Category: assistants

What You Should Know:

– San Francisco-based digital health startup Pair Team
emerges out of stealth with $2.7M in seed funding backed by Kleiner Perkins,
Craft Ventures, & YC.

– Pair Team provides both a remote team and AI that automates workflows, provides infrastructure & improves medical practices — efficiencies and billing as you’d expect, but all driving toward value-based, quality patient care.

– Pair’s wrap-around technology tripled the rate of annual wellness visits and increased revenue by 15% for clinics in 2020.

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Pair Team (“Pair”) announced today it has
emerged out of stealth and has raised $2.7 million in seed funding backed by Kleiner Perkins, Craft Ventures, and YCombinator, along with other prominent
funds. Pair is an end-to-end operations platform for value-based primary care,
backed by Pair’s own care team. For patients, Pair provides a digital front door
and helps them navigate healthcare.

Automate Primary Care Operations Infrastructure

Founded in 2019 by Neil Batlivala and Cassie Choi, RN after experiencing how critical a high functioning administrative team is to provide high-quality primary care by building out operations together at leading tech-enabled practices of Forward and Circle Medical. The majority of healthcare is local and fragmented, and no solutions were built to enable existing clinics. Pair came out of that need and provides a simple yet comprehensive solution that covers the front, mid, and back-office. Their automation, along with a human-in-the-loop approach provides end-to-end operations of patient outreach, scheduling, e-forms, care gap reports, record requests, referrals, lab coordination, etc., to offload the traditional job functions of the front desk and medical assistants.

“Primary care is systematically and chronically under-resourced. Pair ensures patients receive the very best practices in health care — from annual checkups, follow-ups after hospital discharge, and preventative care screenings,” commented Neil Batlivala, CEO and co-founder of Pair Team. “We not only monitor patient data, but we go further to operationalize it with automation and our care team.”

Revenue-Sharing
Business Model

Pair provides a revenue-sharing model to the share cost of operations with primary care providers. The platform monitors health plan and system data to trigger automated workflows that engage patients to schedule clinically impactful visits, surface care recommendations to clinicians, and manage follow-up care coordination. Their bolt-on model allows them to work as an extension of your care team within existing processes and accelerate quality programs in days, not months. For practices, this drastically improves care quality and visit efficiency. For plans, this aligns day-to-day operations with a total cost of care.

Helping Medicaid Populations Navigate Their Healthcare

Medicaid and Medicare is struggling in an unprecedented way during COVID — many workers are losing access to healthcare through their employer and COVID job loss. During the first week of open enrollment, last month nearly 820,000 people selected plans on HealthCare.gov 2020, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).  Federal Medicaid outlays increased more rapidly through 2nd half FFY 2020, up 22.5% as compared to prior year at 8.7% growth. So the number of patients coming onto the system is at unprecedented levels. 

Pair helps Medicaid populations navigate their healthcare with follow-ups, preventive cancer screening, and those recommendations on current (and ever-changing) Medicaid requirements. The company starts with existing processes and accelerates quality programs in days, not months.

Recent
Traction/Milestones

Despite COVID and patient’s avoidance of medical offices and care, Pair’s wrap-around operations technology and care team tripled the rate of preventative care visits and are on track to increase clinical revenue by 15% by end of the year through quality incentives alone. To date, Pair manages care for thousands of Medicaid patients in southern California and has closed hundreds of care gaps with their remote care team.

What You Should Know:

– Augmedix closes $25 million in private placement
funding and completion of a reverse merger transaction with Malo Holdings Corp.

– Following the transaction, the merged entity will be
named “Augmedix, Inc.”, and will continue the historic and innovative
business of Augmedix. 

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Augmedix, a company
specializing in providing remote medical documentation and live clinical
support services, today announced the closing of a $25 million private
placement financing and completion of a reverse merger with Malo Holdings Corp.
In connection with the financing, current investors Redmile Group, DCM, and
McKesson Ventures invested alongside new investors.  Financial advisory firms, Stifel, Nicolaus
& Company, Incorporated, B. Riley Securities, Inc., and GP Nurmenkari, Inc.
(as consulted by Intuitive Venture Partners) acted as placement agents for the
private placement.  Montrose Capital
Partners was the sponsor for this transaction.

