Israeli digital health device maker Tyto Care raised $4 million in a round led by OrbiMed Israel Partners with additional funding from LionBird.

Tyto Care is developing a handheld device that can help patients examine their mouth, throat, eye, heart, lung, and skin. The device can also measure the patient's temperature. These exams can be guided by a physician online or guided by the device offline. In either situation, Tyto aims to have the physician ultimately provide the patient with a diagnosis based on the information collected by the device.

"Contrary to other devices out there, we are really working on replacing face-to-face visits with online or offline ones," CEO Dedi Gilad told MobiHealthNews. "So we are really focusing on primary care service. It's not only for if you're a jogger and you want to check your stats, it's way beyond that. It can really reduce [healthcare] costs."

Although the device will be direct to consumer, Tyto will not offer a physician service. Instead, the company will partner with other telehealth companies that have physician services so that the consumer can get a diagnosis using the information from the device. Gilad said the device will either be sold directly to the patient for around $200 or bundled with some kind of physician service. Another vertical that Tyto Care will explore is the "multi-patient environment", which he said includes self-service kiosks at schools, in employer's offices, or in retail clinics.

Within the next few months, Gilad said the company plans to launch pilots with healthcare providers in the United States and then move into business pilots with partners that the company already has in the works. Gilad says he expects the device to get FDA clearance by Q1 next year and a commercial launch soon after.