With much of the pandemic-driven adoption of virtual mental health services looking like it’s here to stay, Iris Telehealth recently closed $40M in Series B funding to help its telepsychiatry services keep up with a demand that’s “grown exponentially” over the past two years.
Iris’ telepsychiatry platform is designed to help US health systems and community health centers improve outcomes for patients with serious mental illness by intelligently pairing them with its staff of board-certified psychiatrists.
- The company identifies best-fit providers for each unique organization based on practice philosophy, long term goals, and scheduling availability, then ensures a long-term commitment to addressing their partners’ needs.
- These partnerships support healthcare organizations in creating their own sustainable telepsychiatry department by providing ongoing support, care model optimization, and triage assistance to help match patients to providers with appropriate licenses.
The latest funding will accelerate the scaling of Iris’ clinical operations team and the go-to-market strategy for expanding beyond its 200 current partner organizations.
- Iris made it clear that developing long-term relationships will remain a priority throughout the expansion, and a core pillar of making this happen will be to extend the length of its contracts, which already average a four year duration.
- The long term contracts are made to support what Iris reports is the number one need of its partners, which is the ability to optimize their throughput across the entire continuum between the primary care referral to discharge follow-up.
The Takeaway
Even as health tech funding cools off into the second quarter, mental health has remained the most resilient clinical area, with Rock Health reporting that the sector brought in a leading $1B during Q1 2022. The investor attention has catalyzed the creation of plenty of solutions targeting conditions such as anxiety or depression, and now Iris is looking to establish itself as the “escalation team” for when these situations require one.
