What You Should Know:
– SimpliFed, the telehealth platform dedicated to democratizing access to baby feeding services, announced it has closed $6M in its seed round, led by Morningside Ventures and The Venture Collective, with participation from NY Ventures, Elizabeth Street Ventures, Waterline Ventures, and 3CC.
– SimpliFed provides virtual breastfeeding and baby feeding support fully covered by your health plan from pregnancy to weaning.
Virtual Inclusive Baby Feeding Support for Everyone
Founded in 2020 by CEO Andrea Ippolito after experiencing first-hand how difficult infant feeding was, and realizing how much judgment and misinformation exists around baby nutrition. From this experience, she and her team were driven to redesign the care pathway to improve access to high quality care, reduce costs, and improve maternal and baby health outcomes.
“SimpliFed provides inclusive support no matter how parents feed their babies. We are excited to accelerate our traction with our partners and serve families across the United States,” said Ippolito. “This round was raised while I both breastfed and formula-fed my second daughter. There is so much joy in building a family, but feeding your baby is not always easy. That is exactly why SimpliFed is on a mission to help provide equitable access to the services families need to feel secure about their nutrition choices.”
The SimpliFed team includes a network of lactation consultants, nurses, nurse practitioners, doulas, social workers, and working parents who have a range of breastfeeding-specific training and credentials. This team democratizes access to baby feeding services that are covered under the Affordable Care Act, seeks to shift practice and narratives by providing expanded resources for judgment-free support while embedding baby feeding into both community-based and in-person clinical care delivery, and reaches parents when and where they need help, on their own terms.
Recent Partnerships
SimpliFed secured two national contracts with TRICARE and two regional Medicaid contracts, obtained its Medicaid number in several states, grew to serve more than 24 employers through a partnership with Milk Stork, and partnered with health care systems, clinicians, and community-based organizations. The company plans to use the latest round of funding to further build the virtual baby feeding platform and implement and scale its unique service offering in partnership with commercial, Medicaid, Marketplace, and TRICARE health plans across the United States.
