Klara, the secure healthcare communication platform, announced its Series A funding round of $11.5million led by FirstMark Capital, and joined by existing investors such as Lerer Hippeau, Project A Ventures, and Atlantic Labs. Klara also welcomed the support of a few seasoned entrepreneurs who participated in the round: Zac Weinberg and Nat Turner, founders of Flatiron Health; Vivek Garipalli, founder and CEO of Clover Health; and Clark Valberg, CEO and founder of InVision.
Led by co-founders and co-CEOs Simon Bolz and Simon Lorenz, Klara rethinks the way communication is handled across healthcare, and strives to thrust the industry into the digital age.
"We're currently witnessing a Copernican Revolution in healthcare, a shift from a provider-centric to a patient-centric universe," says Mr. Bolz. "But like all revolutions, change comes with a price, and as patient demands grow, the extreme inefficiencies of the system only become more glaring. Billions of dollars are lost each year due to the siloed storage of data, miscommunication, or simply a lack of functioning communication at all. Medical staff and patients alike are suffering from an antiquated, broken setup."
Klara wishes to solve all that by improving the quality of care while radically reducing the cost of it through a central messaging platform that securely and intuitively connects providers, medical professionals, and patients. Everyone can now seamlessly communicate, share, and exchange information.
This means Klara is saving medical staff hours and hours each day with time-efficient messaging that's deeply integrated with their day-to-day workflows, phone systems, and websites, allowing them to effectively collaborate. And ultimately, Klara is making patients happier by granting them access to a channel that eliminates all the stress of archaic telecommunications, so they can easily navigate their healthcare.
"We've already become an operating system for all things related to patient communication for thousands of providers, connecting them with hundreds of thousands of patients," says Mr. Lorenz, who is leading Klara's efforts from its New York office, "And this is just the beginning. We hope Klara will eventually become the connecting fabric the healthcare system so desperately needs."
To this end, the long-term vision for Klara is to incorporate complementary services into its platform, like payments and scheduling services, as well as insurance carriers and pharmacies. As part of the funding deal, FirstMark's Amish Jani will join the board.
About Klara
Klara is an intuitive and secure messaging platform for healthcare providers and their staff, which allows them to effectively communicate with one another and their patients.
Imagine a single platform for all healthcare-related communication, which uses "WhatsApp"-style messaging to link the entire network—including patients, various practices, hospitals, pharmacies, etc.—eliminating the frustration of phone tag, and saving everyone time and money. Klara also integrates with phone lines and websites through an automated chat-bot, creating a seamlessly efficient network.
