Patient education startup WelVU secured $1.25 million for its initial seed funding round, VentureBeat reported.
In a statement about the funding, WelVU did not mention who the investors were but said the round was oversubscribed and that they are expanding the round because "seasoned angel investors" have shown their interest in the company's multimedia patient engagement technology platform. Based in Portland, Oregon, WelVU was founded in January 2013 but rolled out its personalized patient education platform earlier this month, the report said.
WelVU Founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Friess told VentureBeat that the funds will be used towards hastening its marketing and sales efforts, putting in more features as well as enhancing client support for their future deployments. The company is intent on marketing their solution for ambulatory, acute care and post-acute care use, the report said.
With patients retaining only less than 20% of what their healthcare providers tell them, WelVU brings together medical illustrations, videos, voiceover from the doctor, scheduling, test results and other notes that the doctors or nurses add, among others, into a presentation given to the patient as an iPad or iPhone app or through a computer's browser. Then, the interactive presentation is recorded as a Screencast movie that is given to the patient through email or which can be accessed through a patient portal. The presentation is customized for the patient since majority of the content is derived from the records of the patient himself or herself.
Another aim of WelVU is to provide a "platform for crowdsourced materials. Although doctors and hospitals can source out their materials for the presentations, they may also get them from those already shared by others. Friess said that they compete with Elsevier's ExitCare and Milner-Fenwick in the space but they are unique because they the first to put together everything. He told VentureBeat, "We're integrating with patient data out of medical records, personalized for a person and offered in a HIPAA-compliant format."
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