Pager has raised $14 million to bring its on-demand doctor service to new cities, including San Francisco, and then to other places like Los Angeles and Chicago in 2016. Moreover, the company will also look to expand its service by partnering with healthcare organizations.
New Enterprise Associates, Sound Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Lux Capital and Montage Ventures provided the capital. Additionally, Pager got a new executive – Aran Ron, who joins the firm’s ranks from his chief medical officer post at Oscar Health Insurance.
Overall, patients tend to use Pager for upper respiratory problems.Founded in 2014 by Uber’s CTO Oscar Salazar, Gaspard de Dreuzy, and Philip Eytan, Pager is looking to connect non-emergency patients with nurses and doctors who make house calls in the New York city area. Patients can choose between three types of appointments: sickness or injury, a physical, or a health check, and the service will link them to one of its 40 doctors. Overall, patients tend to use Pager for upper respiratory problems, like a persistent cough or Streptococcus (also known as strep-throat), common infections, and minor injuries.
Pager’s healthcare professionals start by remotely evaluating patient requests to determine whether an ailment falls within the scope of what they’re able to treat, before agreeing to an appointment. After the session, nurses and doctors follow up with patients in a phone call or text, and from there, patients can continue to communicate with doctors through the app.
Going forward, the company plans to team-up with hospitals and medical networks, and eventually integrate with their electronic health record (EHR) systems. Given the proliferance of different EHR solutions, that won’t be an easy task. Nevertheless, they hope to use all the extra data sets to improve the service and by starting with big boys like Epic, Cerner and McKesson, they may find a shortcut of sorts. We’ll see how that goes…
[Via: VentureBeat]