Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

And the company just raised a $13.5 million seed round, led by and , to try to do so.

Modern Animal charges $100 per year annual membership so pet owners can have access to a full set of services in clinics. Additionally, users can have 24/7 access to virtual care through the app, however “any services rendered above and beyond a routine and standard appointment are an incremental fee,” according to , founder and CEO Of Modern Animal.

Competition Wags Some Tails

Eidelman called this model the “next generation of veterinary care” but if you look a little north, there’s a competitor swinging at this big market, too: Fuzzy.

In 2016, San Francisco-based was created to bring veterinary telemedicine to worried pet owners. While it was started years ago, Fuzzy has raised less than Modern Animal, at $12.5 million to date.

However, what Fuzzy doesn’t have in the bank it does have in proof. When I last talked to the co-founder and CEO, , he said there have been 60,000 to 70,000 consultations on the app.

In regards to Modern Animal’s new funding, Bhettay said “We love that there are new and innovative approaches that more folks are coming forward with about how to address [veterinary challenges],” via e-mail.

“Pet health advice [today] is either your pet is fine, or your pet is going to spontaneously implode in five minutes,” Bhettay told me back in June. Fuzzy also recently scooped up San Jose’s Fetch Labs, which helps manage animals through a digital network with other pet owners. Think a pet owner network.

When asked about Fuzzy, Modern Animal declined to comment. Eidelman said that “we are primarily competing with your traditional veterinary clinic around the corner.” Both services are focused on prioritizing the wellness of practitioners and families.

So yes, Modern Animal’s seed round, even for today’s standards, is giant. However despite a flashy boost of capital, the startup has its work cut out for itself. Not only must it differentiate itself from traditional vet clinics, but from existing startups looking to compete in the same sector.

Illustration:

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

One Hoboken, New Jersey-based startup wants to step into that process and has just raised $10 million from an investor who believes the company’s product has merit.

The startup, , has developed software to help reduce readmissions via remote patient monitoring and video visits. The company has just raised that $10 million in a “growth round” from out of Princeton, N.J. The financing brings the company’s to $17.5 million, according to its Crunchbase profile.

CEO developed the idea for the company in 2011 as a 24-year-old graduate student at when his grandmother was readmitted to the hospital for heart failure.

“So I convinced two friends to start the company and write all the software,” Bauer said. Not only is the company’s goal to help improve patient outcomes, but also to help hospitals protect themselves from being penalized for having a patient readmitted.

Health Recovery Solutions claims its platform, which includes software, predictive analytics and hardware/bluetooth devices, is cutting down on 30-day readmissions to healthcare facilities, especially those related to chronic illness, by as much as 80 percent.

Today, 140 medical centers including Penn Medicine, John Hopkins Medicine, WellCare and Henry Ford Health System use Health Recovery Solutions, and the company has monitored about 100,000 patients to date, according to Bauer.

“We’re using this $10 million for further product growth and also to help us reach our 1 million patient goal,” he told Crunchbase News. “We’ll be investing heavily in product development and in account managers so we can meet demand.”

Bauer expects the company to nearly double its revenue this year to $11 million compared to $6.3 million at the end of last year. Health Recovery Solutions, which has landed on the Inc 5000 list multiple times, currently employs 85 people with plans to double that over the next two years.

I asked Bauer how his startup does remote patient monitoring better than the slew of other companies in the space. To him, it lies in the fact that it’s cloud-based.

“A lot of remote monitoring companies tend to be more hardware-centric and then move into telemonitoring,” he said. “We were software-focused in the beginning and I believe that makes us more nimble. We have software and tablets to engage patients, many of whom are elderly, and apps for family members.”

While Edison has invested in a number of healthtech companies, including , and , among others, its backing of Health Recovery Solutions marks its first telehealth investment.

, operating partner at Edison Partners, said his firm believes the company’s patient monitoring platform “solves a critical problem in healthcare.”

“Hospital readmission rates are significantly higher than they could be because many recently discharged patients are not provided with the proper education to improve their condition or tools for clinicians to keep track of their progress,” he wrote via email. “The company provides a clear ROI to its customers healthcare systems and home health agencies—as well as to patients.”

Health Recovery Solutions is one of many telemedicine companies ranging in category from urgent care to fertility to cannabis that have landed significant capital over the past few years, as Savannah Dowling reported in March.

Take a look at some notable companies that have raised since the beginning of 2017:

Illustration:

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

launched Remedy in early 2016 with the goal of providing “convenient and affordable access” to medical care from a patient’s home, or serve as “an Uber for house calls.” The Austin-based company initially started out providing on-demand house calls before pivoting to a traditional telemedicine model that starts first with virtual visits and then can be escalated to an in-person home visit if needed. The company also operates a walk-in clinic in its home base of Austin to which it can also refer patients. Remedy’s platform also includes 24/7 access to nurse triage and lab test visits.

Remedy currently provides its telehealth services in Texas and California but has plans to expand into other markets, according to Gabrysch. The Series A takes its total raised to a , according to Crunchbase data.

Dr. Gabrysch had worked as an emergency room physician in Austin for several years before he and his wife,, moved to Ethiopia in 2011. There, he served as chief medical officer for a 150-bed teaching hospital and realized how wasteful Americans could be of the resources available to them.

“I had seen people coming to the ER with non-emergency issues because they couldn’t get into their primary-care doctor,” he told me in 2016 when I interviewed him for an . “I also would often help out friends or family that didn’t have insurance or had high deductibles by going over to treat them or their children. We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to offer this to everyone?’ ”

The company has served “tens of thousands” of patients since its inception, according to Gabrysch. Its focus is on working with self-funded employers (including a Fortune 500 company), which make up a large part of its business. Remedy plans to use the new capital to expand to other states as well as broaden its technology platform, do some hiring, and open additional walk-in clinics.

“We want to scale and to grow as much as possible going to be in as many states as we need to be,” Gabrysch told Crunchbase News.

I asked him how Remedy differentiates itself from the host of other telemedicine startups out there, and Gabrysch said he believes it “offers a broader suite of services.” It also does not outsource its care to third parties, and instead hires providers to work as Remedy employees.

Santé Ventures Managing Directors Dr. Joe Cunningham and Doug French are joining Remedy’s board as part of the financing.

“After reviewing numerous telemedicine companies in recent years, we feel confident Remedy can scale beyond traditional primary care delivery and is well-positioned to dramatically lower costs and improve outcomes for high-cost procedures and chronic disease management,” said Cunningham, in a written statement. “The market potential for coordinated care delivery and chronic disease management from a telemedicine platform is the next evolution of this technology.”

Last month, we reported on how , an Austin-based healthcare and life science-focused venture firm, had raised $250 million in its third fund.

Illustration: