Spora Health, a telemedicine startup offering primary care services, has closed a $1 million seed funding round.
The company offers patients membership-based telemedicine services for several health problems, including Allergies, Cold & Flu, Common Infections, Digestive System, Musculoskeletal, Reproductive System, and Skin Conditions such as wounds, Burns, Rashes, Acne, Eczema.
According to the company, its machine learning-driven technology also can predict risk profiles for patients and look for chronic conditions like pre-diabetes, hypertension, and emphysema.
“Being a young startup, we can compete on price,” said founder and CEO Dan Miller. “For us, we can make the offering more affordable because we have less overhead as well as tech that allows us to be more thoughtful.” “We want to over-index on providers of color, but supply and demand don’t match up.” “There’s a shortage of providers of color becoming physicians. So we need to invest in the reeducation of providers.”
Spora Health plan costs $9.99 per month. On the first visit, patients pay their normal co-pay. For those without insurance, they pay a one-time $99 fee on their first visit. The company’s services are currently available in Virginia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
“Within med school, there is a curriculum around health equity, but that only happens in the first year of the program,” Miller said. “What tends to happen by the end of residency is that a lot of these implicit biases tend to surface again because the training curriculum and environment do not incorporate equity and don’t think about disparities in certain populations.”
Telemedicine companies raised $3.3 billion in the first nine months of 2020. Recently, Nice Healthcare, a telemedicine and primary care services provider, raised $5 million in seed funding. Waterline Ventures led the round with participation from Conductive Ventures and Indie.vc.