Reverse Merger Details

Augmedix further announced the completion of a reverse
merger transaction with Malo Holdings Corp., an SEC-reporting public Delaware
corporation. Following the transaction, the merged entity will be named
“Augmedix, Inc.”, and will continue the historic and innovative
business of Augmedix.  In connection with
the financing and merger, Augmedix agreed to cause its common stock to be
quoted on the OTC Markets QB tier, subject to certain terms and conditions.

Remote Medical Documentation & Live Clinical Support

Founded in 2012, Augmedix converts natural clinician-patient
conversation into medical documentation and provides live support, including
referrals, orders, and reminders, so clinicians can focus on what matters most:
patient care. The Augmedix platform is powered by a combination of proprietary
automation modules and human-expert assistants operating in HIPAA-secure
locations to generate accurate, comprehensive, and timely-delivered medical
documentation.

Augmedix services are compatible with over 35 specialties
and are trusted by over one dozen American health systems supporting
telemedicine, medical offices, clinics, and hospitals.  We estimate that our solution saves
clinicians 2–3 hours per day, increases productivity by as much as 20%, and
increases certain clinicians’ satisfaction with work-life balance by 49%

Manny Krakaris, Augmedix Chief Executive Officer, said, “We’re thrilled to complete this financing, which we believe puts Augmedix on the path of accelerated expansion, and will enable us to broaden our operational capabilities, accelerate our technology research and product development, and strengthen our marketing and sales.”  Krakaris noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of telemedicine and enabled Augmedix to showcase its competitive advantages in the medical documentation market.  “Because the Augmedix service is accessed through mobile devices and is telemedicine application-agnostic, our innovative technology allows clinicians access to medical note documentation, regardless of their location,” Krakaris said.

What You Should Know:

– Intermountain Healthcare announced it will scale
Notable’s AI-driven platform across the health system’s clinically integrated
network to support thousands of providers, automate administrative workflows,
streamline the check-in experience for patients, and simplify provider
follow-up.

– The Notable Platform uses intelligent automation to identify and engage more patients in need of care and enables staff and clinicians to better serve patients by eliminating manual, administrative tasks like registration, documentation, and billing. 

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Intermountain
Healthcare, today announced it is partnering with Notable Health to reimagine the
manual, repetitive administrative aspects of patient intake and post-visit
follow-up into a fully automated, intuitive digital experience across the
health system’s clinically integrated network (CIN).

Empowering Digital Transformation from Check-In Through Collections

Intermountain is harnessing Notable Health’s platform to
digitally transform ambulatory check-ins through mobile registration and
virtual clinical intake for both in-person and telemedicine appointments.
Available within general internal medicine groups in the Salt Lake City region,
over 55 percent of patients from these clinics are now completing their entire
digital check-in prior to their office visit, decreasing check-in time by 25
percent. Intermountain reports an industry-leading 94 percent patient
satisfaction rating for their digital check-in and registration experience,
including 86 percent for patients 65 and older.

Notable extends the capabilities of My Health+, Intermountain’s health app, with digital assistants that automate administrative workflows for staff, streamline the check-in experience for patients and simplify follow-up for providers. Following an initial deployment that went live in under one month and results realized across over 100 providers, Intermountain will scale the Notable Platform to support thousands of providers within additional specialties and states across the clinically integrated network in the coming months.

Initial Notable Deployment Outcomes/Results for Intermountain

Intermountain patients benefit from a digital intake process
that assists with registration, verifies insurance eligibility, and prompts
patients to enter symptoms and medications directly from their smartphone through
dynamic questionnaires customized for an individual’s medical history. The
platform enables patients to complete their entire check-in before their visit
for a touchless, paper-free experience. This reduces the number of people in
waiting rooms, and patients can be offered virtual visit options when
appropriate.

