Bright.md, the leading healthcare automation company, announced that it closed Series C funding, bringing in strategic investors including Philips Health Technology Ventures, UnityPoint Health Ventures and Concord Health Partners, a healthcare-focused investment firm that has partnered with the American Hospital Association (AHA) on its AHA Innovation Development Fund. Bright.md has raised $16.7 million in its oversubscribed Series C round co-led by B Capital, Seven Peaks Ventures and Concord Health Partners.

Bright.md will use the funding for accelerated market and technology expansion of its suite of care-automation solutions, including their award-winning flagship product, SmartExam™, a capacity-boosting, AI-powered, asynchronous telehealth platform already deployed in leading hospitals and healthcare systems across the U.S. and Canada.

"Our new strategic investors share Bright.md's vision to reimagine the way we deliver healthcare, especially in light of COVID-19," said Ray Costantini, M.D., co-founder and CEO of Bright.md. "The pandemic has provoked a monumental shift in the care delivery and patient-provider experience. There's no turning back. Healthcare will begin at the virtual front door, making healthcare delivery more efficient and allowing patients to get better care and providers to deliver it virtually and expeditiously. The capital and insight from our partners will enable us to achieve greater scale more rapidly in this next phase of our growth. We will be able to support more hospital systems in delivering patient navigation, triage, and treatment of low-acuity conditions, while seamlessly escalating those with more serious conditions to a higher level of care. We've worked toward this for six years, and I am extremely proud of what the team has accomplished and the high-value strategic partners our progress has attracted."

The Next Frontier in Healthcare Begins at the Virtual Front Door

The COVID-19 pandemic is shining a spotlight on the need for vibrant telehealth offerings. It has also exposed the limitations associated with video-only solutions. Though video has enabled patients and providers to continue care, video visits still require a scheduled appointment with a doctor, take weeks of provider training to become proficient, and take the same amount of physician time as in-person visits. Providers need to offer a virtual entrypoint to care, like Bright.md's SmartExam, which streamlines care delivery across the entire care continuum.

SmartExam is the first step along the care pathway. Bright.md's AI-powered asynchronous virtual care platform enables patients to quickly share their concerns and symptoms with providers, get a diagnosis and treatment, or be fast-tracked for video, in-person, or specialty care. SmartExam acts like a virtual physician's assistant, automating 90% of a primary, urgent care, or video visit, and reducing average visit time from 20 minutes to under 90 seconds. By intelligently and automatically combining patient-intake data, interview information, electronic health records, and clinical-workflow integration, then creating and entering SOAP notes and structured data into the patient's health record, SmartExam boosts provider efficiency 15x and increases provider capacity to treat hundreds of patients in a single provider shift.

"Providers across the country have witnessed a decline in ambulatory visits as a result of shelter-in-place orders. At the same time other systems are overrun with COVID-19 patients," Dr. Costantini said. "In one region, clinicians are being furloughed and in other systems they are being pushed beyond capacity. SmartExam gives providers the necessary support they will need to help triage and treat, and offers patients a digital entrypoint to help them efficiently navigate the system in an environment where many fear doctor visits because of exposure to COVID-19. The coronavirus has only expedited a trend in care delivery that has been underway for nearly a decade."

In the first three months of 2020, Bright.md's healthcare delivery partners experienced more patient visits than during the 2019 calendar year, and supported evaluation of more than 100,000 COVID-related patient visits. The company currently works with some of the largest health systems to deliver treatment for nearly 500 conditions such as the flu, pediatrics, dermatology, muscular-skeletal, and behavioral health issues. Bright.md integrated coronavirus screening questions into its care platform in January, and began offering a free screening tool to hospitals in early March.

What Investors Are Saying About Bright.md

James Olsen, Founder & Managing Partner, Concord Health Partners

"We strive to identify and support best-in-class healthcare companies with innovative solutions that address affordability, quality and access to care with meaningful strategic benefits for health systems. Bright.md aligns with our strategy with a proven platform that enables health systems to leverage their existing physicians to meaningfully increase capacity and streamline care delivery through AI powered automation. With Bright.md, health care providers can significantly improve access and efficiency, enabling them to deliver better care, more quickly and in the lowest cost setting."

Rich Wilmot, Head of Philips Health Technology Ventures

Bright.md delivers solutions that help address the challenges that overwhelm busy healthcare professionals. The team has proven that they are nimble, and can quickly adapt to fast-changing market conditions. We are teaming up with Bright.md, because their platform is not only valuable during the current pandemic; we believe that its technology promises to enable new care models and help healthcare providers long into the future."

Matthew Warrens, Director of Innovation, UnityPoint Health

"Long before anyone knew the impact COVID-19 would have on healthcare systems, the innovations Bright.md brought to market were creating enormous value for both patients and providers. Our investment in Bright.md is an important piece of how we're striving to provide more convenient, personalized care. We're certain our partnership with Bright.md will continue to find ways to drive care transformation that benefits everyone in the communities we serve."

About Bright.md

Founded in 2014 and based in Portland, Oregon, Bright.md is a leading healthcare automation company helping many of the largest healthcare systems in North America make healthy happen faster. With its AI-powered care automation platform, SmartExam™, Bright.md empowers healthcare providers to create a virtual front door through which patients can navigate, be triaged, receive care for hundreds of low-acuity medical conditions or be routed to in-person or video visits. Bright.md has been named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Healthcare, a Vendor to Watch by Chilmark Research, is the preferred choice of AVIA's Virtual Access cohort, and was named one of 12 telehealth companies to fill the gaps in COVID-19 care by CB Insights. Bright.md is venture-backed by B Capital Group, Seven Peaks Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Philips Health Technology Ventures, UnityPoint Health, and Concord Health Partners. For more information, visit Bright.md.