You feel a sore throat coming on, you start overheating, and your body aches, but you know the drill… flip open your laptop and start Googling your symptoms, and before you know it you’ve self-diagnosed yourself with an illness. Thankfully K Health is here to change that. This is the first free primary care app that provides personalized health information based on clinical data collected from people with a similar health profile as you, which this NYC startup refers to as a “People Like Me” approach. Additionally, this app allows users to connect with leading independent primary care providers throughout NYC and receive a same-day visit or a free remote consultation.
AlleyWatch spoke with K Health CEO, cofounder, and serial entrepreneur Allon Bloch (Wix, Vroom, Flok) to learn in greater detail how K Health is streamlining access to accurate, personalized health information and how recent funding is enabling this NYC startup to disrupt the personal healthcare sector based on data-driven insights.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
K Health is announcing $12M in financing, from Mangrove Capital Partners, Primary Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau, Comcast Ventures, BoxGroup, Max Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Tell us about the product or service that K Health offers.
K Health is the free primary care app that provides personalized health information based on “People Like Me” or PLM. K’s proprietary PLM approach combines real clinical data with advanced machine learning to empower people to make informed decisions about their health.
K has access to the experience of thousands of doctors and millions of people like you, and it compares your situation to similar cases allowing you to assess outcomes, treatments, and care. Users and doctors alike trust K because it’s built on top of 1B+ data points, rigorous research, and real clinical insights.
K is now launching in NY an easy way for its users to connect with a leading network of independent primary care providers throughout New York City. Local users can share their K report in a HIPPA-compliant manner with a provider through the app for a same-day visit or a free remote consultation.
What inspired you to start K Health?
The idea stemmed from a common frustration that my founders and I shared about the lack of reliable health information available to consumers.
Why does searching for an answer to your symptoms feel impossible?
It’s a process we’re all familiar with: our symptoms set in, we don’t know what we have or which doctor we should see, so we turn to ‘Dr. Google’ and attempt a self-diagnosis. K Health provides a new way for all of us to learn about our health, based on each other’s experiences. We realized that this data existed — all that was missing was access. Building on the notion that the medical conditions of others could help garner quicker diagnoses and treatments while bypassing unnecessary repeat visits to the doctor, we launched K.
How is K Health different?
Our data-driven approach and our proprietary technology are the reasons we can deliver more accurate, personalized health information to users.
Unlike content-based websites and health apps that use static protocols, K gives you trustworthy health information based on People Like Me, a new and proprietary methodology that uses 20+ years of data across +1B health interactions, so people can access insights based on others like them. When you use K, you can see how many other people in your PLM cohort had the same symptoms and what their doctors advised. Now instead of textbook answers, you see how medicine works for people like you in the real world.
K is much more than just a symptom checker or simple chatbot. The app is built on proprietary AI technology we developed for turning massive amounts of health data into knowledge that’s useful for consumers. The app’s conversation manager is capable of sophisticated dialogue that taps the experience of 10K doctors to ask smart questions about your symptoms, much the way a doctor does in a first diagnostic visit. Rather than giving you a diagnosis, K gives you relevant data enabling you to have informed conversations with your doctor.
What market does K Health target and how big is it?
Anyone interested or concerned about their health can use K! It works for adults ages 18-85 for most primary care and ER conditions. It’s not for kids, pregnancy, dermatology, or orthopedics.
What’s your business model?
The information and the app will always be free! And that’s our focus area.
What are the challenges of building a data-driven healthcare company?
The main challenge we foresee is building enough awareness and trust to pull consumers out of entrenched behaviors such as searching symptoms online or going to urgent care for everything. These behaviors don’t work very well for people today but changing consumer behavior on a mass scale is always a challenge.
What was the funding process like?
Because of the space and relationships I’ve built over the years, there was a lot of healthy interest. It was fun to bring together investors who have a lot of enthusiasm for what we’re building.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
The challenge was less about raising the capital and more about deploying it wisely to build out our ambitious vision for a consumer health product that improves people’s lives worldwide.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our investors were blown away by the product. They were interested in PLM and found the approach game-changing but easily implementable.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
K will grow its provider networks in the US and other global markets in the months and years to come.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
To focus on building a great product that adds a lot of value to society. Once you do that you will be recognized by investors and customers alike.
What’s your favorite restaurant in the city?
Oh, so many to choose from. A consistent great one is Hillstone Park Avenue. Great place for small team dinners and long nights of product debates!
