Funding Roundup: Post-Hospitalization Behavioral Platform Launches; Brightside Snags $24M

Laguna Health launches with $6.6M

Laguna Health, which provides digital care tools and virtual behavioral health care to individuals post-hospitalization, has launched after raising $6.6 million in seed funding.

Pitango HealthTech and LionBird led the round. Additional participants include Hippo Insurance founder and CEO Assaf Wand and Onduo founder and CEO Josh Riff.

Laguna’s business model uses a combination of clinicians, nurses, coaches and artificial intelligence-driven resources to help individuals in their post-hospitalization recovery.

Laguna’s goal is to use data, technology and behavioral health experts to shorten recovery times for patients and to help cut down on hospital readmissions that cost payers and providers over $80 billion annually, according to a press release announcing the news.

Laguna co-founder and CEO Yoni Shtein helped to establish the company, which has offices in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, following a personal experience of the death of a loved one.

“We’ve all been traumatized by losing a loved one, but the trauma is compounded when you find out there’s a world where it could have been prevented,” Shtein said in the press release. “Not only can bad recovery lead to terrible health outcomes, it wastes billions of dollars every year — and it’s a category of digital healthcare that has not received proper attention. Laguna exists to solve this problem: by combining data, technology and behavioral health, we offer a valued-based digital solution to help all people successfully recover after hospitalization.”

Brightside Health raises $24M

Digital behavioral health provider Brightside Health has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round led by ACME Ventures, with additional participation from Triventures and existing investors.

The new investment brings the total amount raised to date by the San Francisco-based company to $31.4 million, according to the fundraising tracking site Crunchbase.

Founded in 2017, the San Francisco-based Brightside provides personalized treatment plans for users by matching them virtually with psychiatrists, physicians, psychiatric nurse practitioners and therapists, in addition to helping them access medications to treat anxiety and depression. Brightside’s services are available to individuals 18 and older.

Residents in 36 states and Washington, D.C. can access medications through Brightside, while the company’s therapeutic services are available in 39 states. The company currently does not accept insurance for services.

Brightside plans to use the new funding to ramp up its offerings, as the pandemic has increased the number of people in need of mental health treatment for anxiety and depression.

“As we look ahead post-pandemic, we’re optimistic about a return to normalcy,” Brightside founder and CEO Brad Kittredge wrote in a blog post about the funding round. “But as we saw before COVID-19, the need for accessible, high-quality mental health care will only grow. We’re committed to establishing a new standard for depression and anxiety treatment for the telemedicine age, and to helping everyone who needs it get the care they need to feel like themselves again.”

ifeel scores $6.6M

ifeel, an online behavioral therapy platform, has snagged $6.6 million in a Series A funding round led by Nauta Capital. The funding brings the amount so far raised by the Madrid-based startup to over $16 million, based on previous funding totals from Crunchbase.

Founded in 2016, ifeel connects users in the European Union to psychologists to address a range of behavioral issues like anxiety, stress, depression, work matters and relationship problems. ifeel’s services are also provided to workers through such companies as the French insurance unit Axa Partners and the Spanish commerce startup Glovo.

Since the onset of the pandemic, the company has shifted more toward offering its services through employers.

”The health crisis and new blended employment models create a high need for managers to support remote employees and distant customers,” ifeel co-founder and CEO Amir Kaplan told EU Startups. “We are proud of the success we achieved with leading global partners and are looking forward to leading the transition in the relationships created between companies and their employees and customers.”