PrEp, a once-daily pill that reduces the risk of getting HIV. Nurx’s expansion beyond birth control is part of the company’s goal of helping people take control of their health, especially the millions in the U.S. who live in “contraceptive deserts,” or areas where there is no reasonable access to a public clinic.

“Our mission here is to leverage telemedicine to change public healthcare,” Nurx co-founder and chief executive officer Hans Gangeskar told TechCrunch. “We are building a full-stack primary care telemedicine platform at an unparalleled cost.”

The HPV testing kit is only approved for women over 30 and is not a replacement for a Pap smear, which collects a sample of cells from the cervix to check for abnormalities. Still, the kit, which requires only a vaginal swab, is able to assess for 14 high-risks of HPV that lead to cervical cancer. The company says the test will be a game-changer for women who are not regularly able to get Pap smears or who have not had access to the HPV vaccine, like women who live in rural areas and those without health insurance.

Nurx raised a $36 million round with support from the Clinton Foundation in July. As part of the deal, Chelsea Clinton joined its board of directors. The company has used that investment to incorporate the HPV testing kit, as well as to expand into several new markets in 2018. 

Nurx is currently available in 22 states, including the District of Columbia.

The FDA OK’d an app as a form of birth control

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Messaging-based primary healthcare service 98point6 raises $50 million from Goldman Sachs

The messaging-based primary care provider 98point6 has raised $50 million in its latest round of led by the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs.

It seems that Jo Natauri, the global head of healthcare investing in Goldman Sachs’ investment banking group is a fan of the concept that millennials would rather text than video chat.

The Seattle-based company had previously raised over $36 million from investors including YIS Capital founder Jeffrey Greenstein, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

98point6 said in a statement that it will use the funding to expand its products and services and recruit new doctors to the platform.

The company’s services are currently available in 37 states and Washington and will be in all 50 states by the beginning of 2019.

According to the company, the U.S. will need 52,000 physicians to meet patient demand by 2025, and given the shortage of doctors that already exists in the U.S., 98point6 is touting its messaging service as a viable alternative.

“Primary care is the main entry point for individuals into an increasingly complex healthcare system, making it the ideal setting for providing patient education, encouraging preventive care and controlling downstream costs,” said Natauri, in a statement.

The investment is of a piece with Natauri’s broader thesis that healthcare investment activity broadly is about controlling the engagement with patients earlier and more upstream in the process. It’s driving big healthcare acquisitions like the whopping $69 billion that Aetna paid to acquire CVS.

The investment is an interesting one for Goldman Sachs’ investment group, because 98point6 looks, in many ways, like a direct competitor to a company in the Goldman Sachs Investment Partners portfolio, DoctorOnDemand.

Earlier this year that company raised a $74 million round and was touted (by me) as a strong contender to reshape role of telemedicine in primary care service.

Video consultation service Doctor on Demand raised $74 million so everyone can see a doctor anytime

In addition to these companies looking to supplant the traditional doctor’s office visit with their own practices. Other companies are looking to give doctors their own way to consult with patient via text and video — selling secure communications tools that doctors can offer to their patients.

Like other startups tackling healthcare problems in the 21st century, 98point6 depends on a combination of algorithmically defined care methodologies and natural language processing alongside consultations with board certified physicians to help diagnose patients and come up with treatment regimes. 

If a patient does require a specialist, a physician can make a referral.

So far, the company is selling its service through a mix of commercial contracts with employers and their healthcare providers and direct to consumer marketing. For users paying out of pocket, the plan costs $20 for the first year and $120 for each year thereafter.

The bulk of the company’s publicly disclosed patients — which is expected to reach 100,000 members by the end of the year — come through contracts with customers like Seattle Children’s Hospital, Aegis Living, and Zones Inc., according to a statement.

“We set out to make primary care accessible and affordable for everyone, to address a crisis in America that has led to nearly one-fifth of the population not having a relationship with primary care,” said Robbie Cape, CEO and co-founder of 98point6, in a statement. “

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Keeps parent company Thirty Madison raises $15 million to fight male pattern baldness

Thirty Madison, the healthcare startup behind the hair loss brand Keeps, has brought in a $15.25 million Series A co-led by Maveron and Northzone.

The company provides a subscription-based online marketplace for men’s hair loss prevention medications Finasteride and Minoxidil. Keeps sells these drugs direct-to-consumer, working with manufacturers to keep the costs low.

