Primary care player Forward is abruptly shutting down its operations, closing its locations and canceling scheduled visits, the company publicly announced Wednesday.
The company also is shutting down its mobile application effectively immediately, the company said in a post on its website. There was no other information available on the website.
Fierce Healthcare has reached out to Forward for comment but has not received a response.
The Information first reported (paywall) on Tuesday that Forward was shutting down. All of its nearly 200 employees will lose their jobs, the publication reported, citing a person close to the company.
Forward said it will provide further information to patients about how to access their medical records in the future as well as some "suggested resources for finding a new provider," the company said in its post.
"We know this news is abrupt, so we are committed to helping you navigate your care transition in the days to come. Starting today you will no longer have access to the Forward app, but our medical team is available at [email protected] to support your care until December 13, 2024," the company wrote in the online post.
"Over the last 8 years, it’s been a privilege to provide the world’s best preventive care to our members. Thank you for being an integral part of our mission to help get the world one step closer to more affordable and accessible care," the company wrote.
The company launched in 2016 as a tech-enabled direct primary care business based on a cash-pay model that doesn't take insurance.
Tech Crunch had reported that the company raised $657 million to date. Forward reached a $1 billion valuation in 2021.
Forward picked up $100 million in a series E funding round in 2023 and then rolled out Forward CarePods. The self-serve kiosks use artificial intelligence to screen and diagnose health conditions and were being deployed in malls, gyms, and offices starting in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, the company announced in November 2023.
Forward said at the time that it planned to more than double its footprint in 2024.
Adrian Aoun, Forward's outspoken founder and CEO, told Fierce Healthcare in November 2023 that the AI-based CarePods are designed like kiosks that automate medical check-ups. The CarePods are the next step in the company's vision to use technology to scale healthcare services to large populations, essentially, everybody, Aoun said.
The company picked up a $225 million series D funding round in 2021 backed by Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures and Softbank as well as Marc Benioff, founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, and musician The Weeknd. The company was reportedly worth $1 billion at the time of its Series D.
Over the past eight years, the healthcare "unicorn" built out tech-enabled primary care clinics in 19 locations with more than 100 primary care clinicians.
Before founding Forward, Aoun headed up special projects for the CEO of Google/Alphabet, where he founded one of the Alphabet companies Sidewalk Labs. He arrived at Google upon the acquisition of his AI startup Wavii, and spent his first year at Google helping to create and build their AI division.
Some industry observers say the healthcare unicorn focused too much on tech rather than clinical care while others pointed out that Forward clinics required expensive real estate in cities like New York and San Francisco.
Leah Houston, M.D., a emergency room physician and and founder and CEO of Humanitarian Physicians Empowerment Community (HPEC), said in an X post that Forward's folding didn't come as a surprise, "Patient care isn’t a technology product; it’s a deeply personal service industry."
"The service industry workers are physicians, and we are highly skilled professionals with years of rigorous, specialized training. Healthcare is personal, and that personal touch simply can’t be scaled like software or tech solutions," Houston wrote in an X post.
Mindaugas Galvosas, M.D., digital health lead at health tech startup Hyfe, questioned the future of tech-enabled care pods.
"After $500M+ in funding, 8 yrs in operation, Forward Health is shutting down. The bold vision of high-tech Care Pods aimed to transform primary care but faced challenges with operational complexity, scaling infrastructure and reactive care limitations. Are care pods still future?," he wrote in an X post.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.