Today’s announcement comes after general internal medicine
groups in the Salt Lake City region generated significant results across 100+
Intermountain providers:

· By automating clinical documentation through the Notable
Platform, Intermountain medical assistants save 30 minutes of charting time per
day;

· More than half of patients now complete their entire
digital check-in prior to their office visit, decreasing check-in time by 25%;
and

· Patient satisfaction ratings for digital check-in and
registration have topped 94%, including 86% for patients 65 and older.

“Creating a more seamless and empowered consumer experience is critical to meeting evolving patient expectations. This starts with digitally transforming the complex process of accessing and registering for care,” said Kevan Mabbutt, senior vice president and chief consumer officer at Intermountain. “By engaging patients to provide information through My Health+ about their health before their visit, we can better address what type of care our patients need, and where and when they can receive it across the care delivery continuum.”

We are facing a global healthcare crisis unlike any in our recent history. Within the span of a few short weeks, we saw our lives and practices drastically change. COVID-19 has fundamentally altered how medical care is delivered today and possibly for many years to come. We as clinicians need to rise to the challenge to provide the best possible care in this time of change and uncertainty. This includes adjusting the way we communicate with patients, adapting to the evolving landscape of telehealth, and incorporating new technologies into our daily medical practice to drive improved care and efficiency.

The Role of Clinical Decision Support in Telemedicine

Tens of thousands of doctors, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners are now using telemedicine for the first time. How do we maintain our exacting standards of clinical excellence in evaluating and educating patients from afar? We must find new ways to facilitate patient interaction and engagement as we administer care virtually. Now more than ever before, we need the right tools and technology.

The use of tools such as clinical decision support software during virtual care visits can aid in the diagnosis, guide therapeutic decision-making, and enhance patient engagement while helping to keep as many patients as possible out of the acute care setting. It can assist in triaging patients with suspected COVID-19 as well as help with the diagnosis and management of patients with non-COVID-19 illnesses that require care. And it can help us deliver knowledge (patient information, medical images, and illustrations) to the patient via screen sharing and e-mail.

Trust Begins with Transparency

It is imperative that we find ways to build patient trust and confidence and reduce patient anxiety in the virtual environment. Clinical decision support, both during an in-person patient encounter and using telehealth services, facilitates greater transparency. We can show patients on the screen the set of diseases in our differential, thus bringing them into the diagnostic process; share images representative of their conditions, and show words describing their symptoms. 

We have made much progress in moving away from a paternalistic system of care delivery to one of partnership with the patient, where we allow and encourage patients to be more active participants in their healthcare decisions. We must continue to move toward a holistic system of care that is problem-oriented and patient-focused. We can transform the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic into opportunities. The rapid adoption of telehealth platforms by providers’ and patients’ necessary acceptance of virtual appointments instead of office visits sets the stage. In training healthcare providers and students on decision-making tools that support virtual care delivery, we can further normalize their use as well as the sharing of information at the point of care. 

The Dermatology Example

Today we are seeing a lot more live telemedicine in dermatology, and as a result, more referring providers and specialists are using decision support to provide an essential second opinion, acting as the co-pilot in the cockpit. This is not without challenges. What we see on the patient’s skin is of great importance. In the absence of an in-person visit, it’s essential to have clear, in-focus images of the lesion in order to ascertain the morphology and diagnose a patient’s skin condition when they are not physically in the exam room. Educating the patient in advance on best skin photography practices is key for empowering patients to improve the overall telehealth experience. Other specialties may need to educate patients in other ways to improve the experience.

The Future

This crisis has upset traditional models of delivering healthcare in all specialties, accelerating our use of telemedicine and technology. It is critical for our industry to implement proven strategies to optimize this burgeoning technology. Clinical decision support is a great example of an essential “cockpit tool” to assist providers in evaluating, diagnosing, and managing treatment strategies for patients as well as educating and building trust. We must embrace our future as information intensivists, expertly equipped to logically handle massive amounts of information. In doing so, we can emerge from the pandemic stronger than before, with a renewed sense of purpose and with a new set of tools to connect with and treat our patients. 

