A health IT startup in the practice management space also wants to improve the patient experience of booking appointments. New York City-based NexHealth, a graduate of Blueprint Health’s accelerator, raised $1.5 million in the company’s latest funding round. CEO Alamin Uddin confirmed the fundraise and highlighted NexHealth’s investment priorities in an interview at the MedCity ENGAGE conference this week.
New investors, including iSeed Ventures and DeNA Ventures, took part in the funding round, which will be used to support the growth of its client base and product development, Uddin said. He explained that the company plans to ramp up hiring, but declined to give specific numbers.
Uddin said NexHealth is a bit like ZocDoc. Although NexHealth seeks to make physician practices more efficient and help them retain patients through its automated appointment booking and rescheduling system, it also wants to make it easier for patients to communicate with practices.
NexHealth’s app, available for iOS and Android networks, transmits alerts for impending appointments and makes it simple for patients to cancel hours ahead of time, automatically reshuffling practices’ appointment calendars. The app also provides a way for patients to make co-payments in the office.
“We give patients access to their physicians via the web, phone, email, and text message,” Uddin said. “At the end of the day, our model is patient access.”
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.
NexHealth also competes with Solutionreach and Klara. Uddin noted that the company’s technology has led one practice to cut staff members since it reduced the need for a full-time person to manage appointments.
Making the process of booking physician appointments easier in a way that benfits practices and patients is a challenge that resonates in other countries besides the U.S., China, France, and Poland, illustrate the rise of companies in international markets providing their own approach to simplifying the process of addressing practice management.
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