Who says doctors don’t make house calls?
Heal, the app for on-demand doctor house calls, has been used to arrange more than 16,000 doctor visits over the past two years. Now the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based company is planning new services and a nationwide rollout.
The aim is to help heal the broken health care system through the transformative power of on-demand doctor house calls. The company said it has driven more than $5.9 million in health care savings, reducing unnecessary prescription antibiotic usage by more than 50 percent. It has also reduced non-emergency trips to the emergency room by 62 percent for its patients and partners.
Heal has raised $52 million in funding and plans to grow its doctor visits exponentially through its availability in select cities within Florida, Texas, New York, and Pennsylvania by the end of 2017.
“In February 2015, we saw our first Heal patient — ever,” said Nick Desai, CEO and cofounder, in a statement. “With visionary investors and a world-class team, we are excited to more fully realize our mission of striving to make healthcare more effective, intuitive, and affordable for all.”
Recently, Heal hired former Amazon mobile app general manager Rish Tandon to serve as the company’s chief technology officer. The company also hired Bhavini Soneji, former director of engineering at Snap to serve as Heal’s senior vice president of engineering.
“I joined Heal to create purposeful innovation that will make the Heal experience even more proactive, precise, and powerful,” said Soneji, in a statement. “Together with Rish, we are eager to re-invent the system of healthcare as we know it.”
“With this recent addition of Rish and Bhavini, we’re creating a formidable technology team, which indicates [that Heal is] a place to be if you truly want to change the world,” said Desai.
Founded by Desai and Renee Dua, Heal aims to free doctors from the burden of seeing 40 patients a day, giving them more time to take care of fewer patients. This leads to a better system for doctors, better health outcomes for patients, and lower costs for the larger health care system, the company said.
Investors include Fidelity ContraFund, Thomas Tull, Jim Breyer, the Ellison Family, Lionel Richie, Dr. Paul Jacobs, and others.