Chat support and patient navigation startup Nurse-1-1 wrapped up a $2.3 million seed round led by Argon Ventures, with participation from York IE and Hyperplane.

The company said it plans to use the capital to hire more staffers, speed its go-to-market strategy and increase the number of partnerships with digital health, in-home diagnostic testing and pharmaceutical companies. 

"As more and more of our healthcare transitions to digital, we can't lose the thing that really works in the current system: patients interacting with nurses," Joe Raczka, managing partner at York IE, said in a statement.

WHAT IT DOES

Nurse-1-1 provides a chat support service that can be embedded on a digital health company's website. The company's network of nurses and other advanced care practitioners can then answer questions about medications, at-home testing and other home-care services, and then direct them to the next steps in their care.

"Patient adherence – whether to medications, at-home testing or other digital health treatments – is a major issue to tackle," cofounder and CEO Michael Sheeley said in a statement. "Our embedded nurse chat provides an on-demand experience with patients waiting fewer than 8 seconds on average to connect with a nurse – bridging an essential gap in care when patients need it the most."

MARKET SNAPSHOT

Another company in the patient communication space is Well Health, which offers an AI-enabled chatbot for appointment scheduling, telehealth, care management, patient outreach and revenue-cycle management. Well scored $45 million in Series C funding in 2020. 

Late last year, another startup that helps with appointment scheduling and reminders, Luma Health, scooped up a whopping $130 million in Series C financing. 

Others in tech-enabled patient communication and engagement include PatientServe, Medici and Klara.