What You Should Know:
Bright.md closes oversubscribed $16.7 million Series C funding, co-led by B Capital, Seven Peaks Ventures and Concord Health Partners bringing in strategic investors including Philips Health Technology Ventures, UnityPoint Health Ventures and Concord Health Partners.
Bright.md will use the funds to accelerate market and technology expansion of its suite of care-automation solutions, including SmartExam.
Bright.md, the leading healthcare automation company, announced that it closed Series C funding, bringing in strategic investors including Philips Health Technology Ventures, UnityPoint Health Ventures and Concord Health Partners, a healthcare-focused investment firm that has partnered with the American Hospital Association (AHA) on its AHA Innovation Development Fund. Bright.md has raised $16.7 million in its oversubscribed Series C round co-led by B Capital, Seven Peaks Ventures and Concord Health Partners.
The Next Frontier in Healthcare Begins at the Virtual Front Door
Co-founded in 2014 by Ray Costantini and Mark Swinth, Bright.md’s SmartExam acts as a virtual physician’s assistant – think of it as the best automated medical resident ever – that enables primary care providers (PCPs) to deliver exceptionally efficient remote care for more than 450 low-acuity conditions—the kinds of health issues that make up more than 60% of primary- and urgent-care visits.
The COVID-19 pandemic is shining a spotlight on the need for vibrant telehealth offerings. It has also exposed the limitations associated with video-only solutions. Though video has enabled patients and providers to continue care, video visits still require a scheduled appointment with a doctor, take weeks of provider training to become proficient, and take the same amount of physician time as in-person visits. Providers need to offer a virtual entry point to care, like Bright.md’s SmartExam, which streamlines care delivery across the entire care continuum.
SmartExam is the first step along the care pathway. Bright.md’s AI-powered asynchronous virtual care platform enables patients to quickly share their concerns and symptoms with providers, get a diagnosis and treatment, or be fast-tracked for video, in-person, or specialty care. SmartExam acts like a virtual physician’s assistant, automating 90% of a primary, urgent care, or video visit, and reducing average visit time from 20 minutes to under 90 seconds. By intelligently and automatically combining patient-intake data, interview information, electronic health records, and clinical-workflow integration, then creating and entering SOAP notes and structured data into the patient’s health record, SmartExam boosts provider efficiency 15x and increases provider capacity to treat hundreds of patients in a single provider shift.
Recent Traction/Milestones
Bright.md will use the funding for accelerated market and technology expansion of its suite of care-automation solutions, including their award-winning flagship product, SmartExam™, a capacity-boosting, AI-powered, asynchronous telehealth platform already deployed in leading hospitals and healthcare systems across the U.S. and Canada.
In the first three months of 2020, Bright.md’s healthcare delivery partners experienced more patient visits than during the 2019 calendar year and supported the evaluation of more than 100,000 COVID-related patient visits. The company currently works with some of the largest health systems to deliver treatment for nearly 500 conditions such as the flu, pediatrics, dermatology, muscular-skeletal, and behavioral health issues. Bright.md integrated coronavirus screening questions into its care platform in January and began offering a free screening tool to hospitals in early March.
“Our new strategic investors share Bright.md’s vision to reimagine the way we deliver healthcare, especially in light of COVID-19,” said Ray Costantini, M.D., co-founder and CEO of Bright.md. “The pandemic has provoked a monumental shift in the care delivery and patient-provider experience. There’s no turning back. Healthcare will begin at the virtual front door, making healthcare delivery more efficient and allowing patients to get better care and providers to deliver it virtually and expeditiously. The capital and insight from our partners will enable us to achieve greater scale more rapidly in this next phase of our growth. We will be able to support more hospital systems in delivering patient navigation, triage, and treatment of low-acuity conditions, while seamlessly escalating those with more serious conditions to a higher level of care. We’ve worked toward this for six years, and I am extremely proud of what the team has accomplished and the high-value strategic partners our progress has attracted.”
