Physician search engine and appointment startup raising $1M

Company name: HealthPost Inc.

Industry: Health IT

Location: Houston, Texas

Solution/product: The company is described by CEO Omar Alvi on his LinkedIn profile as a provider of cloud-based healthcare search and booking solutions for healthcare systems, hospitals, payors, emergency rooms, medical practices and other outpatient services. On the website, one focus is primary care doctors in Houston.

Money raised: $549,998 of a targeted $ 1million

Investors: Nine

Management team: Omar Alvi is the CEO. He previously served as director of Internet marketing at Memorial Hermann Healthcare System. Prior to that he worked in strategy and business development at AOL, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also worked in distribution planning and internet marketing for Continental Airlines

Market: There is an increasing trend toward health IT companies launching physician search tools with the pitch that it can save users time and boost business for healthcare professionals. This is becoming an increasingly crowded market so I expect it will be a bit Darwinist as far as which companies will survive the eventual consolidation. Earlier this week BetterDoctor launched at the TechCrunch disrupt conference in San Francisco. But so far, ZocDoc has been the one watch. Still, some critics contend that this physician finder/appointment booking subsector of health IT has been overhyped.

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