PocketHealth, a medical image exchange platform, has raised $33 million in a series B round.
The round was led by Round13 Capital, with participation from Deloitte Ventures, Samsung Next and existing investors Questa Capital and Radical Ventures.
The funding will be used to further develop the product and patient experience while supporting PocketHealth's plans to double its workforce over the next two years. With this funding, it has raised $55.5 million to date.
“We're really excited to invest in the most exciting area we can invest in, which is just product and engineering,” CEO and co-founder Rishi Nayyar told Fierce Healthcare.
PocketHealth, founded in 2016 by Rishi and his brother Harsh Nayyar, gives patients immediate access to their medical images from partner providers and enables image exchange between providers. It was founded on the belief that the current system and way of sharing medical imaging, often via CDs, is inefficient and an “antiquated way of getting access to … really important information,” per Rishi Nayyar.
Today, it is used by more than 1.5 million patients across more than 775 healthcare sites in the U.S. and Canada. With PocketHealth, providers can access a secure platform to exchange diagnostic images with patients and other providers. Customers have the flexibility to quickly share images with anyone, across any network, or set up a local network of PocketHealth community gateways for automated image exchange.
“PocketHealth is tackling a massive problem that requires the ability to build a thoughtful, resilient product experience for patients, physicians, and the most complex healthcare providers,” Brahm Klar, managing partner at Round13 Capital, said in an announcement. “We are impressed with how effectively the PocketHealth team has been able to rise to this challenge and create a solution that ensures data gets where it needs to go, instantly, empowering patients along the way."
The platform uses AI to provide patients with personalized insights with the goal of improving their understanding of their health. Its explanation of medical terms, detection of follow-up instructions and recommendations for personalized questions for users to ask their doctors helps the platform drive patient retention, executives said.
It can also save providers money—Colorado’s Valley View Hospital, for instance, reduced non-labor costs associated with burning CDs by 95% and enabled patient and staff image sharing with out-of-network providers, according to PocketHealth.
Rishi is able to vouch for the platform firsthand. At the start of this year, a medical emergency left him with few options but to rely on PocketHealth himself. After intense abdominal pain landed him in the ER, Rishi got a CT scan and was told to go home and await the results. He did, still in pain, but did not hear from anyone. “I started to get a little bit anxious,” he recalled.
Rishi was able to access his image on PocketHealth and send it to his brother, an internal medicine doctor, who said he should return to the ER immediately. Rishi went back and within an hour or two was getting microscopic surgery to get his inflamed gallbladder removed. The clinicians acknowledged that it had been a mistake to send him home.
Even after the procedure, no one called him to follow up. His family doctor never received a report of his imaging results. All this, despite Rishi being what he calls a “super engaged, empowered patient.” This experience exemplifies just how fragmented the system typically is for patients who need medical imaging, he noted.
PocketHealth works with University Health Network, Southern Illinois Healthcare, UofL Health, Universal Health Services, Radiology Partners and others.