Remember when choosing a bank meant selecting the one closest to your home? With something as important as managing your money, there was a natural sense of security that came with knowing your bank teller, discussing your changing needs with the bank’s loan officer, and knowing that you had quick access to your cash.
Then came the online and mobile banking revolution. Digital-native companies like FinTechs and neobanks powered a transformation that led people to reconsider this notion that their local branch was sacred. Every physical bank now has to compete with every technology upstart in the country.
Simply put, digital-first competitors flipped the finance industry on its head.
The same is happening today in healthcare.
Gone are the days of the family doctor down the street being the only way to access medications, consultations, or referrals. Large health systems and provider groups —increasingly owned by payor organizations—compete every day with digital health companies and other systems that have been early adopters of the technology wave.
Healthcare system operating margins are already razor-thin. Now digital health startups are targeting their top-of-funnel and their most profitable service lines by offering better customer experiences at lower costs. The healthcare industry's digital renaissance has come later than finance, but its impact will be no less profound.
One Medical's success story serves as a stark reminder of what's at stake for traditional providers who fail to adapt. One Medical has driven notable success by redefining primary care with a tech-forward model focused on the consumer experience. With an app where consumers see all of their medical history, visit summary, medications, and bills in one place—and have the ability to message their doctor as easily as if they were texting a friend—it’s no surprise that One Medical saw strong member retention and growth. Their approach has attracted significant investment and led to a high-profile acquisition by Amazon, further cementing their influence in healthcare.
With the pace of innovation in healthcare technology only increasing every week, month, and year, there is one choice for health systems: adapt or slowly lose market share.
That’s why we’re co-leading a $20M Series A funding round into Praia Health. Their personalization platform brings an ecommerce-like experience to healthcare providers, helping health systems regain equal footing with digital-native providers. By offering fully integrated experiences to patients, Praia is addressing the urgent need for health systems to improve patient engagement under a single brand.
Baby steps: healthcare’s slow walk toward modernization
The healthcare industry has lagged the rest of the economy for decades in technology adoption. Multiple generations of patient engagement technologies have come before Praia Health, and each has taken a necessary but insufficient step toward modernizing the consumer and patient experience. Praia offers health systems the tools they need to fight back against tech-first entrants by providing a personalization platform that enables fully integrated patient experiences, offering the kind of seamless, tech-savvy interactions that patients of all generations expect and are starting to demand.
Below we outline a brief history of the patient engagement evolution:
Gen 1: Unidirectional patient notifications (focused on scheduling)
This early stage of patient engagement technology primarily centered on delivering basic reminders to patients. Intrado was a pioneer in this space, introducing what became known as "Broadcast Messaging." This innovation took messages from patient portals and transmitted them via SMS, marking the first step in delivering healthcare information to patients through more accessible channels.
Gen 2: Bidirectional communication that revolutionized patient-provider interactions
This stage marked a significant leap forward, with Well Health and others pioneering the ability for patients to respond to provider messages. Known as "Secure Messaging," this innovation allowed patients to engage in asynchronous care dialogues via SMS or email, transforming the nature of patient-provider communication outside of traditional phone calls and in-person visits.
Gen 3: Omnichannel engagement with AI-powered interactions and seamless integrations
Companies like Luma Health led the charge in developing comprehensive omnichannel messaging and engagement platforms. These solutions required deep integrations with healthcare providers' existing systems, enabling patients to perform tasks like rescheduling appointments directly through SMS or email, with options pulled from the provider's practice management software. Additionally, this generation introduced AI-powered chatbots on provider websites, allowing for autonomous triage and scheduling.
Gen 4: Praia Health's breakthrough—a patient engagement suite with AI and rules-based intelligence and automated actions driven by electronic health record (EHR) integration
Praia's innovation lies in its ability to connect all data sources, automate patient access, and use a rules engine to triage patients pre-visit and orchestrate their end-to-end experience. This approach allows health systems to offer proactive, contextual outreach to patients, mimicking the personalized experiences that have become standard in other industries.
Praia has created a unified view of patients by building its core infrastructure layer (called the Secure Patient Identity and Experience Orchestration Platform) to sit atop and amplify existing investments in systems like Epic and Salesforce. This enables health systems to make personalized care recommendations, increase patient retention, and boost lifetime value—critical priorities for C-suites grappling with margin pressure and patient attrition.
Each Praia customer receives a platform SDK and API that powers a white-labeled consumer app, giving patients a "One Medical-like" experience within their existing health system. Additionally, an Analytics Dashboard and events schema allow providers to monitor insights and value generated from these personalized recommendations, closing the loop on patient engagement efforts.
Praia is built on a strong backbone: it was spun out of Providence, one of the country’s top 10 health systems by net patient revenue size. Praia spent two-and-a-half years under Providence, developing a strong and multipronged return on investment spanning increased new patient visits, self-service, content consumption, and patient retention.
Looking ahead, the potential for Praia's approach is vast. As health systems continue to generate petabytes of data annually, much of it currently untapped, Praia's platform stands poised to unlock tremendous value. By enabling health systems to harness this data for personalized, privacy-compliant, and EHR-authorized patient engagement, Praia isn't just solving today's challenges—it's laying the groundwork for the future of healthcare delivery.
In an industry where patient trust is paramount and regulatory compliance is nonnegotiable, Praia's solution offers a way forward that respects both imperatives while driving business results. For health systems ready to embrace the digital future of patient engagement, Praia represents not just a tool but a transformative partner in healthcare's ongoing evolution.
Investing in Praia Health’s Series A
The team at SignalFire has gotten to know Justin Dearborn*, CEO of Praia Health, for a number of years via his prior roles. We’d also built a deep relationship with the Providence Digital Innovation Group, which incubated the company. Given our thesis in patient engagement, we were incredibly pleased to co-lead Praia’s Series A with Frist Cressey Ventures. Justin shared his thoughts on partnering with SignalFire:
“We loved the industry diversity and energy SignalFire brought to the table. They have a world-class operational team that is available on-demand, and our day-to-day investment contacts, YY and Tony, have an analytical and practical thought process that has elevated our thinking and processes.”
We’ll be heading to HLTH soon along with the team at Praia, and we would love to meet more founders building in the patient engagement space or in health system technology innovation more generally. Reach out to yy@signalfire.com or t@signalfire.com to get in touch!
*Portfolio company founders listed above have not received any compensation for this feedback and may or may not have invested in a SignalFire fund. These founders may or may not serve as Affiliate Advisors, Retained Advisors, or consultants to provide their expertise on a formal or ad hoc basis. They are not employed by SignalFire and do not provide investment advisory services to clients on behalf of SignalFire. Please refer to our disclosures page for additional disclosures.
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