This morning telehealth giant Amwell raised a whopping $194 million in a Series C funding. Allianz X and Takeda were among the participants this round.
Amwell has a history of large funding rounds. In 2018 it raked it a cool $365.4 million in Series B funding, and in 2014 it raised $81 million.
This latest funding news comes as telehealth gets its era in the spotlight, as providers and patients look for alternatives to in-person care due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“As we come out of covid there is going to be a newfound understanding of how digital plays a role in the fabric of healthcare. It is a new balance of physical vs digital,” Amwell President and CEO Dr. Roy Schoenberg, told MobiHealthNews last week. “With that comes that mature understanding that we are going to regularly care for our patients through telehealth. It is going to be part of the way our relationship happens.”
WHAT THEY DO
Founded in 2006, Amwell is one of the largest telehealth companies in the U.S. Its offerings include virtual urgent care, pediatrics, telestroke, population health management, telepsychiatry and chronic disease management.
It is able to work with health systems in order for them to create their own telehealth program that can integrate with the system’s EHR. Its markets also includes health plans, Medicare advantage plans, and employers.
In mid-April, Amwell announced its new virtual-health offering geared towards small and medium physician practices with less than 100 providers.
Clinicians using the platform, dubbed Amwell Private Practice, will be able to begin scheduling virtual appointments for their existing patients. Amwell also noted that the tool is currently available to these practices through June 30, with fully waived per-provider fees.
WHAT IT’S FOR
The company plans to use the new money to help expand its technology and services and help providers scale.
"The past two months have accelerated telehealth by more than two years," Ido Schoenberg, CEO of Amwell, said in a statement. "We intend to build upon this momentum to transform healthcare with digital care-delivery. Our strategic investors are providers, insurers, consumer gateways and healthcare innovators. Each of these partners play[s] a key role in creating a more interconnected digital healthcare ecosystem, where our mission is to deliver greater access to more affordable, high quality care."
THE LARGER TREND
It’s no secret that during the coronavirus pandemic rates of telehealth usage have skyrocketed. Teladoc, one of Amwell’s biggest competitors, announced a major spike in demand in its first quarter. In its April earnings call it disclosed that its year-over-year revenue grew 41%, from $128.6 million in 2019 to $180.8 million in 2020. It also reported that total visits grew by 92%.
“You have a perfect storm that says we need to fend all people’s healthcare concerns somewhere else,” Schoenberg said. “So, telehealth sort of stepped in to become the aggregator or the destination where people went to. … That translated in a matter of days or maybe a week. … Somewhere in the middle of March to what we see today which is a sustained about thirty-fold increase in volume. This is not 30%, this is not 300%, this is 3,000% of growth and increase in telehealth.”
