Startups, Health Services, Health Tech, Payers

Anthem partners with startup K Health on symptom checker and telehealth app

The co-branded application will open up access to K Health's AI-driven triage and symptom checker tool to Anthem's more than 40 million members. 

Indianapolis-based insurer Anthem has tapped primary care startup K Health to launch a new co-branded app to help Anthem members determine potential diagnosis and text with doctors for medical advice.

As part of the collaboration, Anthem is making a major multi-million dollar investment in the New York-based company, bringing its total funding to more than $50 million. K Health CEO Allon Bloch said the funding is tied to certain commercial milestones on behalf of the partnership.

The co-branded application will open up access to K Health’s AI-driven triage and symptom checker tool to Anthem’s more than 40 million members.

Using a combination of licensed data resources and a chatbot-driven patient interview about demographics, medical history and symptoms, K Health’s system is able to derive likely conditions based on other similar patient cases and recommend potential routes to receive care.

K Health’s application was launched in the U.S. last year and has grown to more than 1.3 million users. Bloch said the company is adding around 15,000 new users a day and he hopes the new Anthem partnership will enable the company to reach 10 million users by the end of 2020.

Anthem members will be able to receive symptom checker services for free and connect with a board-certified doctor through the app. While the pricing is still being worked out for the co-branded Anthem service, K Health’s standard application has a $49 annual fee for unlimited chat messages with a doctor.

The doctor will help discuss treatment options through chat and have the ability to prescribe medication or lab tests if necessary. K Health has a roster of around 50 clinicians employed by an associated physicians group and currently offers services in 14 states between the hours of 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.

Armed with the data provided through K Health’s chatbot technology, Bloch said its clinicians are able to provide faster and more effective care.

K Health touts its technology as being more personalized and accurate than simple internet searches or more generalized symptom checkers, while also being able to close the loop of care and directly connect patients to clinicians.

It also helps to expand access to primary care services by circumventing the average 24 day period it takes to schedule a first-time appointment with a physician.

“The ugly secret is that telemedicine doesn’t have wide adoption because it’s built in a clunky way and not easy to access it or find out how to use it,” Bloch said. “With K’s platform, you have immediate access to a clinician if you want it at orders of magnitude cheaper than traditional telemedicine.”

Anthem’s co-branded app will eventually offer additional services not in K Health’s standard direct-to-consumer product like linking members to its Engage digital health navigation platform.

The value proposition for the insurer is to create a consumer-driven technology product that can also help better manage downstream health spending by highlighting and addressing issues earlier.

Bloch also brought up the potential of Anthem opening up access to the app to non-members as a way to broaden the company’s business model.

“Anthem is taking a positive view of the fact that change is going to come to the system,” Bloch said. “There’s an idea of ‘let’s try to be ahead of the change, rather than be pulled along.'”

In addition to its work with Anthem, Bloch said it’s likely K Health partners with other insurers in similar models.

While the startup is currently focused on primary care for those 18 years old and over, Bloch says the company will expand into pediatrics by the end of the year and eventually into areas like orthopedics and chronic disease management.

Picture: Andreus, Getty Images

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