Adaptive virtual care company Story Health launched this week with $4 million in seed funding from veteran health tech investors General Catalyst and Define Ventures. 

Focused on simplifying specialist care, the new platform is headed by a team of Verily alumni, including its CEO Tom Stanis, Verily’s cofounder, and Chief Product Officer Nikhil Roy. 

WHAT IT DOES 

The technology was designed to help guide patients and specialist physicians through a care journey with telemedicine, data models and analytics. Doctors can tap into virtualized therapy management, where they can see a variety of clinical, pharmacy and lab data in a unified platform. It also includes a machine learning component that helps doctors cater a patient’s treatment and therapies. 

The platform also has a component for patients where they can keep track of their care. 

WHAT IT’S FOR

The company only specified that the new funds were meant to “close the care gap between primary and specialist physicians”. However, this funding was attached to a company launch, which typically comes with a growth phase. 

“Critical opportunities to optimize care are often lost in the months between clinic visits. We empower specialists to use virtual care to close the gap between clinical evidence and patient reality,” Story Health founder Tom Stanis, said in a statement.

“The potential of virtual care is massive, yet still largely untapped. We launched Story Health to create what we call adaptive virtualized care – a system that empowers specialists to achieve medical goals with patients beyond the clinic by adapting to real-world scenarios. We give virtual superpowers to specialists.”

MARKET SNAPSHOT 

Telemedicine companies have increasingly turned to the specialty space for expansion. In 2019, Amwell launched a new acute care telemedicine cart for virtual care specialists. ArtistaMD has a slight different focus in uniting specialty and primary care though providing PCPs a platform to consult with specialist.

In the U.K. there has also been an increased effort to bridge primary and specialty care. NHS Digital and NHSX announced a national roll-out of a digital interoperability system GP connect to all NHS GP surgeries and specialist care centers.