Tendo Systems, a digital health startup that is collaborating with Jefferson Health, has raised $50 million though a private stock sale.
The Series B round was led by new investor Lux Capital, a New York venture capital firm, and previous lead investor General Catalyst, a VC firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The funding values the private company at $550 million.
Tendo has now raised $70 million since its launch in 2020.
The company's other backers are its founders, brother and sister technology industry veterans Jennifer Goldsmith and Dan Goldsmith, and Jefferson Health.
The new funding will enable the company to continue to invest in product development and talent recruitment. Dan Goldsmith said the company has grown to 45 employees and expects to be at about 100 by the end of the year. Tendo has been a virtual company since becoming operational during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company going forward intends to continue operating virtually without a permanent headquarters, with its base in the Philadelphia suburbs.
Tendo's goal is to develop software that seamlessly connects patients, clinicians, and caregivers and delivers improved health care experiences, better clinical outcomes, and greater efficiencies.
"Health care continues to move from being paternalistic to collaborative, and from something that is reactive to something that is proactive," Dan Goldsmith said. "That is long overdue."
Tendo is looking to help lead that change by assembling a team that combines "Silicon Valley DNA" with expertise in health care delivery.
The company has selected Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and San Francisco as its first three hub cities. It is in the process of forming foundational partnerships with additional health systems who will join Jefferson — and may or may not be based in or around the host cities.
Tendo is developing and beta-testing software products based on information Jennifer and Dan Goldsmith gathered while talking for more than a year to leaders at more than 50 health systems across the country about their needs.
"For our foundational customers, we are looking for health care providers who share a similar vision to change and reinvent the patient experience," said Dan Goldsmith.
Jennifer Goldsmith said one of Tendo's early focuses is on improving the care journey from the beginning.
"The example I used before is how Open Table lets me make a restaurant reservation very quickly," she said, noting that kind of service is not widely available for people wanting to make an appointment with their doctor. Tendo wants to create a system to make it easier for patients to schedule not only their initial doctor's appointment, but also any follow-up care.
The customer for Tendo's software products will be health systems, and Jennifer Goldsmith said the need already exists.
"The experience of patients as they move through the health care process needs to evolve," she said. "People have become used to, especially because of their experiences they had with Covid, a consumer-generated design for interactions with services — whether those services are picking up their groceries from Target or Walmart in a seamless fashion via technology, or something as simple getting a haircut at the Hair Cuttery down the street. People want to be able to act with the health care providers in the same way, and health care really hasn't got there yet."
Dr. Stephen Klasko, president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health, said Tendo aligns well with the "health care without an address" model he advocates.
Jefferson's commitment to what Tendo is doing is illustrated by Dan Goldsmith having a seat of the health system's leadership cabinet and Jefferson moving its digital innovation and consumer experience team over Tendo after Tendo was launched.
"We're looking at how we can be more consumer-like and connect with the patient during the entire patient experience," Klasko said.
He noted one example of the technology they are developing with Tendo allows a doctor to be fully focused on a patient, and nowhere near a computer, during an appointment by using artificial intelligence to capture the key parts of the conversation for the patient's medical records. "It's almost science fiction," Klasko said.
Klasko said the other health systems that join Tendo as a foundational partnership like Jefferson will also be in regular contact to talk with, collaborate and learn from each other.
"We're creating a consortium of the willing," he said. "The end result will be places that are associated with Tendo will have a better consumer experience."
