Vida Health raises $25M to meet increased demand due to COVID-19

The virtual care company has seen over 500,000 new customers since early March

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COVID-19 has been a boon to the telemedicine and virtual care spaces; now that nobody can go out and see a doctor in person, or at least nobody wants to, they are turning to services that let them take care of their health on their own. 

Vida Health is one startup that has seen a huge increase in activity since the start of the pandemic: the virtual care company has seen over 500,000 new customers since early March. And now it's also seeing interest from investors as well, announcing that it raised $25 million in funding to meet the increased demand.

The funding was led by Ally Bridge Group (ABG), a global life science investment firm and included returning investors AME Cloud Ventures, Aspect Ventures, Canvas Ventures, NGP Capital, Webb Investment Network, and Workday Ventures. With this latest funding, Vida has now raised more than $80 million.

Founded in 2014, Vida Health connects patients with marketplace of national providers, who cover a number different conditions, including hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. It provides a continuous, connected and collaborative care model, which includes a coach and a doctor to help members with things like weight loss, chronic disease management or dealing with an auto-immune disease.

"There are more than a dozen programs on the Vida Health platform. From weight loss to stress management, diabetes prevention and management, to hypertension, hyperlipidemia and COPD management," Stephanie Tilenius, co-founder and CEO of Vida, told me.

"We have expanded our network to cover both coaching and therapy in all 50 states and added many large customers including employers like Cisco, Boeing and Visa and payers like Florida Blue and Humana. Teladoc invested and we are partnering to bring virtual care to the market. We have partnerships with Castlight and Alight as well." 

In addition to helping people with physical problems, Vida also helps its members with their mental health, offering evidence-based programs, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness based stress reduction for problems such as stress, anxiety, depression and resilience. It also provides 24/7 access to therapists through text, audio and video.

The new funding will go, in part, towards building out those mental health capabilities.

"Mental health has always been an important area for Vida. We were first to market, before Omada and Livongo. Combining mental and physical health, we built our platform to be polychronic from the ground up. We’ve been treating the whole person from day one because we know that’s the most effective way to get real results," said Tilenius.

"Our mental health program is also growing quickly and has shown great results: participants working with our expansive network of licensed therapists, have shown an average reduction of anxiety and depression by more than 50 percent at 6 months and as high as 80 percent reduction between seven and nine months." 

This is a unique time for the virtual care space, which is finally having its moment due to the COVID-19 crisis. In response, Vida has been working with its enterprise customers to roll out help for chronic conditions, stress, depression, and anxiety, while also making it easier for new members to join. 

"For new customers, we’ve drastically shortened our implementation time and can now launch in 48 hours to meet the needs of their members quickly. We’re also helping employees adjust and manage daily life during these unprecedented times. We’re doing webinars and providing coaching around the new norms people are facing like working from home, lack of gym access, etc," said Tilenius.

"We see virtual care being the first point of care for chronic conditions. The healthcare system needs a continuous care model that prevents, manages and reverses chronic physical and mental health conditions at scale. Especially now with COVID-19, virtual care is more important than ever. Data shows that 78 percent of ICU admissions for C19 have underlying chronic conditions and that 70 percent of employees are suffering from stress, depression, and anxiety."