MDLive raises $75M in equity and debt to expand its telehealth platform

This is the second round of funding that the company has raised in less than two months

As telemedicine usage exploded thanks to COVID, so did investments in the space: there was $788 million invested in Q1, more than three times the $220 million invested into telemedicine companies in Q1 of 2019. 

Even as telemedcine usage has begun to decline from its peak earlier this year, as restrictions are relaxed and people feel more comfortable seeing a doctor in person again, the investments are still pouring in, with one company now raising two big rounds of funding in the span of less than two months. 

On Monday, telehealth company MDLive announced that it raised a $50 million round of funding from Sixth Street Growth, the growth investing arm of Sixth Street. This follows the $50 million that the company raised at the beginning of August from Health Velocity Capital, Cigna Corporation, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), Novo Holdings A/S and Industry Ventures.

In addition, the company also revealed that it received $25 million in debt expansion from other investors. 

COVID had led to huge increases for MDLive's services; while the company had been growing by 45 percent for each of the last five years, in just the first half of this year it saw a 95 percent increase in visits, and a 300 percent increase in bookings. 

In the first half of 2020, MDLive completed nearly 1 million patient visits. That included year-over-year growth of more than 500 percent for behavioral health, more than 350 percent for dermatology and more than 80 percent for medical care. The company now has over 2,000 clinicians on its platform, and 45 million member. 

The company says it will use the new funding to expand its platform, as well as to launch new products and services.

Investments in telemedicine companies 

As I said earlier, there have been a number of companies in the telemedicine space that have raised funding this year, including Heartbeat Health, a platform for virtual cardiovascular care, raised $8.2 million in a Series A round of funding; 98point6, a provider of AI-driven virtual doctor visits, which raised a $43 million Series D round of funding; XRHealth, a virtual reality therapeutic platform, which raised $7 million; Tyto Care, a telehealth platform for remote medical examinations, which raised $50 million; Carbon Health, which combines telehealth and in-person care, raised $28 million; Medici, which offers a platform for physicians to communicate with patients via text, voice, or video, raised $24 million; and Binah.ai, a provider of AI-powered video-based monitoring tools, raised $13.5 million.

Two of the biggest players in the space also raised funding: in May, Amwell revealed that it raised $194 million in Series C funding across two tranches; the company has since filed for its IPO. Then, in July, Doctor On Demand announced that it raised $75 million in Series D financing, bringing its total raised to $239 million. 

(Image source: mdlive.com)