Karoo Health wants to help people in need of cardiovascular health care by being more involved in that care. Now it has more than $1 million in early-stage investment, allowing the startup to put its plan into action from New Mexico.
Co-founder and chief financial officer Ben Selzer is leading Karoo Health along with Farmington resident and co-founder and CEO Ian Koons. They want to build what Koons characterized as "micro-clinics" for cardiovascular care.
"People talk about various things ... but at the end of the day, cardiovascular disease kills more people than anything in America," Selzer told Business First in an interview. "And one of the things that's interesting about it, if you talk to our [cardiologist] partners, so much of the problems that occur in cardiology could have been prevented. And they could have been prevented by better management of patients."
By leveraging medical technology to keep patients engaged along with a medical care team, Karoo Health wants to reduce admissions for cardiovascular concerns. In doing so, the startup believes it can lower long-term health care costs for insurers.
In the end, Selzer says that with more "handholding," patients will see improved outcomes.
Karoo Health closed its seed round last month. The round was led by Panoramic Ventures with additional participation from FirstMile Ventures and others, according to the company, and the money will be used to establish its relationship with an insurance provider.
"Essentially, the model is we're going to the insurance companies ... and we're saying 'hey listen, we can avoid admissions by 50 percent, we can reduce a lot of the cost and the spend and the waste that's in the system to really [focus] on the patient,'" Koons said in an interview.
Moving forward, the company wants to raise from $5 million to $10 million which would enable the firm to build out a clinic and collect clinical data.
Koons and his wife are planning to relocate to Albuquerque, where Karoo Health will get its footing. For the startup, the Duke City may offer a place to hire corporate staff. The location of the local office has yet to be decided.
"Albuquerque I think is just an untapped gem, where if you think about great weather, hiking, skiing ... affordable ... there's not a lot of cities left," Koons said.
He added later that his longer-term vision is to attract talent to Albuquerque.
"There's the care team within that micro-clinic that's delivering that care. But then there's the corporate side of things that are doing kind of the data analytics and the engineering and the marketing and the sales ... all of that."