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About Art Papier

Art Papier, MD, is Co-Founder and CEO of VisualDx, a University of Rochester affiliated medical informatics company.

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We are facing a global healthcare crisis unlike any in our recent history. Within the span of a few short weeks, we saw our lives and practices drastically change. COVID-19 has fundamentally altered how medical care is delivered today and possibly for many years to come. We as clinicians need to rise to the challenge to provide the best possible care in this time of change and uncertainty. This includes adjusting the way we communicate with patients, adapting to the evolving landscape of telehealth, and incorporating new technologies into our daily medical practice to drive improved care and efficiency.

The Role of Clinical Decision Support in Telemedicine

Tens of thousands of doctors, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners are now using telemedicine for the first time. How do we maintain our exacting standards of clinical excellence in evaluating and educating patients from afar? We must find new ways to facilitate patient interaction and engagement as we administer care virtually. Now more than ever before, we need the right tools and technology.

The use of tools such as clinical decision support software during virtual care visits can aid in the diagnosis, guide therapeutic decision-making, and enhance patient engagement while helping to keep as many patients as possible out of the acute care setting. It can assist in triaging patients with suspected COVID-19 as well as help with the diagnosis and management of patients with non-COVID-19 illnesses that require care. And it can help us deliver knowledge (patient information, medical images, and illustrations) to the patient via screen sharing and e-mail.

Trust Begins with Transparency

It is imperative that we find ways to build patient trust and confidence and reduce patient anxiety in the virtual environment. Clinical decision support, both during an in-person patient encounter and using telehealth services, facilitates greater transparency. We can show patients on the screen the set of diseases in our differential, thus bringing them into the diagnostic process; share images representative of their conditions, and show words describing their symptoms. 

We have made much progress in moving away from a paternalistic system of care delivery to one of partnership with the patient, where we allow and encourage patients to be more active participants in their healthcare decisions. We must continue to move toward a holistic system of care that is problem-oriented and patient-focused. We can transform the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic into opportunities. The rapid adoption of telehealth platforms by providers’ and patients’ necessary acceptance of virtual appointments instead of office visits sets the stage. In training healthcare providers and students on decision-making tools that support virtual care delivery, we can further normalize their use as well as the sharing of information at the point of care. 

The Dermatology Example

Today we are seeing a lot more live telemedicine in dermatology, and as a result, more referring providers and specialists are using decision support to provide an essential second opinion, acting as the co-pilot in the cockpit. This is not without challenges. What we see on the patient’s skin is of great importance. In the absence of an in-person visit, it’s essential to have clear, in-focus images of the lesion in order to ascertain the morphology and diagnose a patient’s skin condition when they are not physically in the exam room. Educating the patient in advance on best skin photography practices is key for empowering patients to improve the overall telehealth experience. Other specialties may need to educate patients in other ways to improve the experience.

The Future

This crisis has upset traditional models of delivering healthcare in all specialties, accelerating our use of telemedicine and technology. It is critical for our industry to implement proven strategies to optimize this burgeoning technology. Clinical decision support is a great example of an essential “cockpit tool” to assist providers in evaluating, diagnosing, and managing treatment strategies for patients as well as educating and building trust. We must embrace our future as information intensivists, expertly equipped to logically handle massive amounts of information. In doing so, we can emerge from the pandemic stronger than before, with a renewed sense of purpose and with a new set of tools to connect with and treat our patients. 

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About Art Papier

Art Papier, MD, is Co-Founder and CEO of VisualDx, a University of Rochester affiliated medical informatics company.

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What You Should Know:

– Collective Health appoints Max Mancini
as its new Chief Technology Officer.

– Mancini, who previously held senior roles at Apple and
eBay, will lead the company’s exceptional engineering team- overseeing the
architecture, design and scaling of Collective Health’s core platform and suite
of products which help make health insurance work for everyone.

