Care coordination is one of the pillars of establishing a healthcare model that’s increasingly moving towards value-based care. The market is poised for digital adoption and large-scale innovation; the digital care coordination software market alone is expected to top $3.1B in 2022. Challenges remain in the market as there’s traditionally been a lack of interoperability between payers and providers as well as confusion when care transitions from team to team and across institutions. HeyRenee is a digital healthcare concierge platform that’s focused on centralizing all aspects of a patient’s care into a single platform that’s easy to use and navigate. There are 100M+ Americans that suffer from 2 or more chronic conditions and the startup plans to focus on this segment, allowing them to interact through voice, text, and touch. The platform focuses on all aspects of the healthcare journey from diagnosis to ongoing monitoring to post-care follow up aligning the interest of payers, providers, and patients to ensure better outcomes for patients.
LA TechWatch caught up with Founder, serial entrepreneur, and CEO Nick Desai (cofounded Heal) to learn more about the care coordination market and the benefits it brings in an era of increasing costs, how the founding team’s experience dealing with a parent’s illness led to the inspiration for the business, the company’s future plans, recent round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $8.2M, and much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised an oversubscribed $4.4M Seed II funding round led by Quiet Capital, with participation from City Light Capital, Fika Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Mucker Capital, SaaS Ventures, and Tau Ventures. To date, we have raised a total of $8.2M and tripled the company’s valuation in just five months.
Tell us about your product or service.
HeyRenee is the first-ever whole person healthcare assistant that unifies the myriad complex, interrelated aspects of healthcare into one delightful voice, text, and touch interface specifically designed for the 100M Americans with 2+ chronic conditions. HeyRenee’s dedicated and compassionate Care Concierges take the time to learn a patient as a human being — including social and cultural context. That learning is combined with the primary care physician (PCP) created clinical care records — enabling HeyRenee to curate a custom, interactive daily care plan for each patient. As an example, if a doctor prescribes a blood pressure medicine to a patient, HeyRenee will ensure that the prescription is delivered to the patient. Then, HeyRenee will remind the patient to take the medication. Then, HeyRenee will measure the patient’s actual blood pressure and if it isn’t improving, will report those numbers back to the PCP so that they can add/adjust medication as needed. Similarly, HeyRenee schedules transportation, medical appointments, labs/imaging, tracks vitals, and much more — all on behalf of the patient, so patients spend more time being well and less time getting well.
What inspired the start of HeyRenee?
Coordinated care can lower healthcare costs $7,700 per patient per year, while 3 out of 4 seniors do not have an effective coordinated care plan. At the same time, 53 million Americans are already taking care of elderly loved ones and over 75% of those people feel significant stress. And the U.S. is facing an acute shortage of 1.2 million home health workers in the next decade alone. That creates a rapidly growing $9.6 billion U.S. opportunity for the kind of software HeyRenee is creating.
Our journey to HeyRenee was very personal as healthcare often is. One of our own parents had a surgery that went awry and suddenly they were calling Renee multiple times a day saying, “Hey, Renee, what do I do about …” and it struck us. Not everyone has a loving daughter who is doctor, so we should create a service that does the care coordination everyone needs … and no one gets.
How is it different?
HeyRenee is different because it is:
- Patient-centric, designed from the ground up for actual humans to use.
- Focused on older, underserved Americans. Our mission statement is health equity through innovation and so our STARTING audience is disadvantaged Americans.
- Provider-agnostic. We don’t burden overwhelmed doctors with yet another platform or process. Rather, we deliver real value to the patient in parallel to the doctor and that itself empowers doctors by substantially reducing their workload.
- Open platform. We leverage the entire digital health ecosystem to curate the exact combination of partners and services instantly, efficiently, and cost-effectively into one cohesive, integrated experience specific and custom to each patient.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We’re targeting the rapidly growing $9.6 billion U.S. market for care coordination tools with a uniquely patient-centric platform.
What’s your business model?
We charge risk-bearing entities (payers, Accountable Care Organizations, value-based care groups, health systems) for improving the health of their patients.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
To safely return to a blend of at-home and in-office work.
What was the funding process like?
For this round, it was incredibly quick. We prepared a deck, showed it to three investors, got a term sheet, and closed the round in eight working days.
For this round, it was incredibly quick. We prepared a deck, showed it to three investors, got a term sheet, and closed the round in eight working days.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Thus far, we have been fortunate and haven’t faced fundraising-related challenges.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
In part, it’s us — Renee (Dr. Renee Dua, cofounder) and Nick. We built Heal and are proven healthtech entrepreneurs and innovators. Partially it is the product itself — led by Alexandra Cohen, our Chief Product Officer — that is miles ahead of anything else out there. Partially it’s our mission — health equity through innovation. Finally, our pilot patient data, which exceeds our own best expectations in terms of improving patient outcomes with HeyRenee.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Launch our beta and 1.0 product, secure three revenue-generating customers, hire senior engineering talent, and raise our Series A funding.
What advice can you offer companies in Los Angeles that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
HeyRenee is the fifth venture-funded startup I have founded, built, and grown in Los Angeles, dating back to 1998. This is the greatest city and metro area in the world, period, and now, the best for startups. The San Francisco Bay Area has given way to insular thinking and copycat models, while LA remains an incredible, diverse place where entertainment, ports, manufacturing, aerospace, real estate, tourism, biotech, and so many other industries come together, which creates a “primordial soup” of innovation that spans across human existence.
HeyRenee is the fifth venture-funded startup I have founded, built, and grown in Los Angeles, dating back to 1998. This is the greatest city and metro area in the world, period, and now, the best for startups. The San Francisco Bay Area has given way to insular thinking and copycat models, while LA remains an incredible, diverse place where entertainment, ports, manufacturing, aerospace, real estate, tourism, biotech, and so many other industries come together, which creates a “primordial soup” of innovation that spans across human existence.
I’d say stay in LA and wouldn’t give up. There is no VC anywhere in the world that won’t invest in LA-based companies. To be sure, I have raised capital from France, India, the Middle East, New York, Boston, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Silicon Valley, and of course LA itself over the different startups.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We want to achieve health equity through innovation. In the near term, our goals are to launch our beta and 1.0 products, secure revenue-generating customers and add engineering talent.
What’s your favorite outdoor activity in LA?
Going to the beach.
