Nurse-1-1, the first conversational marketing company for health care, has announced the close of its $2.3 million seed funding round.
The company, based in Cambridge, embeds a live chat widget into digital health websites to enable nurses and providers to provide consultation from anywhere. The company had over 10,000 patient consultations through its partnerships with digital health, at-home testing, and pharma companies in 2021, it said.
Nurse-1-1’s funding, which was led by local venture capital investor Argon Ventures, with participation from York IE and Hyperplane, all of which are based in Boston. The funds will be used to expand Nurse-1-1's team, increase its market efforts and scale its current partnerships, the company said.
The company said its app connects a nationwide network of over 2,000 nurse practitioners, registered nurses and physician assistants. It also offers customer-service platform that "educates patients and drives adherence at all patient touch points within the digital health and pharma markets,” the company wrote in a press release.
Nurse-1-1 is also dedicating itself to addressing medication adherence, stating that many patients do not properly take their medication, whether it be picking it up from the pharmacy, or taking it on time.
Barriers to properly taking medication include poor provider-patient communication, inadequate knowledge about a drug and its use, not being convinced of the need for treatment, complex regiments and costs, according to a report in Oman Medical Journal.
“Non-adherence not only costs the healthcare system, but also can cause long-term health effects to the patient,” Kimberly Liner, chief nurse practitioner at Nurse-1-1 and a former pediatric nurse practitioner at Boston Children’s Hospital, said in the release. “Nurse-1-1 provides reliable sources of information from credible, trusted nurses.”
Co-founder and CEO of Nurse-1-1 Michael Sheeley said adding that patients wait fewer than 8 seconds on average to chat with nurses online, which the company sees as a method of closing gaps to care.
“As more and more of our healthcare transitions to digital, we can’t lose the thing that really works in the current system: patients interacting with nurses,” Joe Raczka, managing partner at York IE, said. “Mike, Kimberly and the whole crew at Nurse-1-1 are the right team to bring nurses to the front lines of digital healthcare — a mission that will have a positive impact on all of our lives.”
