Story Health Launches Virtual Specialty Care to Empower Patient-Clinician Relationship
Team of technologists and practitioners leverages $4M in seed funding to close the care gap between primary and specialist physicians
SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Story Health, the healthcare company building virtualized specialty care solutions, today formally launched and announced $4 million in seed funding from General Catalyst and Define Ventures. Led by a veteran team of career engineers and medical experts, Story Health powers specialty clinicians with easy-to-use digital tools for optimized patient outcomes.
The company is headed by a unique blend of healthcare and technology experts: CEO Tom Stanis, a former Google engineer and Verily co-founder; product manager Nikhil Roy, who previously worked with Stanis at Verily to develop multiple real-world medical devices; and Ashul Govil MD MBA, a practicing, seasoned cardiologist. Driven by a common belief in practical solutions to fix problems in the last mile of care, they founded Story Health to fill a glaring gap in the healthcare industry’s use of technology for new methods and designs. With this initial seed funding, Story Health plans to create more partnerships with clinicians, grow its product offering, and expand the ways it maximizes specialty care.
“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,” said Story Health founder Tom Stanis. “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.”
Story Health realizes a new care model that brings aspects of care out of the clinic. This model goes beyond video visits to guide and adapt to a patient’s needs on a day-by-day basis through optimizing care plans, understanding therapy efficacy, and suggesting evidence-based changes. For clinicians, this means improved efficacy over a larger patient population with confidence that a patient’s therapy is safe and effective outside the clinic. For patients, it means more frequent touch points where health status can be assessed and therapy modified to an individual’s needs. The end result is an adaptive virtualized care process with improved outcomes, more efficient clinicians, and a better patient experience.
“We believe that the virtualization of care from hospital to home was a strategic imperative for healthcare long before COVID,” said Lynne Chou O’Keefe, Founder and Managing Partner at Define Ventures. “Having invested in virtualizing primary and chronic care, we see the virtualization of the speciality layer as the next growth driver to redefine healthcare. Story Health is the epitome of this next evolution.”
“Significant businesses are being built around better access and customer-first, data-driven experiences across every aspect of healthcare,” said Hemant Taneja, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “Tom, Nikhil, and Ashul are working towards exactly that for specialized care with Story Health. We’re excited to partner with them as they address this important need.”
Story Health’s launch comes at a critical time for virtual healthcare. With telehealth visits increasing up to 175 times during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company focused its resources on ensuring medication and therapy optimization for senior citizens — the segment of the US population most at-risk, yet often least comfortable with telemedicine. Story Health has designed a comprehensive and accessible digital experience that anyone can use.
Visit the Story Health website www.storyhealth.ai to learn more about how adaptive virtualized care can help your practice as well as career opportunities on Story Health’s growing team.
About Story Health
Story Health is a healthcare technology firm that builds adaptive virtualized care systems for specialists. The firm’s products empower specialists through intelligent embedded clinical software tools, virtual patient programs, and analytics that adapt therapy to the individual needs of specific patients. Story Health is led by CEO Tom Stanis, co-founder of Verily and former Google engineer, product manager Nikhil Roy, and cardiologist Ashul Govil, MD MBA. For more information, please visit www.storyhealth.ai
About Define Ventures
Define Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on building digital health companies redefining healthcare that will change all of our lives. We believe unparalleled change is happening in healthcare at the intersections of healthcare, technology, and consumer trends. The Define team has partnered with companies, such as Livongo, HIMS, etc and believes that digital health entrepreneurs deserve investors that have proven digital health expertise and experience. We focus on partnering with entrepreneurs from incubation, seed, Series A, and Series B investments. For more information, please visit www.definevc.com
About General Catalyst
General Catalyst is a venture capital firm that invests in powerful, positive change that endures — for our entrepreneurs, our investors, our people, and society. We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond to build companies that withstand the test of time. With offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, and Boston, the firm has helped support the growth of businesses such as: Airbnb, Deliveroo, Guild, Gusto, Hubspot, Illumio, Livongo, Oscar, Snap, Stripe, and Warby Parker. For more: www.generalcatalyst.com.
CONTACT: Contact Story Health info@storyhealth.ai LaunchSquad for General Catalyst generalcatalyst@launchsquad.com 212-564-3665
