
Buoyed by the pandemic, 2020 was undoubtedly the year that telehealth turned the corner to mainstream. But for savvy investors, the big question isn’t what’s hot now — it’s what’s the future holds.
“If it’s straight telehealth, we’re not interested,” Lynne Chou O’Keefe, founder and managing partner of Define Ventures, said on a panel Wednesday on digital health business opportunities at the all-virtual Consumer Electronics Show. “To me, telehealth is a pipe… It’s about the use case and what are we trying to solve.”
She pointed to her firm’s investment in MedArrive as an example of a company with a telehealth component that’s got the right idea. MedArrive, which launched out of stealth mode this fall, plans to send paramedics and EMTs to deliver home-based care under the supervision of remote physicians who are “piped” in.