The Demise of the Traditional Doctor’s Visit

Company Ventures is a sector-agnostic firm investing in the most compelling new businesses at the earliest stages. Thanks to our Grand Central Tech program and to the 250+ founder community we’ve amassed over 7 years, we’ve been fortunate enough to see a good number of such businesses. We’ve made 53 investments to date in the full range of sectors, and a concentration of excellence has emerged within our healthcare portfolio. We’ll be the rare investor to admit we didn’t have a deliberate thesis on the space when we began investing in it, but we’ve unearthed a key insight around “the demise of the traditional doctor’s visit” that has enabled our portfolio to thrive.

Visiting the doctor is a notion nearly everyone can identify with; it’s remarkable how shared the notion is in terms of the actual experience. It’s Rockwellian. The crowded waiting room with Highlights magazines. The ominous fish tank. The jars of cotton balls and popsicle sticks. The eye chart. The scale with the weighted sliders. But in the past few years, the appreciation of the doctor’s visit has shifted from a begrudgingly beloved anachronism to an inhibiting, frustrating, and even ineffective use of time and energy. Change is coming in its trademark fashion: slowly at first and then all at once.

We dug in further to identify three key drivers of change:

1. Evolving User Experience Demands: The antiquated spaces and technologies that typify doctor’s offices stand in stark contrast to the growing series of human-centered, digital experiences that consumers expect today. The innovations that have reshaped access to food, transportation, and entertainment are only beginning to transform the one thing that matters most: our health. Just as COVID-19 has dramatically accelerated digital adoption, changing behaviors will also manifest themselves within patient preferences — especially when it comes to being confined within indoor spaces with other (potentially) sick individuals.
2. Ownership of Outcomes: Across categories, consumers are increasingly aware of the value of their data, and the capacity to take control of their outcomes if they can capture and monitor it directly themselves. Historically, doctors and medical systems have served as the comprehensive gatekeeper of baseline insight into our well-being and the way we diagnose, treat and manage our health. Intense pressure is building for this balance of power to shift to the consumer.
3. Continued Shift Towards Value-Based Care: The growing shift towards value-based care has changed the incentive structure that historically existed between patients and providers, placing pressure on healthcare supply to cut costs while simultaneously improving patient outcomes. It’s clear that in many circumstances, health goals are best accomplished without, and often explicitly by not, visiting a healthcare facility.

We have seen these dynamics play out in the growth of several of our portfolio companies. Below, we’ve broken down four specific opportunity areas for upending the historical dominion of the “doctor’s visit” as follows:

1. New Sites & Segments of Care

Increasing lifespans, changing family structures, and the adoption of digital technologies are collectively forcing healthcare systems to adapt. Telehealth is enabling a seamless experience for both patients and physicians by moving the site of care from the examination room to in-home. People want better options for accomplishing and maintaining both their personal and family health goals, and, increasingly, they have them:

Juno Medical is providing whole-family primary care through an omni-channel approach (in-person & digital). A mother can have her child see/televisit a pediatrician while she sees an obstetrician, all under the same physical/digital roof. Juno is complementing their total family care model with a breakthrough approach to price transparency that patients and doctors alike appreciate.

Oova is moving clinical-grade fertility management into the home via a breakthrough approach to at-home fertility hormone monitoring.

Hero Health allows chronic disease patients to leverage in-home devices to drastically improve medication adherence and avoid unnecessary in-person doctor visits.

Octave has pioneered a new methodology for thoughtfully pairing consumers with mental healthcare professionals to ensure a proper therapist/patient “fit”. This inspires confidence and increases demand, which they are servicing digitally. Octave is also complementing traditional therapist services with group-oriented workshops for challenges needing attention but which can be best addressed outside of the traditional therapy context.

2. Blurring of Consumer Wellness with Medical-Grade Insight

Health is more than a list of metrics — it’s about supporting a happy and fulfilling life. A holistic approach to wellbeing includes everything from monitoring stress, to nutrition, to sleep. Equipped with more information than ever, modern consumers are reevaluating their everyday needs and rejecting old ingredients and habits. Patients are leveraging data to self-diagnose, helping them avoid unnecessary trips to the doctor by understanding what’s going on in their body:

Season empowers consumers to achieve their health and fitness goals through dietician-customized eating programs.

Pinto educates consumers about food they consume through an integrated ingredient-data platform embedded at Whole Foods and other large grocers.

Nara Organics provides parents with the first US-manufactured, FDA-approved (pending), all-natural ingredient, infant formula.

Hilma is reimagining the medicine cabinet with clinically validated, all-natural over-the-counter remedies and supplements.

Deep gives consumers tools to improve sleep through scientifically validated behavioral techniques.

While prior generations would have relied on the doctor’s visit as the gateway to health insight, consumers are increasingly finding their concerns better addressed through these novel products and services.

3. Employer-enabled Access

With a renewed focus on well-being and maximizing productivity, executives are re-examining the way in which they address the end-to-end needs of their employees and families through quality-focused healthcare solutions. Legacy, employer-based healthcare options have been void of innovation or cost effectiveness, but emerging players are disrupting the status quo with effective alternatives.

Centivo provides a value-based digital health plan for employers that is cheaper than traditional insurance plans through a new national healthcare network which leverages analytically-driven networks & primary care-centered healthcare management.

Eden Health provides an integrated in-person and telehealth experience that lets employers offer their employees the ideal type of care no matter the circumstance while also lowering costs.

Maven Clinic provides telehealth services focused on prenatal and postpartum health for enterprise employees, fulfilling a long-overdue need for female-focused healthcare solutions.

On-demand access to virtual care at affordable prices lessens families’ reliance on the legacy doctor’s office and increases employee satisfaction.

4. Data Access & Interoperability

Creating a truly interoperable healthcare system that gives patients, and their care providers, a real-time, comprehensive profile of their health has long been a goal, but never truly a reality. Particle Health is solving for the underlying infrastructure needed to enable instant patient health information access across different sites of care and further empowers patients to have control over their medical information.

While medical professionals will remain the key focal point within the healthcare toolkit, technology has completely altered the care access and delivery paradigm. This is a good thing for healthcare in the U.S. and we look forward to capitalizing on what we’ve learned to date to continue investing in this exciting category.

If you’re interested in learning more about Company Ventures contact investmentteam@company.co.