– He will also be responsible for continuing innovation,
initially bolstering the recent launch of Collective Go™, Collective Health’s
comprehensive solution for COVID-19 employer screening, testing, and
monitoring.

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Collective Health,
a San Francisco, CA-based simplifying employee healthcare with technology
solutions, today announced it has appointed Max Mancini as its Chief Technology
Officer (CTO). In his new role as CTO, Mancini will oversee the company’s
software development and technical operations while furthering Collective Health’s
mission to create the healthcare experience we all deserve.

“We are so thrilled to have world class talent like Max join our team,” said Ali Diab, CEO and Co-Founder of Collective Health. “With so many forms of care now taking place in a remote setting, businesses must adapt to support their people by adopting solutions that help them better understand and navigate healthcare. With Max’s expertise and guidance, Collective Health will continue to usher in a new era of forward-thinking technology when it comes to bringing the best experience to our members and expanding our offerings.”

Mancini Bio/Background

Max joins Collective Health from Automation Anywhere which
transforms how people work by enabling the creation and discovery of digital
workers, which act as digital assistants to millions of information workers.
Max has been passionate about software since he was a teenager – he wrote code
at NASA Ames Research Center while in high school, and worked for a defense
contractor and Apple before graduating college. The common threads uniting
Max’s experiences and pursuits are the challenge of solving tough problems and
his passion for trying new things. The professional highlights from his tech
career include running the mobile commerce business unit, disruptive innovation
team and developers program at eBay, the global e-commerce engineering team at
Apple and the $500 million app ecosystem business at Atlassian. 

Expanding Collective Health’s Key Offerings and
Innovation

As Chief Technology Officer, Mancini will lead the company’s
exceptional engineering team while overseeing the architecture, design and
scaling of Collective Health’s core platform and suite of
products, which help make health insurance work for everyone. Max will also
be responsible for continuing to expand the company’s key offerings and
innovation, building upon the recent launch of Collective Go™, Collective
Health’s comprehensive solution for COVID-19 screening, testing, and monitoring.

“I’ve always loved applying technology to solve important problems and healthcare is an industry in dire need for technology to provide more transparency and understanding, while  enhancing people’s experience,” said Mancini. “Technology has evolved and upleveled the experiential expectations of customers. This expectation creates the demand, from both employees and employers, for much better navigation, access to care, and ease of use, and I’m excited to be part building that experience in healthcare.”

Fundamentally, Max’s role is about building — building a web
scale technology system, expanding a world class engineering organization,
fostering an outstanding product development culture and continuing to build
out Collective Health as one of the most meaningful businesses of the next
decade.

Collective Health’s products and technology transform
employee healthcare for over a quarter of a million members across all 50
states.

What You Should Know:

– Cerner expands its AI collaboration with Nuance to
provide joint customers with more advanced natural language virtual assistant
technology to navigate electronic health records (EHRs) using just
their voice, giving clinicians more time to spend with patients and less time
with a computer.

– As part of the expanded collaboration, Nuance will
offer Cerner deeply embedded virtual assistant technology that
delivers sophisticated conversational dialogues and skills to automate
high-value clinical tasks inside Cerner Millennium, such as chart
search, navigation, intelligent computerized physician order entry (CPOE), and
scheduling.

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Nuance®
Communications, Inc. today announced that it has expanded its
long-standing AI collaboration with Cerner
to include the integration of Nuance’s virtual assistant technology into
the Cerner Millennium® electronic health record
(EHR). Building upon the existing integration between Nuance’s Dragon®
Medical platform and Cerner Millennium, joint clients can utilize
Nuance’s advanced natural language virtual assistant technology to navigate the
EHR using just their voice, giving clinicians more time to spend with their
patients and less time with their computer.

