K Health, maker of an artificial intelligence-powered app for consumer health education and linkage to primary care, announced this morning that it has closed $25 million in Series B funding.

The round was led by 14W, with additional participation from Comcast Ventures, Mangrove and other unnamed angel investors. This latest gain brings the company’s total funding to $37.5 million.

In addition, K Health is also announcing the launch of a new virtual visit capability supported by the new funds, which the company expects to launch in multiple states during the early part of next year.

What they do

The K app looks to give healthcare consumers a more informed understanding of their current condition. With a dataset comprised of physician notes, lab results, treatments, prescriptions, and other interactions, the company’s AI informs users about how their health issue has been diagnosed and treated in the past. With this, consumers have a rough idea of their issue’s severity, and — in the New York City area — can be connected with a brick-and-mortar primary care provider if necessary.

“We’ve built a model based on AI that allows people to have a conversation about their health based on what we call ‘People like you’ — your gender, your age and then your very specific history and symptoms,” Allon Bloch, CEO and cofounder of K Health, told MobiHealthNews. “Essentially, what we’ve tried to mimic is that diagnostic where people go to a doctor and complain about a headache or a stomach ache or dizziness or any other kind of chief complaints, they have a conversation with the doctor, and  at the end the doctor might diagnose them, might send them a referral, might keep them at home, might send them to a lab or a test, or might send them to an ER.”

What it’s for

Along with supporting its current service, Bloch said that his company will be expanding with a new fully staffed virtual care feature in early 2019. Through the app, users who have already fed their case information to K Health’s AI can choose to be connected to a board-certified primary care or ER doctor for a yet-to-be-announced fee. The service will be available to adult patients regardless of insurance status.

Bloch said the new feature was a logical next step for K Health, both in terms of delivering more prompt care to the user and reducing the time commitment of a consulting physician.

“What we’re releasing in 2019 is the ability to have remote care in most states — not all, it depends on remote care licensing in each state,” he said. “We have our own doctors, and we’re rolling out the ability to not only understand health information [with the AI app], but also share it with the physician and be treated remotely. Now whether you need a consultation, a prescription or just reassurance, you’ll be able to do it with K — and unlike telehealth solutions, K collects extensive information about your medical history and that specific acute condition you’re having and share it with a physician in a secure way, and now that doctor has to spend much, much less time.”

Looking ahead

Bloch noted that his company’s service has grown substantially since the company’s last funding round, going from a few thousand downloads to nearly half a million, and said that he expects that momentum to continue in the coming year.

“There’s a number of things we’re working on I can’t talk about, yet we have a lot of interest from the value chain and we are having really, really detailed conversations with people to be partnered,” he said. “I think there will be a lot of stuff happening in the next year or two.”

Market snapshot

K Health’s primary competition is likely 98point6, a Seattle-based startup that recently raised $50 million for its on-demand, texting-based primary care services. Meanwhile, Carbon Health recently merged with Direct Urgent Care to pair its mobile patient app with in-person care services.