On Keeps, a subscription of Minoxidil, an over-the-counter topical treatment often referred to as Rogaine, is $10 monthly. A subscription to Finasteride, a prescription drug taken daily, is $25 per month.

“It’s an end-to-end platform that is the single best place for guys who are looking to keep their hair,” Thirty Madison co-founder Steven Gutentag told TechCrunch.

Keeps is tapping into a big market. According to the American Hair Loss Association, two-thirds of American men experience some hair loss by the age of 35.

You may have heard of Hims, a venture-backed men’s healthcare company that similarly sells subscriptions to hair loss treatments, as well as oral care, skin care and treatments for erectile dysfunction. Keeps is its smaller competitor. For now, the company is focused solely on haircare, though with the new funds, Thirty Madison plans to launch Cove, a sister brand to Keeps that will provide treatments to migraine sufferers.

The company was founded last year by Gutentag and Demetri Karagas with a plan to develop several digital healthcare brands under the Thirty Madison umbrella.

“Going through this process myself of starting to experience hair loss, I was not sure where to turn,” Gutentag said. “I went online and looked up ‘why am I losing my hair,’ and if you search on Google, really for any medical condition, you usually walk away thinking you’re going to die … I was so fortunate that I got access to this high-quality specialist who could help me with my problem and I was in the position to afford those treatments but most people don’t get that access.”

Keeps also provide digital access to a network of doctors at a cost of roughly $30 per visit.

Life is changing for men for two reasons — and new startups are on it

TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos wrote last year that “it’s never been a better time to be a man who privately suffers from erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation or hair loss” because of advances and investments in telemedicine. Since then, even more money has been funneled into the space.

Hims has raised nearly $100 million to date and is rumored to be working on a line of women’s products. Roman, a cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction, raised an $88 million Series A last month and is launching a “quit smoking kit.” And Lemonaid Health, which also provides prescriptions to erectile dysfunction medications and more, secured $11 million last year.

Greycroft, Steadfast Venture Capital, First Round, Entrepreneurs Roundtable, HillCour and Two River also participated in Thirty Madison’s fundraise, which brings its total raised to date to $22.75 million.

Erectile pharmacy app Roman raises $88M to launch ‘quit smoking’ kit

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Sequoia backs Maven, a virtual health clinic for women

Despite the increase in women in the U.S. workforce and public pledges from several high-profile CEOs to close the gender pay gap, women, especially working mothers, often find themselves without the resources necessary to succeed at work.

Maven, a digital health startup and benefits platform focused on improving access to healthcare for women, has emerged specifically to help businesses help their female employees.

Maven has garnered the support of Sequoia Capital, a household name in Silicon Valley and a venture capital firm that has seldom backed female-focused businesses. Today, the company is announcing a $27 million Series B co-led by Sequoia and Oak HC/FT. Existing investors Spring Mountain Group, 14W and Female Founders Fund have also participated in the round.

As part of the deal, Sequoia’s Jess Lee and Oak’s Nancy Brown will join Maven’s all-female board of directors.

The company was founded by Kate Ryder, a journalist-turned-venture capitalist-turned-founder. Before joining Index Ventures as an early-stage investor in 2012, Ryder was a reporter at The New Yorker and The Economist.

During her time as a VC, digital health and telemedicine were the nascent sectors to watch. Professionally, Ryder realized the huge market opportunity, meanwhile, personally, she was reminded of the major lack of resources for women at work.

“A lot of my friends started having kids while I was working in venture capital, so I started hearing about the difficulties of having kids or postpartum depression,” Ryder told TechCrunch. “It’s not like you as a woman get educated on what all this is while you’re in school.”

In 2014, Ryder left her VC job to create Maven . Her goal: become a one-stop shop for working women starting families. Since launching the company, Ryder herself has become a mother of two.

“You go through this enormous life experience; it’s hugely transformative to have a child,” she said. “You do it when your careers is moving up — they call it the rush hour of life — and with no one supporting you on the other end, it’s easy to say ‘screw it, I’m going home to my family’ … If someone leaves the workforce, that’s fine, it’s their choice but they shouldn’t feel forced to because they don’t have support.”

Maven partners with companies, including Snap and Bumble, to provide employees access to its women’s and family health provider network. The platform connects users to OB-GYNs, pediatricians, therapists, career coaches and other services including resources for families interested in adoption, IVF or maternity care.

Users can also video chat or direct message healthcare practitioners using the Maven app.