COVID-19 Underscores Importance of Addressing Physician
Burnout

The expanded Nuance-Cerner relationship is driven by the healthcare industry’s need to mitigate what the World Medical Association is calling a “pandemic of physician burnout” with 51 percent of physicians reporting frequent or constant feelings of burnout. This is caused by a staggering administrative workload of electronic paperwork to document patient care and to meet requirements for insurance coverage, financial reimbursement, and medicolegal liability protection. 

Research shows that more than 80 percent of physicians believe virtual assistants in health care can reduce the burden on care teams and improve the patient experience. Nuance’s virtual assistant technology helps physicians rapidly accomplish tasks and communicate more naturally while allowing them to use specialized medical terminology across a range of devices and applications with high accuracy.

Virtual Assistant Platform Integration Benefits

Nuance’s deeply embedded virtual assistant technology delivers sophisticated conversational dialogues and skills that automate high-value clinical tasks inside Cerner Millennium, such as chart search, navigation, intelligent computerized physician order entry (CPOE), and scheduling. Nuance technology’s high accuracy rates, rich set of voice-activated skills and ability to understand the user’s intent in context provides higher levels of workflow automation, and more efficient and complete documentation of patient care. Additionally, Nuance’s pre-built, HIPAA-compliant natural language understanding models and cloud platform will support Cerner to deploy the solution quickly and easily to joint clients.

“Together with Cerner, we’re bringing the next level of conversational AI directly to our joint clients with the goals of improving patient experiences, combating clinician burnout, and reducing costs,” said Joe Petro, CTO, Nuance. “Building on our Dragon Medical platform, already used by over 550,000 physicians in the U.S. alone, our new virtual assistant technology will help deliver solutions that automate time-consuming tasks, eliminate inefficiencies, and bring clinical intelligence and better decision-support to clinicians at the point of care.”

 Availability

Select joint Cerner and Nuance clients can expect
to start deploying this integrated virtual assistant technology late this
year.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented shift in the way consumers view and access a variety of goods and services—and healthcare is no exception. Recent studies show that many patients, including vulnerable populations like those living with cancer, are delaying recommended care and procedures—and will continue to do so for at least several months amid fears over the safety of in-person visits. In response, reports of providers adapting to offer care virtually are all the more commonplace, with almost half of physicians now treating patients through telemedicine platforms, up from just 18 percent in 2018.

These trends have solidified virtual care as a mainstay, and as a result, the virtual visit has become a commodity—a service that can be provided by many capable vendors. However, the logistics that power the adoption of virtual care are often overlooked. As healthcare administrators turn to telemedicine to resume “non-urgent” healthcare services, we must ensure that best-in-class technology solutions are utilized to improve the virtual care experience—for providers, clinical staff, and, importantly, patients.

Health systems and their networks face significant operational issues when delivering care in a remote setting, due to the range of potential interactions and diversity of devices—adding to the already recognized administrative burden that comes with routine patient care. With each patient visit comes over a dozen manual tasks, including patient intake and registration, in-visit clinical note writing, as well as back-office billing and claims processing. The virtual visit adds even more steps, such as helping patients access the appropriate technology for a two-way video interface or sending custom links to a “virtual waiting room” at the right time.

Facilitating a seamless virtual care experience before, during, and after a patient’s visit should be top-of-mind—particularly as patient expectations have heightened and healthcare has progressed towards a technology-enabled future. Fortunately, the automation of operational workflows can help healthcare administrators smooth the friction around conducting virtual visits at scale.

Intelligent automation extends our capacity in healthcare by enabling us to do more with the same workforce and technology infrastructure. In fact, digital medical assistants can use artificial intelligence to automate repetitive, cognitively tiring, and error-prone tasks. This technology can support the influx of virtual visits by offloading administrative processes, such as co-payment collection, clinical documentation, and pre-population of common clinical orders. 

