MORE Health, a San Mateo, California-based startup offering a medical second opinion service, has recently unveiled partnerships with two pediatric institutions: Boston Children’s Hospital and Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Through the collaborations, patients around the world using MORE Health’s offering can get access to physicians and services at Boston Children’s and Nationwide Children’s.
Here’s how MORE Health’s model works in the U.S.: From a sales perspective, the startup works with health insurance brokers who put together benefits packages for companies. Through their health benefits, employees of those companies can then have access to MORE Health’s second opinion service.
When the patient is receiving a medical service and wants a second opinion, he or she can contact MORE Health. After gathering the patient’s relevant medical information, MORE Health matches the patient to a physician that best fits their case. These physicians can be from various institutions, including Cleveland Clinic, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Boston Children’s, Nationwide Children’s and others.
Using the HIPAA-compliant MORE Health Physician Collaboration Platform, the second doctor works with the patient’s original treating physician to determine whether the patient received the correct diagnosis and what the best treatment plan is.
The California startup can also assist international patients in locations like China, South Korea, Kenya, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Nigeria. The payment model is slightly different for users outside the United States, MORE Health director of marketing and design Vivian Jisrawi explained in a recent phone interview.
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 impetus behind MORE Health came when co-founder and CEO Hope Lewis was working as an attorney in China. One of her clients had an 18-month-old daughter who was diagnosed with liver cancer. Doctors said they didn’t have a treatment plan for the baby and she wasn’t going to survive.
In an effort to help, Lewis reached out to physicians in the United States for a second opinion and treatment plan. Years later, the girl is now cancer-free.
Looking ahead, MORE Health plans to continue its growth by adding partnerships with hospitals and working with more brokers, Jisrawi said.
Picture: andrei_r, Getty Images
