InquisitHealth, a River Edge, New Jersey-based startup focused on population health, has wrapped up a round of seed funding led by Hudson River Capital Partners and Dreamit. AmeriHealth and other investors also participated.
The new capital brings the startup’s total funding to $4.2 million, which includes non-dilutive funding from the National Institutes of Health, according to a press release.
Via email, InquisitHealth co-founder and CMO Dr. Ashwin Patel said there are two sides of the company.
The first, which is available for payers, is a peer mentoring-as-a-service solution that is made up of trained peer mentors, technology and evidence-based programs. With the aim of getting better outcomes and more savings, insurers can have their high-risk, high-cost patients gain assistance from InquisitHealth’s mentors. Each patient-mentor pair is matched up based on shared conditions, age, language, medication types, demographics and comorbidities.
“The core objective is to improve clinical outcomes by inspiring healthy lifestyle changes and addressing any underlying social and behavioral determinants of health,” Patel said.
The other side of the business is geared toward providers, pharma and patient advocacy groups. InquisitHealth licenses its platform to these organizations so they can head up their own peer support programs internally.
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.
The new funding will be used to expand the New Jersey company’s existing asthma, diabetes and pre-diabetes programs. It will also go toward creating new programs for sickle cell, hypertension and adult asthma/COPD.
Patel added that InquisitHealth will use the money to grow and meet the needs of current customers like Montefiore Health System, and to help its new clients utilize peer mentoring.
As for the investors, Patel said they are the company’s mentors and have been “helping us through their insights, connections and capital.”
In particular, Dreamit has played a vital role in the startup’s development. Not only is it an investor, but InquisitHealth also participated in the Dreamit accelerator in the spring of 2016.
“Dreamit asked us tough questions, got us to dig deep and helped us get really clear about where we could add the most value,” Patel said of the experience.
Moving forward, InquisitHealth wants to continue helping everyone from payers to the pharma industry better assist patients. It also wants to make its peer-based approach more broadly available.
“Our partners are now seeing the tremendous ability of peers to engage and help patients, with significant improvements in clinical outcomes,” Patel said.
Photo: aurielaki, Getty Images
