Luma Health raises $16 million to manage doctor appointment bookings

Luma Health, a San Francisco startup developing a patient engagement platform for health systems, today announced that it’s raised $16 million in series B funding led by PeakSpan Capital, with participation from U.S. Venture Partners and strategic investors Cisco and the Texas Medical Center. The capital infusion brings Luma Health’s total raised to $25.7 million, which cofounder and CEO Adnan Iqbal said will be used to “scale and meet the demands” of its customers.

On the subject of growth, Luma Health claims that it’s partnered with over 300 U.S. health care organizations to date and that it now reaches more than 7.5 million patients. Just this year, it formalized partnerships with Epic and announced electronic health record integrations with Athena Health’s Marketplace and Nextech Systems, as well as Uber Health and Cisco Webex Teams.

“This latest round of funding will help us expand and get more patients to the care they need while also helping healthcare clinics and systems modernize their patient communication,” said Iqbal, who cofounded Luma Health with Aditya Bansod and Tashfeen Ekram in 2015. “We are proud to have an all-star squad here at Luma Health, and we’re thrilled to continue building upon our work over the past four years.”

Above: Luma Health’s practitioner dashboard.

Image Credit: Luma Health

Luma Health’s cloud-hosted and HIPAA-compliant platform facilitates scheduling, referrals, feedback, and more semi-autonomously. Through a web widget, patients can schedule their own appointments, which automatically appear on office-wide and individual calendars. Luma Health walks those patients through the process of filling out intake forms online ahead of their appointments, and it automatically syncs their responses (along with a snapshot of their insurance documents) into the corresponding electronic health record.

As appointment times near, Luma Health issues reminders via text and email. And in the event of a cancellation, it cycles through a waitlist to fill the open slot.

Luma Health’s two-way secure messaging features lets patients and practitioners share protected health information like lab results, tests, and images, and arrange follow-up visits directly from texts tailored to specific procedures, providers, clinic locations, and more. Additionally, it enables care providers to broadcast notifications to entire segments of patients at once in multiple languages, and to schedule appointments for referral patients.

It all complements Luma Health’s reputation management tools, which remind patients to publish reviews online. More sophisticated work can be coordinated from the collaboration hub, which enables staff members to quickly send or respond to patient SMS messages or invite relevant team members across offices into conversations.

Luma Health currently works with over 70 electronic health record and practice management systems including Epic, Athena Health, Allscripts, Centricity, Meditech Greenfield, CareCloud, eClinicalWorks, and NextGen Healthcare. Cisco Investments head of corporate development Rob Salvagno asserts that this is yet another point in the company’s favor as it seeks to carve out a larger portion of the global patient access solutions market. It’ll need every advantage, what with rivals ZocDoc, Doctolib, and DocPlanner raking in tens of millions in venture capital.

“Cisco invested in Luma Health because we understand how innovation and technology can maximize the value and impact of telehealth for patients,” Salvagno said. “Luma Health’s approach to patient engagement through technology offers providers immediate access to address patient needs, even if they aren’t able to make it to the doctor’s office.”