Thirty Madison to merge with Nurx, expanding virtual specialty care services

Telehealth unicorn Thirty Madison will merge with female-focused virtual care company Nurx to support over 750,000 active patients, the companies announced Wednesday.

The two digital health startups aren’t exactly competitors. Thirty Madison provides telehealth visits and online prescriptions targeting hair loss, migraines, acid reflux and allergies, while Nurx provides birth control education and delivery, as well as services like STI testing, HIV prevention with PrEP, and at-home HPV testing.

Instead, the deal seeks to expand Thirty Madison’s existing offerings, allowing the combined company to treat a greater range of conditions on a single platform.

Company executives believe the combined entity, operating under the Thirty Madison brand, will become the leading virtual specialty healthcare firm in the U.S.

“What the Nurx team has built for its patients is remarkable, and is exactly what brought our two companies together: a relentless focus on our patients’ many different needs through personalized treatment and expert care,” said Steve Gutentag, Thirty Madison co-founder and CEO, in a statement. “We started Thirty Madison to make specialty-level care more accessible to the tens of millions of Americans suffering from chronic conditions. This partnership accelerates our ability to serve patients at an even greater scale by immediately doubling the number of conditions we cover and the number of patients on our platform. More importantly, it expands our capabilities and ability to better serve our patients where and when they need it most.”

The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

RELATED: Thirty Madison jumps to unicorn status as it eyes expansion, payer partnerships 

New York City-based Thirty Madison jumped to a $1 billion valuation after snagging $140 million in its series C round in June. The company has raised more than $210 million to date.

The startup said it expects to rake in $300 million in revenue in 2022.

San Francisco-based Nurx has raised $113 million since it launched in 2016 through Y Combinator.

The startup also partnered with Amazon in September to provide free birth control reminders and sexual health education through the tech giant’s Alexa-enabled devices.

RELATED: Nurx, Amazon Alexa roll out voice-activated birth control reminders, sex education 

Gutentag will remain CEO of Thirty Madison, and Varsha Rao, current CEO of Nurx, will become Head of Nurx within the combined company.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of the year.

“Thirty Madison has a proven care model aimed at making healthcare more accessible and more personalized, ultimately providing better experiences and outcomes to patients,” said Rao. “Pairing our understanding of our patients with the passion for solving real health challenges will allow us to have even more impact for patients. With our continued focus on technology-enabled provider care, we will be able to accelerate and meet the new demands of patients, and the changing provider landscape, as telemedicine has become integral to healthcare.”

Thirty Madison announced in November that it would open its first in-person hair transplant clinic in New York City in early 2022, signaling a strategic shift towards hybrid care.

Gutentag wrote in a November Medium post that the clinic was “just the beginning of our evolution toward a holistic, end-to-end care model that encompasses both virtual and in-person elements.”  

RELATED: Telehealth unicorn Thirty Madison goes brick-and-mortar with in-person hair restoration clinic

As the COVID-10 pandemic prompted patients to seek virtual care options, online specialty care surged alongside general telehealth offerings.

Virtual specialist care company Summus Global saw the utilization rate of its platform jump by 3.1 times between January 2020 and January 2021, with membership growing more than 1,000% during the same period

Seasoned players have joined emerging startups in the virtual specialty care space, too.

Oak Street Health acquired RubiconMD for $130 million in October, allowing the value-based primary care network to add virtual care offerings in cardiology, nephrology, pulmonology, and other specialties to its platform.

MDLive launched a remote patient monitoring program for virtual chronic care management in January, while One Medical and Humana introduced their own virtual chronic care offerings last year.