Aspen RxHealth has recently raised $9 million in Series A funding for their gig economy model that links patients with pharmacists. The company will be making its entrance into the healthcare technology marketplace with this app-based connection system, hoping to maximize patient outcomes. The funding for this Tampa-based healthtech company was led by Flare Capital Partners, with an undisclosed health planning partner taking part in the investment round as well.
The main goal of Aspen RxHealth is to connect licensed and experienced pharmacists with members of health plans who need pharmacological discourse. Pharmacists using this system will have the ability to create their own hours and work from multiple locations. These features will allow patients to connect with their pharmacist over the phone for optimization of medications, with the patient’s doctor having consultation as well.
“Within our country, 2018 is the first year we’ve actually had a surplus of pharmacists,” said Aspen RxHealth CEO, David Medvedeff. “We’ve overgraduated pharmacists. Dispensing automation has kind of caught up to the profession. So we have this supply of very high-end clinical talent that’s there and available. So what we are building is a way to leverage that crowd of pharmacists and connect them to these patient opportunities.”
Though the initial product is based on a smartphone application platform, Aspen RxHealth plans to expand regionally and connect their members to local pharmacists.
“It starts by phone but ultimately we want to create a system where if a patient needed a pharmacist to meet with them in the home … they get paid for that home visit,” Medvedeff said. “So we’re rolling out regionally for that reason, so we always have pharmacists located in the regions they’re doing business in.”
For now the company is using their newly acquired funds to hire more staff and grow their existing facilities. Medvedeff notes that an area of interest with this expansion is to attain more technology and software engineering talent.
“The use of the proceeds is to really build the team out, to bring on both the clinical and the technology, software engineering talent, and then to scale the business up.”
Aspen RxHealth’s movement into the technology field follows a common trend of digitalization in the pharma industry. With healthcare startup companies like Alto and NowRx offering technology-assisted same-day shipping of prescription medications on the west coast, the industry is quickly adapting to use of phones and apps. Even industry giants such as Amazon are getting involved with pharma, with their recent acquisition of online pharmacy company PillPack.
“To start, specifically we’re working with health plans because health plans are charged with working with their most critically ill and most fragile patients and trying to provide these high-end clinical pharmacists to try to optimize therapy and improve outcomes,” said Medvedeff. “So again, in that gig economy, crowd-sourced model we’re going to leverage that supply of pharmacists to meet the demand that’s created by these health plans.”
Huge congrats to @aspenrxhealth for raises $9M in Series A! The startup will be using a gig-economy model to connect vetted pharmacists with patients in need of consultation. #startup #funding #innovationhttps://t.co/THvHk47Dvo
— Catalyst @ Health 2.0 (@catalyst_H20) December 13, 2018
Sources: BusinessWire, MobiHealthNews
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