For patients not as familiar with digital interactions and the variety of telemedicine modalities, which can include platforms like Amwell, Doctor on Demand, and Teladoc or video conference solutions like RingCentral and Zoom, participating in virtual visits can be a daunting change. Additional technological challenges associated with virtual care can result in heightened frustration, increased no-show rates, or decreased activation, so maintaining patient engagement throughout the patient journey is even more important in a virtual environment. Digital medical assistants can automate appointment reminders, offer detailed setup guidance for patients, and provide “just-in-time” virtual visit links to ensure patients and providers can make the most of their time together.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also introduced new variables and risks that patients, providers, and healthcare institutions at-large must consider when seeking and delivering care. Until recently, it was a relatively straightforward process to determine where a patient should receive routine care. Now given the risk of disease spread, providers find themselves considering which patients to see when to see them and whether to see them virtually or in-person.

This creates additional complexity in determining when to schedule patients and in which medium to conduct the visit. Platforms that leverage intelligent automation can help clinical teams to pre-screen all scheduled patients, collect a thorough medical history, intelligently segment patients into risk cohorts and triage each cohort to an individualized destination, be it a return to in-person care or a virtual environment.

In the “virtual exam room,” things also look a little different. From the provider’s perspective, one of the oft-cited drawbacks of virtual visits is the limited ability to measure vital signs, perform a physical exam or order point-of-care diagnostics. At-home diagnostics, wearable devices and remote patient monitoring tools allow providers to collect continuous clinical data that can be gathered asynchronously and quickly, resulting in a more comprehensive picture of a patient’s health. Further, platforms that use intelligent automation algorithms to organize data collected across the care continuum can parse these data streams to identify at-risk patients and then automate outreach and care management to follow clinical care pathways.

The COVID-19 pandemic has given us a unique opportunity to reimagine healthcare using a modern suite of technology for patients, providers and staff that does away with outdated and inefficient processes. But we also have a responsibility to replace them with solutions that improve digital experiences by supporting patients before visits, automating repetitive workflows, and parsing large amounts of data to support clinical decision-making.

Combining intelligent automation with virtual visits creates a powerful tool to efficiently manage patient populations and offer an experience that feels intuitive while enabling healthcare systems to do more with less. By accelerating the digital transformation of healthcare today, we can position ourselves for a future of increased capacity, decreased overhead, and improved quality.

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Muthu Alagappan, MD, is an attending physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, a trained engineer, and medical director at Notable Health, a healthcare experience automation company. 

What You Should Know:

– Same day
pharmacy delivery startup NowRx raises $20 Million in Series B funding to expand
into new U.S. territories and accelerate its technology roadmap, transforming
the way consumers get their prescriptions. 

–
NowRx’s competitive
advantage is its proprietary pharmacy management system, which leverages AI and
robotics to fill and deliver prescriptions in record time, including
interfacing with insurance, checking for drug interactions, bottling/labeling
in 30 seconds, offering video chats & text with pharmacists, as
well as safe, reliable and convenient home delivery from NowRx’s HIPAA-trained drivers.

– In the
last year, NowRx has grown its new customer base by 84% and increased
revenues by 78%. Since its first delivery in 2016, it has delivered over
200,000 prescriptions to more than 28,000 customers.

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NowRx, a Mountain View,
CA-based same-day pharmacy delivery company experiencing rapid growth during
the coronavirus pandemic, has raised $20 million
in Series B funding round through SeedInvest.com, a leading Regulation A+ crowdfunding platform. This round is the largest
in SeedInvest history and brings the company’s total funding to $30 million.

Retail pharmacy is a $400 billion industry that relies on expensive real estate to drive foot traffic and depends on outdated, legacy software systems to manage prescriptions. Founded in 2015, NowRx exists to provide the most convenient pharmacy experience available, with free, same-day delivery of prescription medications. Expedited one-hour delivery is also offered for a $5.00 charge. All pharmacy services are provided from a low cost, highly automated “virtual pharmacy” location, utilizing end-to-end robotic dispensing (“One-Click Fill”) and artificially intelligent chatbots, coupled with NowRx drivers and plug-in electric vehicles, to provide a more efficient and effective pharmacy experience for busy customers.