Along with the Series B financing, Maven is announcing the launch of a breastmilk service, Maven Milk, which it says is its next step toward closing the resource and care gap for working mothers.

Kegel trainer startup Elvie is launching a smaller, smarter, hands-free breast pump

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Erectile pharmacy app Roman raises $88M to launch ‘quit smoking’ kit

Roman is a rocket ship, and I’m not talking about how it sells Viagra and Cialis. Less than a year after launching its cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction with $3 million in funding and a five-person team, Roman has grown to seventy team members and a revenue run-rate in the 10s of millions — up 720 percent since January. It’s sparked over a million patient-physician visits, phone calls, and text conversations through its telemedicine portal for getting diagnoses and prescriptions.

And now Roman is ready to expand beyond men, so it’s dropping the ‘Man.

Today, the newly renamed ‘Ro’ unveiled its next product, Zero, a $129 ‘quit smoking’ kit. It contains a month’s worth of prescription cessation medication bupropion and nicotine gum, plus an app for tracking progress and learning how to stay motivated through hunger, nausea, and cravings. Pre-orders open today.

“Erectile dysfunction medication is a knee brace. It helps you to walk again but the goal would be to not need a knee brace” says Ro co-founder Zachariah Reitano, who started the company because he lives with ED himself due to a heart medication side effect. “Some people will need ED medication but we’re hoping that a lot of people, through lifestyle changes or quitting smoking, won’t need us any more.”

To get the word out about Zero to women and men alike, as well as build a physician’s electronic medical record system, Ro has also raised a jaw dropping $88 million Series A round. It was led by FirstMark Capital and joined by SignalFire, Initialized Capital, General Catalyst, Slow Ventures, Sinai Ventures, Torch Capital, BoxGroup, and Tusk Ventures. Initialized and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and FirstMark managing director Rick Heitzmann will both join Ro’s board to steward this massive infusion of capital.

Roman board member Alexia Ohanian sporting a Roman Zero hat while cheering on his wife, tennis star Serena Williams

“The plan for the money is to continue to build out our own pharmacy” as well as “a lot of the backend infrastructure that we call ‘Ro’ that will allow us to launch these other products and verticals over the next two to three years, including women’s health products, Reitano tells me. Ohanian writes that “The only thing that exceeds Ro’s execution to date is their vision for the future of healthcare. Unlike other companies in the space, Ro is full-stack and is actually rebuilding the health care experience from the ground up, which means they are able to deliver unrivaled care for patients across the country.”

Ro’s Zero kit

Until recently, 80 percent of Viagra sold online was counterfeit. That not only made it awkward to buy medication for erectile dysfunction, but also dangerous. Yet that number is starting to drop thanks to the explosion in popularity of Roman, as well as fellow direct-to-consumer men’s health startup Hims. “Roman doesn’t lend itself to the typical Instagram unboxing experience, but we get a lot of one-to-one word of mouth” Reitano says with a chuckle. SEO has also been key to revenue growth, as it’s the first organic search result for ‘buy Viagra’.

“One of the thing that’s helped has been me sharing my story [he’s dealt with ED since he was 17], and this ‘check engine light’ concept” that views erections as indicators that a man’s body is in working order. Roman even built a somewhat-silly app called Morning Glory to help men track morning erections. Roman’s whole experience is designed to make patients comfortable with a fundamentally uncomfortable topic. “The fact that this stigma exists is why people don’t talk to their doctor or their partner” Reitano says.

Roman co-founder Zachariah Reitano

Now Ro wants to take the same clear-eyed approach to helping people quit smoking, starting by getting you to chat with its “telehealth assistant” to get paperwork sorted before you speak with a Ro doctor. The startup says that of the 37.5 million people in the US who smoke, 70 percent want to quit and 50 percent try to quit each year, but only 3 to 5 percent are smoke-free after six months. But with medication, nicotine replacement therapy like gum, tapering down smoking before stopping, and counseling, the quit rate drastically improves to 33 percent after six months.

You get all that from Zero’s kit for $129 per month, compared to $120 on Amazon for just the nicotine gum. Reitano admits that “the margin actually is not fantastic to start. Let’s say it’s slightly below what a typical commerce purchase would be.” But the idea is that if Ro and Zero can help someone quit smoking, patients will turn to it for more of their online pharmacy needs.

