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Buoy Health Wins Over Three Health Plans, Turns Symptom Checking into Patient Decision-Making

By JESSICA DaMASSA, WTF HEALTH

Symptom checker startup Buoy Health’s $37.5M Series C caught a lot of attention among health tech market watchers because of the collaborative support the funding round garnered from health plans. THREE payor orgs – UnitedHealth’s Optum, Humana, and Cigna – participated in the round, and co-founder and CEO Andrew Le is here to tell us why.

What’s interesting is how the health tech startup’s model has evolved past “symptom checking” and into patient decision-making to better solve the underlying uncertainty that typically causes a patient to “shotgun into care” that’s often a poor fit clinically AND financially. “If you don’t solve the clinical uncertainty first,” says Andrew, “then nothing else matters.” Health plans, though, are likely also seeing the potential of making sure that their members are routed to the right kind of “covered” care. And Buoy’s big plan is to help that along with a full-on marketplace of curated solutions – think telehealth, digital health apps, digital therapeutics, and so on – that round out the benefit design of a traditional health plan. Suddenly, symptom checking seems a means to a very different end…

Health in 2 Point 00, Episode 106 | More Post-JPM Deals, & a Google/Cerner catfight?

Today on Health in 2 Point 00, everybody’s getting 20 million dollars! There are so many deals to cover. AI chatbot symptom checker Buoy gets $20 million, Clew gets $20 million, diabetes management company Oviva gets $21 million, Covera gets $23.5 million for diagnostic improvement in radiology, Zipari gets $22.5 million working on engagement in health plans. Another $20 million for Kaizen (yet another nonemergency medical transportation company), and Color raises $75 million for personal genetics testing. In other news, Google and Cerner—the catfight begins just in time so we don’t have to talk too much about interoperability at HIMSS. And if you were also waiting with bated breath for where Mona Siddiqui ended up, tune in for the gossip on this episode of Health in 2 Point 00. —Matthew Holt

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