A startup that wants to be your personal healthcare assistant just raised $70 million
You've likely never heard of Accolade, the digital health company that bills itself as a "healthcare concierge" service.
"We're the best-kept secret in healthcare right now," Accolade CEO Raj Singh told Business Insider.
Now, the little-known company based in Seattle is making a big splash with a $70 million series E funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Madrona Venture Group and others also joined in on the round. This round brings their total funding to $160 million.
Accolade's job is to act kind of like how a hotel concierge helps you out, by suggesting the best places to eat. But instead of a recommendation for a pizza place nearby, Accolade wants to give you direct guidance on the next steps you need to take if you need something for your health, like a new medication or to refill a prescription.
Say you just ran out of contact lenses, for example. You could call up your Accolade assistant, and she could tell you what needs to happen to get more: if you need a new prescription, that could mean connecting with an optometrist, or if there's a good deal out there for cheaper lenses tucked away in your health insurance plan, it could be just sharing that information.
Accolade caters to employers, so if your place of work has Accolade, you'd be matched up with with that health assistant (like a mentor for your health), who sticks with you and is around via phone, portal, or mobile app. The assistant has access to your health insurance, and other information so that they can answer questions you might have or unlock any special perks you might have hidden away. The idea is that by having one point person, you don't have to repeat the same information every time you have a question for your insurance provider.
And that way, the "concierge" can remind you of important things that need to happen if you or a loved one have a chronic condition like diabetes. And the technology can plug in all the other perks your employer has, so the assistant can point you in the right direction of other technologies you can take advantage of.
Singh joined the Accolade team last year after 22 years working at and co-founding travel management company Concur Technologies (which later sold to SAP).
"Accolade is an interesting mix of human beings, technology, and clinical science," Singh explained, when asked about what convinced him to join the company. That, blended together, fits the bill of what's called the "Triple Aim:" can you get people better care that they're happy about, while simultaneously cutting down on costs.
That's something that seemed to pull investors in, too. "Accolade is simply the best tool we’ve seen to help companies simultaneously improve both the quality and the cost of healthcare,” Andreessen Horowitz general partner Jeff Jordan said in a release.
The team currently has about 700 people on staff, with the majority of those health assistants or doctors, nurses, or pharmacists who support those assistants. Ideally, Singh said, the grand vision is to make this a platform that's available to hundreds of millions of Americans, as well as sharing more data that could demonstrate just how cost-effective the company's service is.
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