D.C. maternal health startup Babyscripts has closed on its latest raise, finishing up a round whose first chunk of funding came just two months ago.
The company, which makes an app for expectant mothers, has raised another $7.5 million in a Series B round, bringing this latest haul to $19.5 million following $12 million it secured in September. This arms the business with capital to continue building out its platform, Babyscripts Virtual Maternity Care, a tool that tracks a patient’s pregnancy and postpartum information at each stage, co-founder and President Juan Pablo Segura told us.
That means expanding from 32 states, currently managing about 250,000 pregnancies, to all 50 states. The platform now includes a digital education and weight tracking app, a remote patient monitoring system with blood pressure and mental health programs, and a population health tool for insurance providers. The fresh financing will speed up development of new features, Segura said, including a new substance abuse disorder offering, enhancements to its mental health product and early risk detection tools for new parents, he said.
The company also hopes to work more with insurers, which Segura said use the Babyscripts platform to educate patients, improve care coordination, and recognize clinical and social risks early, especially for underserved populations.
To manage that national expansion, Babyscripts expects to double its current 40-person headcount by the end of 2022, Segura said. It's adding positions across the board, while focusing on product and operations, with openings for vice president of finance, product marketing manager and senior analyst, among others.
The latest investment comes from Cigna Ventures, Texas Medical Center Venture Fund and New Jersey’s Atlantic Health System. The $12 million Babyscripts closed in September came from strategic health care investment vehicle MemorialCare Innovation Fund, as well as Philips and the CU Healthcare Innovation Fund. Phoenix-based Banner Health, Pennsylvania-based WellSpan Health, and the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network were also involved in the raise as part of the startup’s Strategic Partner Program formed in December.
This latest injection brings the company’s total funding since Segura and CEO Anish Sebastian founded it in 2014 to about $37 million, including $4 million in December 2020, $6 million in January 2019 and a prior $500,000 investment from Inova Health System’s now-defunct accelerator.
Going forward, Babyscripts still intends to focus on health equity and improved maternal health outcomes for economically vulnerable families, a priority that topped its list at the start of this year, Segura said. It plans to grow its partnerships with federally qualified health centers, public health clinics and Medicaid organizations — similar to its August collaboration with UnitedHealthcare and Regional One Health to offer virtual monitoring to perinatal patients of color across Tennessee — to offer its platform to mothers “at no cost to them,” Segura said.
It's making its pitch as health systems look to move faster into digital care to meet greater demand sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, from February to April alone, Babyscripts saw its user base increase by 600%, but Segura said he knows the challenge ahead for health providers and companies like his is in the ability to scale up quickly.
“The industry will never return to the way it was before the pandemic, and every health system needs to have a digital health strategy to remain competitive in the post-Covid landscape,” he said.
“Most providers that were not fully bought into virtual pre-pandemic ‘MacGyvered’ a way to make telemedicine [and] virtual care work,” he added. “That’s great, but they are now dealing with the fallout of how to do telemedicine at serious scale.”
But, he said, the trick is to stay focused. “In these times of accelerated growth, you can start trying to do too much at once, and grow in too many directions. We will not do that.”
As to whether we’ll see Babyscripts make yet another quick return to the fundraising arena, Segura said it’s not off the table.
“We are always looking for more partners and will never turn down a partner that wants to meaningfully invest in our vision for eliminating maternal mortality by 2030,” he said.
