Monday, Web-based videoconferencing service provider Vidyo, a big player in telemedicine, announced that it received $15 million in new investments, $10 million of which came from Kaiser Permanente Ventures.
KP Ventures, the VC arm of Kaiser Permanente, is a new investor in Vidyo. A Vidyo spokeswoman said that the company believes it to be the first strategic investment by a healthcare provider in a vendor of unified communications services.
“We view our partnership with Vidyo, with its telehealth offerings that increase patient convenience and the overall quality of care, as advancing this strategy [of working with partners that can improve patient care and community health],” KP Ventures Director Jordan Kramer said in a press release.
KP Ventures declined to comment further. However, Kaiser Permanente already uses Vidyo for video services within Kaiser’s My Health Manager patient portal and for various clinician workflows.
Kaiser CEO Bernard Tyson said in April that the nation’s largest private-sector healthcare organization was “betting big on videoconference technology that will improve online healthcare,” and is “distributing care out of the hospital,” in part via telehealth.
Kaiser has advertised its telehealth services in TV spots.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Vidyo said that 45 of the 100 largest integrated delivery networks in the U.S. are customers, and that it is the only video platform integrated into major electronic health records systems. CEO Eran Westman called the KP Ventures investment as a “validation of the ability of the VidyoWorks platform to address the various needs of major telehealth implementations, especially our ability to seamlessly embed HD quality, reliable video interactions into workflows and applications at scale.”
To date, Hackensack, New Jersey-based Vidyo has raised $163 million in private venture capital, the company said.
Photo: Twitter user Vidyo
