Forward Unveils AI-Powered CarePods as Self-Serve Clinics

After two years of undisclosed development, Forward, a major player in primary care, finally presented its self-serve CarePods, which utilize artificial intelligence to identify and assess health issues. 

To construct and distribute the Forward CarePods, the firm, which began operations in 2016 with a technologically sophisticated direct primary care business model, raised $100 million in a series E fundraising round. Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, and Softbank all contributed to the fresh funding round. According to sources, the most recent capital comes from both debt and equity investments totaling over $50 million.

The owner of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, and the artist The Weeknd participated in Forward’s most recent $225 million series D funding round in 2021. Other investors included Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures and Softbank.

In the past two years, there has been a flurry of activity in the primary care space, with significant M&A deals such as CVS’s $10.6 billion acquisition of Oak Street Health, Amazon’s nearly $4 billion purchase of One Medical, and Walgreens’ VillageMD’s almost $9 billion acquisition of Summit Health-CityMD. However, following its series D funding round in 2021, Forward has been rather quiet.

Starting in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the new CarePod modules can be found in shopping centers, fitness centers, and workplaces across the country. The company has announced that by 2024, it expects to have more than doubled its current footprint.

AI-Powered CarePods 

• The modules create an individual’s medical baseline using technology from the primary care provider’s seven-year-old health applications for its primary medical service membership.
• The CarePods include biometric body examinations, blood tests, and diagnostic testing. 
• The company’s health applications may help with a variety of conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, and mental health issues including sadness and anxiety.
• The CarePod’s skin cancer scanner is capable of identifying and tracking things like wounds and pigmentation over time. 
• The modules are able to perform normal blood draws and COVID-19 testing as well.

Forward’s vocal founder and CEO, Adrian Aoun, described the AI-based CarePods as the next phase in the company’s mission to leverage technology to spread healthcare services to significant populations, or virtually everybody.

He said, “We ask ourselves, ‘What would it take to get healthcare to the whole planet?’ You quickly realize when you peel back the layers of the onion that we’re doing healthcare all wrong. Today, healthcare is based on doctors and nurses. And, they’re awesome, but you’re never going to scale doctors and nurses to the whole planet.”

Aoun expressed the perspective that healthcare should be treated as a product. The idea is to transfer all the tasks performed by doctors and nurses to a combination of hardware and software. The goal is to scale healthcare globally through this approach.

Aoun claims that the AI-powered CarePods, which resemble nursing rooms at airports, would put patients in charge of their own healthcare by making medical tests and treatment plans available to the general public. 

In the future, the firm hopes to expand its health applications’ features to include polygenic risk assessment, advanced cancer detection, and prenatal care.