St. Louis-based startup Rezilient has raised $2.5 million as it prepares to launch its first remote health clinics.
New York-based Unseen Capital, which backs underrepresented founders and companies focused on serving marginalized communities, led the oversubscribed seed financing. Other investors in the round include Techstars, Headwater VC, The Council and The Living Fund.
Rezilient said it plans to use its fresh funding to grow its engineering and software development staff and to set up its first “CloudClinics,” which will offer concierge primary care and launch through partnerships with employers.
Founded in 2016, Rezilient has developed robotic telehealth technology and a cloud platform that allows doctors to perform medical services remotely. CEO Danish Nagda and Chief Technology Officer Jeff Gamble co-founded Rezilient.
The startup currently has seven full-time employees and a handful of part-time staffers. It plans to add another four full-time employees over roughly the next month, Gamble said.
Rezilient said it plans to establish its first CloudClinics in the St. Louis and Miami regions through partnerships with undisclosed, major employers. The clinics will be designed to bring a “hybrid approach” to telehealth by providing a physical location for patients to visit and technology that lets doctors provide care remotely. Rezilient’s doctors will use the startup’s cloud health technology to provide care, and each clinic will be staffed by a nurse who can take a patient’s vitals and labs, the company said.
Nagda said Rezilient plans to operate several CloudClinics in the St. Louis area and that its first clinics will begin operations this fall. They will provide primary care, urgent care and mental health care services for patients. The startup says its CloudClinics will be “strategically placed” near its partner employers’ offices and local neighborhoods.
Rezilient said it plans to expand the footprint of its CloudClinics nationwide in 2022 through employer partnerships. It said it is seeking to grow its roster of partnerships and that its target partner is large companies with self-funded health insurance plans. The startup contends its concierge primary care practice can help reduce costs by minimizing more expensive claims such as emergency room visits.
“By providing concierge primary care where you can see your doctor via telehealth or in any of our CloudClinics, we can increase the uptake of primary care thereby decreasing all those downstream costs,” Nagda said.
Through its clinics, Rezilient said it hopes to provide easier access to health care and reduce the time patients have to spend to receive care. For example, it says its CloudClinics will not include waiting rooms. That approach is inspired by Nagda’s experience in serving as a primary caregiver for his father, which he says involved spending about 5,000 minutes a year going back and forth to doctors’ appointments. He says only a fraction of that total time involved visiting with a doctor.
“You can imagine why we built a health care system that has no waiting rooms. It’s personal,” Nagda said.