One barrier for Ro is that it currently doesn’t accept insurance for its $15 telemedicine appointments, Roman pills, or the Zero kit. Eventually it wants to accept FSA cards for tax-favored spending in hopes of reducing the cost for some patients, but otherwise Ro will require people to pay out-of-pocket, restricting it to wealthier segment of the population. Reitano admits that “In any space that’s incredibly competitive and highly regulated, there are things out of your control. In our control, there’s an incredible opportunity to make sure we take advantage of the infrastructure we have.”

Reitano concludes, “Honestly, I hope we can live up to what we want to build.”

Roman is a cloud pharmacy for erectile dysfunction

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Nurx raises $36 million and adds Chelsea Clinton to its board of directors

Telemedicine startup Nurx recently closed a $36 million funding round led by Kleiner Perkins. As part of the investment, Kleiner Perkins General Partner Noah Knauf is joining the startup’s board of directors, along with and Chelsea Clinton .

With this new funding, CEO and co-founder Hans Gangeskar told TechCrunch that the startup plans to scale its clinical teams, pharmacies and geographic reach in the coming year.

“We have a new site in Miami where we have a team of nurses being on-boarded, [we’re] building out our engineering and design teams and really just [working to] increase the pace of everything that we’re doing” Gangeskar said.

The startup launched in 2014 with the goal to make reliable access to contraceptives as easy as opening your web browser. After plugging your information into its online app, users are connected with physicians, given a prescription and Nurx prepares their product for delivery.

Since its launch, this California-based startup now operates in 17 states, and has expanded its products to include not only contraceptives (such as pills, patches, injectables and products like Nuva Ring) but the anti-HIV medication PrEP as well. Gangesker says the company is also preparing to launch an at-home lab kit soon for HIV testing.

For Gangeskar, creating affordable access to contraceptives is a first step to changing how patients interact and receive medication from their physicians.

“Birth control is one of the fundamental functions of any health care system [so] for us its a natural place to start,” said Gangeskar.

To help advance its plans to redefine this space, Gangeskar says Nurx is excited to welcome public health veteran Chelsea Clinton to its board.

“Her experience in public health and global health from the Clinton Global Initiative has been really valuable, [particularly learning about] rolling out preventative services in large scales, because really that’s the potential of our platform — [to reach] populations that can’t be reached by the conventional medical system.”

While Washington looks to make cuts to American’s health care access, startups like Nurx offer a fresh perspective on this critical space.

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Fuzzy Pet Health launches a $10-per-month telemedicine vet care plan

A new subscription service will now let you chat with a vet from your smartphone for $10 per month. This telemedicine vet care plan is the latest from Fuzzy Pet Health, a subscription vet care service providing in-home vet visits to subscribers in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. But while in-home pet care may take time to properly scale, on-demand vet Q&A is something that can be offered nationwide.

Fuzzy Pet Health Connect, as the new telemedicine service is called, works over the Fuzzy Pet Health mobile app, allowing customers to send text, pictures and videos to a vet at any time, then receive real-time medical help.

The vets can help with behavioral advice, training tools, new pet questions, or other concerns that may have normally required a vet visit to diagnose – like a cat that just vomited, or a dog with runny stool.

As Fuzzy Pet Health co-founder Eric Palm explains, the new service can serve as the initial triage that may actually save pet owners a visit to the vet, at times.

“It turns out that 80 percent of the time when people think there’s an emergency issue, it’s not actually critical,” he says. “We can triage – we can share pictures and videos, and that’s really helpful.”

If the issue requires an in-person visit, the vet will recommend it.

Unfortunately, laws in most states won’t allow for diagnosis and medications to be subscribed over telehealth services when it comes to pets – a bit unusual, given that people now have access to a variety of video chat doctors-on-demand offerings. But Palm says laws are starting to change.

“Each state has its own Veterinary Medical Board, and there are active discussions on most of these boards on how to relax the rules around telemedicine,” Palm notes. “Our lead veterinarian and co-founder [Dr.] Robert Trimble is part of the conversation with the state boards, and how to best shape the laws to enable better care for pets.”

Today, there are only three places in the U.S. that permit this – Washington D.C., Alaska, and Connecticut. The U.S.’s neighbor to the north, Canada, also allows vets to diagnose and prescribe digitally.

In the meantime, vet chat is the best most U.S. pet owners can hope for. But at $10 per month, it’s not too expensive to gain access to that additional level of vet care.

“The average pet parent goes to the vet only 1.6 times a year, while our members get in touch with us roughly once a month. We’re excited to expand telemedicine across the country, and provide pet parents the peace of mind and education that come with easy and unlimited access to high quality care,” said Dr. Trimble, in a statement.

