INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Healthtech continues to make impressive strides forward, but some pieces of the healthcare puzzle are still lagging way behind.Communication
But a startup called Klara, which just received $11.5 million in Series A, is looking to change that.FirstMark Capital led the round, with
participation from existing investors Lerer Hippeau, Project A Ventures and Atlantic Labs, alongside a few angels, including Zac Weinberg
and Nat Turner (Flatiron Health founders), Vivek Garipalli (Clover Health founder and CEO) and Clark Valberg (InVision founder and CEO).Led
by founders and co-CEOs Simon Bolz and Simon Lorenz, Klara looks to rethink the way communication is handled across the healthcare
industry.As it stands now, the vast majority of communication across a practice, both internally and with patients, happens either in-person
A good deal of this communication is either diagnostic, or part of the treatment, and yet phone calls and one-on-one convos don&t offer a
record of the conversation
They also take time.According to Klara, the average practice misses around 34 percent of calls
Missed calls turn into calls back, which often turns into an endless game of phone tag
These back-and-forth calls take up a good chunk of a practice staff time.But Klara, a HIPAA-compliant messaging service, saves up to two
hours of time for a medical practice staff each day
The service lets all departments of a practice, from doctors to physician assistants to nurses to the payments department and the scheduling
department, communicate via text around a patients diagnosis and treatment
The platform also allows medical staff to communicate directly with a patient regarding scheduling and treatment.Not only does this save
time for the staff, and reach patients where they want to be reached, but it also saves money
According to Klara, doctors estimate that phone calls alone cost between $15 and $20 each, and that prescription renewal calls alone cost
around $10,000/year.Klara hasn&t finalized its pricing, but charges on a per-month basis based on the size of the practice.The long-term
vision for Klara is to incorporate complementary services, like payments and scheduling services, as well as insurance carriers and
The idea is to turn Klara into the fabric of the healthcare system.Klara says it currently has thousands of practices on the platform, with
hundreds of thousands of patients
As part of the funding deal, FirstMark Amish Jani will join the board.
