Telemedicine platform Medici raises $24m in private placement
Texas-based telemedicine start-up Medici has raised $24.2m in a funding round, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Although the company has not confirmed investors names or amounts invested, it said the investments came from 10 private individuals, mostly CEOs of non-healthcare related firms. Medici provides medical practitioners with software that allows them to conduct 'remote' patient visits. 
Austin, Texas-based Medici, a recently launched telemedicine startup, has raised $24.2 million according to an SEC filing. The company confirmed that it has raised a funding round, although it wouldn't confirm the amount or name the investors. According to CEO and founder Clinton Phillips, the funding was a private placement from 10 individuals, most of whom are CEOs of non-healthcare companies.

"Most of them are CEOs of some big companies who are mostly not healthcare but are very excited to see healthcare change," Phillips told MobiHealthNews. "And a lot of them are people who backed 2nd.MD. They know I’ve developed some expertise and they think this is a ginormous opportunity."

2nd.MD is Phillips' previous company, where he still serves in an advisory role. While both 2nd.MD and Medici are telemedicine companies, they have very different use cases. 2nd.MD uses telecommunications technology to connect people with complex medical conditions to specialists for a second opinion, whereas the mission of Medici is to connect people via telemedicine to their existing primary care doctors. Phillips said his connection -- and some investors -- are the only thing the companies share, other than that they are independent businesses.

"2nd.MD is remarkable at dealing with complexity," Phillips said. "We have virtual second opinions with top doctors at top hospitals. We solved one of the most complex parts of healthcare -- you being able to figure out what you should do in the most complicated diseases imaginable. Medici is not about complexity, it’s about the simple interactions physicians have with their patients every day."

Unlike leaders in the telemedicine space that connect people to a new doctor, Medici works through doctors, giving them a software as a service offering they can set up to do remote visits with their own patients. The platform is secure and HIPAA-compliant. This set-up conveniently skirts the hotly debated issues at the heart of most legal squabbles around telemedicine, including the regulations that prompted Teladoc's antitrust suit against the Texas Medical Board.

"We have a model that’s beautiful for Texas," Phillips said. "And if it works for Texas, it works everywhere. We’re complant across all 50 states. We’ll be in 12 states January 1st and we expect to be national within a few months of January 1st."

The company has international aspirations too, according to a statement from the company that says funding will be used to set up offices in Europe and South Africa, as well as for more hires in the US.