The New York-based company also announced the launch of a pediatric care offering for children ages 3-17.
K Health, a startup combining a free symptom checker with text-based telehealth and virtual primary care, has announced $132 million Series E – its third major raise within the course of a year.
GGV Capital, Valor Equity Partners and Kaiser Permanente pension fund headlined the raise, with GGV Managing Partner Hans Tung and Valor founder and CEO Antonio Gracias joining K Health’s board. Other participants in the round included LTS Ventures, Atreides Ventures, 14W, Max Ventures, Pico Partners, Marcy Venture Partners, Primary Ventures and Box Group.
Coinciding with the raise is the launch of K for Parents, a new one-time or membership-based virtual pediatric care offering for families.
WHAT IT DOES
New York-based K Health has built an artificial intelligence system that chats with users about their health concerns. By referencing a body of anonymized physician notes, lab results, treatments, prescriptions and other data, it informs them about how similar presentations have typically been gauged in the past.
That tool also serves to link users to K Health’s paid services. These take the form of text-based conversations with a live doctor who views the information already submitted by the patient and continues the conversation from there. If necessary, the clinician can prescribe medications, provide referrals or order lab tests.
Customers can pay for these encounters either as one-off visits, or as part of a monthly subscription that that the company brands as digital primary care. This membership includes a drug discount card and unlimited virtual visits, although patients are not assigned a single doctor to act as their primary care provider.
As of today’s news, the primary care subscription also includes the K for Parents pediatrics offering. These remote doctors provide similar services for children aged 3-17, and according to the K Health website are so far available in 15 states.
WHAT IT’S FOR
K Health told MobiHealthNews in an email that the company will be focusing its investment on the new K for Parents offering and on further building out the K Health app. The virtual primary care startup is also looking to add to its list of treatable conditions, and to grow its user base.
“K Health is changing the equation of access to high-quality medicine,” Allon Bloch, CEO and cofounder of K Health, said in a statement. “Our system opens access to the best doctors at a fraction of the cost and without the wait. This new funding and expansion to care for the whole family gives more people the break they need today.”
MARKET SNAPSHOT
K Health has fielded a substantial amount of interest from investors over the past year. The company raised a $48 million Series C in February to expand and refine its product. Just a couple of months ago it also closed a $42 million Series D that coincided with a Mayo Clinic collaboration that focused on improving its symptom checker’s algorithms.
Telehealth and virtual primary care have become an increasingly attractive option since the start of the pandemic, so it’s little surprise that K Health isn’t the only startup in this space to benefit from investor interest. For instance, 98point6 raised $43 million in the spring and another $118 million in October.
