New York City-based digital health company Klara, the leader in patient engagement solutions, today announced it had raised $15 million, co-led by Google's AI-focused venture fund Gradient Ventures and leading healthcare investor Frist Cressey Ventures. Participants in the round also include existing investors FirstMark Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Project A, and Stage 2 Capital.

Klara's end-to-end patient engagement platform enables medical organizations to provide patients with an outstanding experience through intuitive communication, streamlined workflows, and easy-to-access virtual visits. By deeply integrating with a customer's EHR and PM system, Klara intelligently automates many routine workflows across the patient journey, including scheduling, pre-visit instructions, reminders, intake, no-show engagement, follow-up and more. The platform is built specifically to support both in-person and virtual patient journeys.

With the new funding, the company will grow its team, further enhance its core product, and build out AI-driven automation including fully integrated patient intake, payments, and more. It will also continue to grow its capabilities to enable multiple healthcare organizations such as practices, pharmacies and labs to jointly communicate with patients in one place - and make healthcare truly collaborative and less siloed.

"We founded Klara to transform how patients and providers communicate, as that is the single most important element of the doctor-patient relationship," said Simon Bolz, Co-CEO and Co-founder of Klara. "Focusing on communication first has given us a strong foundation to add other rich experiences such as electronic forms, scheduling, and reminders. Now, our automation of many routine workflows is fundamentally changing how healthcare organizations operate. All in all, our product is delivering tremendous value and time savings to providers, staff, and patients - and there's so much more we can do."

The company has been growing strong and has more than tripled its user base and usage since the COVID-19 pandemic hit earlier this year.

"Klara's growth over the past years has proven that healthcare organizations need a solution that simplifies patient communication, optimizes provider workflows, and offers high-quality virtual care in one place," said Simon Lorenz, PhD, Co-CEO and Co-founder, Klara. "With expert guidance on artificial intelligence and large scale market access from our new investors, we're in a unique position to continue building the best product for our customers, and have a real impact on the healthcare system as a whole."

Darian Shirazi, General Partner at Gradient Ventures, and Navid Farzad, Partner at Frist Cressey Ventures are joining Klara's Board of Directors.

"As the world embraces remote interactions and work, physicians and medical practices are increasingly adopting new forms of digital communications with patients. The team at Klara has built an incredible product that delights doctors, patients, and operators within practices worldwide," said Darian Shirazi, General Partner at Gradient Ventures. "While the telemedicine market expands more rapidly than ever before, we're excited to partner with Klara as they develop automated and intelligent solutions for the next generation of healthcare."

"The traditional physician practice must transform to improve communication and engagement with their patients - especially in a post-COVID world. Existing practice technology infrastructure is inadequate. Klara's seamless solution modernizes the practice infrastructure without disrupting workflows," said Navid Farzad from Frist Cressey Ventures. "We're looking forward to being part of this next phase of growth for Klara as they continue to transform the patient experience."

To learn more about Klara, visit www.klara.com.

About Klara:

Klara's end-to-end patient engagement platform enables healthcare organizations to easily communicate with patients, provide virtual care, collaborate as a team, and automate many front-desk tasks. Thousands of healthcare teams across more than 40 specialties use Klara to make their workflows more efficient, deliver an exceptional patient experience across the entire care journey, and grow their patient volume. For more information, visit www.klara.com.

About Gradient Ventures:

Gradient Ventures is Google's AI-focused venture fund - investing in and connecting early-stage startups with Google's resources, innovation, and technical leadership in artificial intelligence. The fund focuses on helping founders navigate the challenges in developing new technology products, allowing companies to take advantage of the latest techniques so that great ideas can come to life. Gradient was founded in 2017 and is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit www.gradient.com.

About Frist Cressey Ventures:

Frist Cressey Ventures (FCV) invests in early and growth stage companies dedicated to improving healthcare. FCV partners with like-minded entrepreneurs who share our mission to improve quality of care, patient outcomes and efficiency in the delivery of care. For more information, please visit www.fcventures.com.