ConsultingMD Raises $10 Million From Venrock to Change the Practice of Medicine

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - May 21, 2013) - Consumers and businesses are reimagining healthcare through a technology that's changing the practice of medicine. ConsultingMD announces a $10 million round of funding from Venrock to further develop its breakthrough technology enabled service platform -- bringing the patients together digitally with doctors and to expand its network of prestigious medical experts.

"We chose Venrock because they are far and away the leading venture firm for healthcare IT and they share our commitment to advancing patient-centered care," said Owen Tripp, CEO and co-founder of ConsultingMD. "We have already established the most exclusive network of experts in their fields. With Venrock's support, we will grow our team to provide more online and mobile solutions to enable these doctors to provide lifesaving opinions and care."

ConsultingMD created a completely new technology platform that creates a "virtual clinic" where experts in the network find a comprehensive 360-degree digital profile of a patient's history and medical records. Once a patient starts a case, the ConsultingMD platform collects and digitizes all medical records, and pages a request to the best expert for the case. The records are presented in reverse chronological order and annotated to convey the full picture of the patient's care and diagnosis to date. These profiles slash the research and assessment time for doctors to provide a conclusive opinion. While a normal in-person consultation might take as many as three months to conduct, the ConsultingMD experts return an opinion in an average of 48 hours.

The ConsultingMD physician network is comprised of top 0.1 percent of experts in each field including the chiefs and chairs of many of the major medical research universities. Physicians must be invited by an existing ConsultingMD physician and are thoroughly vetted by an internal panel of doctors. The ConsultingMD virtual clinic provides the most leveraged way for a physician to spend time on a case and provides specialized physicians with access to unique cases that benefit their research.

"The ConsultingMD physician network is comprised of the 'who's who' of the medical community and represent a collective state-of-the-art knowledge base for patient care. Combining this network with proprietary technology, ConsultingMD has liberated this vast store of medical expertise, making it available to all consumers on demand, thereby improving the lives and health of their customers," said Bryan Roberts, partner at Venrock and new board member of ConsultingMD.

Businesses are tapping ConsultingMD as a unique benefit offering for employees. More than half of all corporate executives (55 percent) named healthcare benefits as their biggest business challenge, according to Adecco SA. Ten percent of employer-provided healthcare costs are due to misdiagnosis and improper treatment. Top physicians, like the network of experts at ConsultingMD, are known to offer more accurate diagnoses, leading to cost savings for both the patient and their employer.

Owen Tripp and Bryan Roberts will take the stage as the opening keynote at HealthBeat on Tuesday, May 21 at 8:50am PT at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco, Calif. For more information, please visit, http://venturebeat.com/events/healthbeat2013/agenda/.

About ConsultingMD
ConsultingMD is dedicated to providing access to state-of-the-art medical information and opinions from the world's top physicians to the people who need it most and to the businesses that want to provide the best care for their employees. By presenting the whole patient digitally, ConsultingMD streamlines the diagnosis process and enables anyone to reach the experts for the most current medical expertise saving time, money and lives. For more information, please visit www.consultingmd.com and follow @ConsultingMD.

About Venrock
Venrock is a leading venture capital firm with offices in Palo Alto, CA; New York, NY; and Cambridge, MA. Originally established as the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family, Venrock continues an eight-decade tradition of partnering with entrepreneurs to establish successful, enduring companies. With a primary focus on technology and healthcare, portfolio companies have included Adify, Adnexus Therapeutics, Apple Computer, Athenahealth, Centocor, Check Point Software, DoubleClick, Gilead Sciences, Idec Pharmaceuticals, Illumina, Intel, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Sirna Therapeutics, StrataCom, and Vontu. For more information, please visit Venrock's website at www.venrock.com and follow the firm on Twitter at @venrock.