Summary

Food access, housing, employment, transportation, education, and social needs are all

social determinants of health

that have huge impacts on health outcomes. Pear Suite is a digital health platform that enables healthcare organizations (providers, insurance plans, and community organizations) to communicate directly with individuals in their audiences, collect health data on social drivers of health, and navigate patients to the care and services they need.

Background

Health plans leverage Pear Suite to connect community health workers with their members to build personal relationships and address the members’ social determinants of health. These efforts improve member satisfaction, promote preventive healthcare, and bring down overall healthcare costs.

Community organizations and nonprofits serving the elderly, immigrants, lower-income communities, and other groups use Pear Suite to connect with individuals in their audience and build plans for the care and services that they need. In many states, these community organizations can bill Medicaid or Medicare for these check-ins and generate additional revenue.

Why Cashmere Fund Invested:

Macro trends around social drivers of health:

In order for value and outcome-based healthcare to become a reality, healthcare systems need to start accounting for social drivers of health outcomes. If not, thousands of patients won’t engage in preventive care or follow through with medical treatment due to food access, hYupousing stability, and other social drivers of health (). Many states are now starting to direct Medicaid funds to programs that support social drivers of health (), and we can see this trend expanding across all payors.

Sales and data momentum:

The founder, Colby, has leveraged his past experience in Healthtech to carve a solid niche in an otherwise crowded healthcare data landscape and prove that he can sell to customers. At the time of our investment, Pear Suite had 5x’d their revenue in 8 months, and is now continuing to accelerate their growth. The data they are collecting with these early customers is fueling momentum as they begin selling to larger customers.

Positive impact healthcare organizations and patients:

Pear Suite customers have engaged with 20,000+ members with a 95% user satisfaction rate. As Pear Suite’s sales to more users and its dataset grows, there are exciting opportunities to predict future health risk, trigger interventions for preventive care, and validate ROI of various social programs.

Other Active Investors

Mucker Capital, Atento Capital, Impact Engine, American Heart Association, Open Venture Capital, Incisive Ventures, Third Act Ventures, Lair East Labs, Techstars, Startup Health, Third Act Ventures