Telehealth provider Antidote Health has raised $12 million in seed funding to build its “virtual HMO.”

The round was led by iAngels, Well-Tech Ventures and Flint Capital. Antidote said angel investors also participated.

"The convergence of two disciplines – AI-based virtual healthcare and fin-tech (insure-tech) applicational layers – is unique in the technological-medical landscape in that it provides a disruptive force in the market,” Avihai Soudri, Antidote Health's cofounder and CEO, said in a statement.

“The melding of advanced technologies and the social impact Antidote produces are part of our organizational DNA and manifest in every action we take."

WHAT THEY DO

Antidote, which launched in January, currently offers telehealth services in Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina. 

Users can sign up for telehealth plans for themselves or their families, paid monthly. They could also choose a one-time visit.

Antidote’s platform uses an AI-enabled chatbot to ask users questions about their symptoms and medical records, and then connects them with a provider or schedules an appointment. Customers can then get referrals or prescriptions at a local pharmacy.

WHAT IT’S FOR

The company, which is based in New York with research and development in Tel Aviv, Israel, plans to use the seed funding to pay for marketing, advertising and to expand its service across the U.S.

"If there is any one industry for which COVID-19 highlighted the major gaps and necessary advances, it is the need for access to telehealth,” Shelly Hod Moyal, iAngels founding partner, said in a statement.

“We are proud to lead Antidote Health's financing round, and to play a role in their journey to level the field for all Americans to receive adequate telemedicine." 

MARKET SNAPSHOT

Antidote is pitching its “virtual HMO” as a way to expand access to healthcare in the U.S. 

According to the Census Bureau, nearly 34% of American counties had an estimated uninsured rate below 10% in 2019.

However, that’s a significant improvement from 2013, the year before some provisions in the Affordable Care Act took effect, when only about 4% of counties had uninsured rates below 10%.

The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly expanded the use of telehealth. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there was a 154% increase in telehealth visits in the last week of March 2020, compared with the same time period in 2019. 

Though telehealth use was declining nationally from February to April, utilization finally stabilized in May 2021, making up 5% of medical claim lines, according to a FAIR Health report. 

Still, telehealth remains most popular among high earners with more education, said researchers in a Rock Health report.

“Therefore, unlike data from prior years, we believe that 2020 is unlikely to represent a point on a linear trajectory or continuous trend line,” authors of the report wrote. “Rather, the adoption trend in future periods may follow more of a step response path in which a period of overshoot is followed by a new, higher equilibrium that is below the initial 'impulse' delivered by COVID-19.”