PocketHealth secures funding as demand surges for patient-centric medical imaging platform

$6.5 million USD ($9.2 million CAD) funding led by Radical Ventures

 

TORONTO, APRIL 20, 2020 — PocketHealth, a platform enabling patients to securely access and share medical imaging with doctors, today announced it has raised $6.5 million USD ($9.2mm CAD) in financing, led by Radical Ventures. Since its launch in 2016, PocketHealth has grown rapidly, creating an image management solution used by over 500 hospitals and clinics. Over 150,000 patients use PocketHealth to manage over 175 million medical images. The funding will help PocketHealth accelerate its hiring and to meet significant increases in demand for the platform from patients and hospital networks in Canada and the U.S.

“Patients need their X-Ray, CT or mammogram to follow them along their care journey, especially at times of greatest need. But, the current opaque approach of hospitals sharing images between themselves via CD frustrates and — far too often — fails patients,” said PocketHealth Co-Founder and CEO, Rishi Nayyar. “PocketHealth gives patients ownership of their imaging data and equips their hospitals with an industry-leading image management solution. This new round of funding brings us closer to our vision of building a truly patient-centric standard in record sharing.” 

 

The COVID-19 crisis has put a spotlight on the need for hospitals and clinics to modernize the way they share medical images. In the last month, PocketHealth has increased the number of sites deploying its platform by 300 percent as imaging clinics and hospitals confront the limitations of legacy distribution systems that rely on copying patient images to a physical CD. 

 

Requiring patients to travel to healthcare facilities to pick up a CD, as is the case in most hospitals, is inefficient, costly and — given current restrictions on non-essential hospital visits — not possible. PocketHealth offers clinics and health networks a cost-effective and secure process for virtually sharing medical images with any patient or provider, in seconds. For patients, PocketHealth delivers an inexpensive and trusted platform for safely storing and sharing their health data. Demand for the platform has been particularly high in the U.S., where existing virtual image sharing solutions have been unable to break the industry’s reliance on CDs.

 

“Current attempts to eliminate CDs inevitably rely on creating cumbersome and time-consuming ‘opt-in’ networks. It creates massive friction for patients and their doctors and it’s not how file sharing works outside of the healthcare industry,” said Co-Founder & CTO, Harsh Nayyar, a former Google engineer whose firsthand experience with challenges of image sharing inspired the company’s founding. “We saw an opportunity to create a dramatically better experience. Hospitals can use PocketHealth to share imaging with any patient or provider – on network or off network. It delivers simplicity for providers and patients alike, which is why we’ve been able to move so many large hospital systems to 100% Zero-CD burning overnight.” 

 

Founded by brothers Rishi Nayyar and Harsh Nayyar, this is the first funding round for PocketHealth which was started four years ago and bootstrapped to profitability.

 

“The PocketHealth team is removing hard costs and friction for hospitals and health care providers while fundamentally empowering patients with a simple-to-use platform to participate in their care,” said Jordan Jacobs, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Radical Ventures. “Beyond streamlining the medical imaging industry, PocketHealth is showing itself to be a trusted steward of patient health data. The PocketHealth team’s focus on patient-centered care, privacy and security is a blueprint for the future of the electronic medical records industry.”

 

About PocketHealth

PocketHealth is a patient-centric cloud platform that enables imaging providers across North America to share imaging records electronically with patients, instantly and securely. Since its launch in 2016, the platform has grown its functionality to enable direct sharing to hospitals and physicians, as well as instant DICOM retrieval and automated importing capability, creating a unified image management solution for their over 600 hospital and imaging clinic customers across North America. The company believes that by placing patients at the center of the record release process, data moves more ethically, easily and securely throughout the care journey. Learn more at www.pockethealth.com.

About Radical Ventures

Radical Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in entrepreneurs applying artificial intelligence and deep technology to transform massive industries. Working with exceptional founders with global ambition to build enduring companies, Radical Ventures invests in enterprises that will shape the future of how we do business, how we take care of one another and how we live. Learn more at www.radical.vc.