Fuzzy Pet Health is one of several startups capitalizing on advances in technology to offer more affordable care to pet owners. A Swedish startup, FirstVet, also announced its funding today to expand its own local operations. There’s also Seattle-based Petriage, UK’s Pawsquad, as well as providers of telehealth tools to existing vet clinics, like TeleVet, to name a few.

But many vet-on-demand services have already failed.

“We’ve learned a lot from those that have come before us in this space. On-demand vet care is super hard – just like any sort of on-demand business,” says Palm. “The amount of staffing you need to do that is sort of prohibitive from a unit economics or margin standpoint,” he continues. “So our on-demand product is telemedicine. That allows us to be much more efficient with scheduling and staffing.”

Longer term, however, Fuzzy Pet Health plans to scale its housecall subscription service, albeit fairly slowly. (Its head of operations, Alex Aguilera, comes from Lyft and Wash.io, and understands market expansions like this.)

“We know if we go to six markets tomorrow, we’ll fail…we have to build demand and awareness ahead of launch, and we have to have on board a veterinarian team to service that market,” adds Palm.

That said, the company is already talking to vets in larger cities like L.A., New York and Chicago to see where it might go next.

To date, Fuzzy Pet Health has raised $4.5 million in funding from Eniac Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Crosscut Ventures, SV Angel Accelerator Ventures, and FJ Labs.

 

 

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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.

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Video consultation service Doctor on Demand raised $74 million so everyone can see a doctor anytime

Healing America’s broken healthcare industry has been at the top of the priority list for almost every politician, entrepreneur, and inventor for at least the past forty years.

Costs continue to climb (roughly 5% this year) and spending is already 20% of the nation’s GDP. For the trillions of dollars Americans spend on healthcare they’re getting declining services, more frequent ailments and a steadily diverging standard of care for the rich and the poor in the country.

Something needs to be done — and venture capitalists and some of the biggest names in finance led by Goldman Sachs are investing $73 million in a technology startup they see as a potential solution.

The company is Doctor on Demand and its solution is video-based telemedicine.

The new funding led by Goldman Sachs and Princeville Global (with participation from existing investors including Venrock, Shasta Ventures, and Tenaya Capital) will be used to continue the company’s rapid expansion in the U.S. and abroad — and brings the company’s total financing to $160 million.

“This trend of consumerization, which we’re leading, is really going to result in much greater patient driven healthcare experiences which will save the patient a lot of money,” says company chief executive Hill Ferguson .

Ferguson knows that the arc of internet services bends towards on-demand and he says that healthcare should be no different. “Most people have no idea they can see a board-certified physician on their phone from their bed while they’re sick at two in the morning with a five minute wait time,” he says.

That’s essentially the service that Doctor on Demand provides.

While the company’s consultations aren’t a panacea for everything that ails the healthcare industry, Ferguson claims his company’s board certified staff can handle 90% of the consultations that happen every day in Urgent Care facilities and for $300 less than insurers currently pay out.

While the service started out as something that consumers had to pay out of pocket, it has now transitioned to a more seamless (and cheaper) option for customers — it’s covered by most major insurance carriers.

“We’ve shifted from being a cash pay virtual practice to more of an enterprise player. we’re driving most of our volume through health insurance plans and employers,” Ferguson says.

The company employs its own doctors and staffs its video consultation service 24-hours a day, seven days a week, Ferguson says. Despite the workload — which sees the company’s virtual doctors consult with four patients each hour on average — the company’s fourteen day readmission rate (a standard measure of effective diagnoses) is on par with brick and mortar services, Ferguson says.

Roughly 5% of the consultations involve patients who need to be referred to specialists, according to Ferguson.

The service can also refer patients to diagnostics and testing facilities to get bloodwork and other tests that can supplement an initial diagnosis.

Through its agreements with insurers, Doctor on Demand stipulates what kinds of conditions its video consultations can cover, and which ailments and maladies require immediate medical attention. Increasingly, customers are taking advantage of the company’s mental health services — an area that’s grown 240% since it was introduced, according to Ferguson.

Mental health is one growth area for the company and its testing services provide another. In all, Ferguson thinks there’s a $50 billion addressable market in the U.S. alone. A figure he says more than justifies the company’s $160 million (and counting) in funding.

 

Doctor on Demand isn’t profitable yet, and the new financing still sees the company valued under $1 billion, but Ferguson is confident about the future. “I gotta wear shades,” the chief executive said.