“The real reason you are stuck waiting in line for your prescription is that the large chain pharmacies actually want you in their stores so you’ll make other purchases while you’re there,” said NowRx CEO and co-founder Cary Breese. “This flawed strategy ignores the fact that consumers are eager to avoid the hassle and risk of in-store shopping, especially during a pandemic.” According to Breese, these retailers are unable to offer a good customer experience with prescriptions because their legacy software systems and manual processes create bottlenecks and inefficiencies. “By re-engineering pharmacy management software and deploying modern automation technology in our low-overhead, high-tech micro-fulfillment centers, NowRx provides a far better customer experience at the same or better margins than the largest players in the industry,” he added.

How It Works

Customers and physicians are able to use the services through the NowRx app, by text, by telephone, and through virtual assistants such as Google Home. Physicians are able to send prescriptions to NowRx through electronic prescribing, fax, the NowRx app, or telephone. Current services provided include fulfilling new prescriptions or refills, transferring prescriptions from other pharmacies, consulting pharmacists via phone, and applying of drug manufacturer coupons.

NowRx Pharmacy is easy to use and works in 3 simple steps.

1. You or your doctor sends a prescription to NowRx Pharmacy

2. Once NowRx has received your prescription, they will
reach out to you in order to get some basic information (insurance, payment
method, preferred delivery time, etc.).

3. Once everything has been confirmed NowRx will deliver
your medication in under 5 hours for your regular copay.

Quickfill Pharmacy Automation

NowRx’s competitive advantage comes from its proprietary pharmacy management software technology, QuickFill (v3.5), which was built from the ground up to streamline and simplify prescription fulfillment and delivery while reducing costs and improving customer service. QuickFill was recently certified by the nation’s leading health information network, Surescripts Health Alliance Network, which unifies electronic health records (EHR) vendors, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), pharmacies, clinicians, and health plans and connects QuickFill to more than 1.5 million physicians across the U.S.

The Quickfill technology suite includes both a consumer app that provides customers with transparency and control over their prescriptions as they are being processed, as well as Wheelz, the driver app that coordinates delivery by NowRx’s HIPAA-trained drivers, enables delivery signatures and transactions, and tracks deliveries in real-time through GPS.

QuickFill technology also incorporates end-to-end robotic dispensing. When a customer clicks on the button to order a refill, that order is automatically routed to the nearest NowRx micro-fulfillment center, where the robots sort, count, bottle and label each medication in less than 30 seconds. The Quickfill software also streamlines the insurance approval process and even has an automated coupon feature that has saved customers millions of dollars by automatically searching for and applying drug manufacturer coupons. Since deploying its fully automated, end-to-end robotic dispensing technology, NowRx has filled more than 15,000 prescriptions (each in less than 30 seconds)

Traction/Milestones

NowRx recently opened one of its high-tech micro-fulfillment facilities in Burlingame, its fourth in California, and has recently received its pharmacy permit to operate another facility in Arizona. In the last year, NowRx has grown its new customer base by 84% and increased revenues by 78%. Since its first delivery in 2016, NowRx has delivered over 200,000 prescriptions to more than 28,000 customers.

NowRx is on track to achieve profitability even as it
exceeds customer expectations by providing free, same-day delivery. According
to SeedInvest CEO and Co-Founder Ryan Feit, investors on the popular Regulation
A+ crowdfunding platform were quick to grasp the advantages of NowRx even
before the COVID-19 pandemic because so many have first-hand experience with
the hassle of getting prescriptions filled. “Investors understand the
problem NowRx is solving,” he said.  

Fueling Expansion into Additional Territories

The funds will be used to launch more of NowRx’s high-tech micro-fulfillment centers to bring free same-day prescription medication delivery to customers in additional territories. NowRx will also use the funds to accelerate the technology roadmap for its proprietary pharmacy management software and logistics technology to increase efficiencies and improve profitability.

NowRx pharmacy currently has multiple locations throughout the Silicon Valley and Orange County California areas.