Your next visit to the doctor’s office might take place inside a shiny eight-foot-by-eight-foot cube without anyone else there. With a few swipes on a screen you’ll be able to immediately have diagnostics like heart and blood tests performed as well as more specialized things like having the weird spot on your skin examined.
It sounds like a science fiction movie. But these automated medical pods are slated to pop up in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia in the coming months. They’re the flagship product of Forward, a seven-year-old startup founded by tech entrepreneur and Google veteran Adrian Aoun. On Wednesday Forward announced it has raised $100 million in new funding, along with plans to begin putting its CarePods in malls, gyms and other locations throughout the US.
The CarePods are the latest, and most significant manifestation of Aoun’s vision of remaking healthcare with a technology-first approach. Forward first began building a network of direct-to-consumer primary care clinics in 2016. New patients receive a full body scan, and the clinics operate outside of the health insurance system, which the company believes is not aligned with patients’ long term health.
With the CarePod, Forward has turned the concept into a tangible product that consumers can see firsthand, and spontaneously walk in and experience (The CarePod will have some basic demo capabilities for the curious, with the price of monthly memberships starting a $99). Videos of the CarePod’s interior show a room that looks like a first-class cabin on a long distance flight, complete with mood lighting, comfortable seat, and giant screens. The pod combines various sensors and AI technology. It’s not meant to replace a human doctor, since the pod is for diagnostics rather than treatment.
Aoun sold his first AI startup to Google in 2013, then spent 3 years at the search giant—first in its AI division and then working as director of special projects for Google cofounder Larry Page. The list of investors in Forward is a who’s who of Silicon Valley power players including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Apple SVP of AI John Giannandrea, and DeepMind cofounders Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman.
The company won’t say who is leading the current $100 milion round, but notes that Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Softbank, and Samsung Next, along with many of the previous individual backers, are among the investors. Forward also declined to comment on its latest valuation. The company was valued at more than $1 billion in 2021 when it raised $225 million, according to Reuters.
Big Tech has been trying to disrupt the healthcare business for years with varying levels of success. Amazon acquired boutique primary care provider OneMedical for $3.9 billion earlier this year. Apple set up special clinics for employees in 2018 with the idea of using Apple watches to collect individuals’ health data and to eventually launch a broader medical service. But Apple’s efforts have struggled to get off the ground, according to reports from Business Insider and the Wall Street Journal.
Forward has suffered some setbacks over its short life, cutting 5% of its staff in July 2022 because of what it described as “extremely tough market conditions.”
With the CarePods, Forward is making what may be the tech industry’s most ambitious move into healthcare yet. As with much in medicine, what happens once human trials begin will be critical.
