NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, virtual neurology clinic Neura Health announced it has raised $8 million in seed funding in a round led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (Oshi Health, Neuralight) and Norwest Venture Partners (Calm, Talkspace, Omada Health). Pre-seed financiers Pear VC (Doordash, Gusto) and Next Play Ventures (Ginger, Headspace) also participated in the round, as did new investors Correlation Ventures and Plug and Play Ventures. The funding will allow Neura to expand its go-to-market approach, moving beyond the consumer market to bring the company’s neurology care offering to the enterprise sector, with an initial focus on employers and health plans.
Neura’s go-to-market expansion is intended to treat more people living with chronic neurological conditions at scale, starting with highly prevalent conditions such as headache, migraine and sleep disorders. Neurology is a top-five spend category for self-insured employers and health plans supporting commercial insurance, and the incremental cost of medical claims for a patient with migraine compared to a patient without migraine is $3,088 per year. Migraine is the second leading cause of global disability, with the World Health Organization considering chronic migraine to be more disabling than blindness or paraplegia. One out of every six U.S. employees is living with migraine disease, which costs businesses $78 billion each year in lost productivity from absenteeism and presenteeism.
By introducing its solution to the employer and health plan markets, Neura is empowering employers to proactively treat neurological conditions by getting them on the right combination of medications, lifestyle changes and proactive care. These treatments help avoid emergency department and urgent care visits, leading to a 2.6x ROI on medical claims savings alone. Plus, improving employee productivity and experience benefits both individual employees and their companies. When productivity improvement is included, the ROI of Neura increases to 3.5X.
“Despite the prevalence of headache disorders and migraine disease among employees, most employers aren’t equipped to support this part of their workforce. The result is that employees living with these conditions are forced to miss work more often and can’t be their most productive selves even when they are at work,” said Elizabeth Burstein, CEO and co-founder of Neura Health. “This funding will allow us to expand our go-to-market strategy to ultimately help more workers experiencing neurological conditions.”
Neura’s end-to-end solution offers those living with neurological conditions, starting with headache and migraine, unlimited online care team access, one-on-one care coaching and a personalized treatment plan. The solution also dramatically reduces wait times to see a neurologist, from 4-6 months to just 48 hours, utilizing its own tele-neurology network for video appointments and messaging. Neura’s proprietary platform allows its care teams to proactively monitor patient outcomes in real-time, enabling a quick feedback cycle to identify the ideal mix of medical and non-medical therapies, cutting down on extended periods of trial and error to find the right solution.
This latest $8 million financing round builds upon Neura’s $2.3 million pre-seed round, which closed in 2021. Since then, Neura has seen thousands of patients with an average Net Promoter Score of 90, becoming the first headache-benefit solution with clinical outcomes published in a peer-reviewed journal, Headache. The report revealed that Neura delivers measurable benefits to patients, with a 73% median decrease in number of ER and urgent care visits, 75% median reduction in headache frequency and 67% median reduction in headache severity after three months of Neura membership.
“Neura has built a proven solution to provide relief for individuals experiencing headache and migraine disorders,” said Brendon Durkin, managing director of Koch Disruptive Technologies. “We’re excited to support Neura as it embarks on its next phase of growth – bringing its solution to more people via an expanded go-to-market strategy. We’re confident Neura will make a significant impact for those living with headache and migraine attacks, sleep disorders, chronic neurological pain and other major neurological conditions.”
“The last several years have shown us that digital tools can be invaluable in supporting people with chronic conditions,” said Parker Barrile, partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “Neura is the first to effectively apply these tools to the previously underserved population of those with headache and migraine disorders, and we’re happy to support their continued growth as they solve this critical market need.”
Neura was recently recognized in Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards for the second consecutive year. The company also announced a partnership with Switchboard Health, an aggregator of virtual specialty clinics that offers employers a curated network of specialty providers to be passed along to employees as a benefit. To learn more about Neura, visit https://www.neurahealth.co/. To discuss Neura Health as a health benefit for your employees, visit the partner page.
About Neura Health
Neura Health is a virtual neurology clinic with a mission to improve the access and quality of neurological care: increase convenience, improve outcomes, and lower costs. Neura Health’s platform connects patients to neurologists, with in-built neurology-specific symptom monitoring and condition-specific diagnostic tests. These include cognitive exams, psychomotor tests, and standard assessments. Neura Health has HIPAA-compliant text messaging and video visits, with a care concierge service to help patients with their various needs. The company’s first app focus is on chronic headache and migraine.
