Doctronic has acquired Summer Health as the AI doctor startup expands beyond adult primary care into text-based paediatric care.
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Doctronic is an AI-based primary care provider that says it has supported 30m health encounters since launching two years ago.
The company offers a free AI chatbot to help users assess symptoms and ask medical questions. Users can also connect with licensed doctors for virtual consultations costing US$39.
Its services are available in all 50 US states. Utah is also testing the platform for prescription refills through a pilot programme.
Founded in 2022, Summer Health provides on-demand support for children by text message. It has handled more than 100,000 paediatric consultations for tens of thousands of families, according to the companies.
Adam Oskowitz, co-founder and co-chief executive of Doctronic, said: “We at Doctronic are always about access to high-quality healthcare.
“We noticed that a lot of our patients were coming through and asking questions related to paediatrics, oftentimes asking us if we could help with children, and so it made sense to us to explore expanding our offering into paediatrics.
“Around the same time, we actually got introduced to Ellen and started chatting with her and her team.
“We really fell in love with what they were doing and initially felt like a partnership would make a lot of sense.
“And so, like a lot of acquisitions in the end, they started off as partnership discussions.
“As we started discussing the opportunities, it just felt like a really great match, and so [we] moved from the idea of a partnership to an actual acquisition quite quickly.”
The companies said primary care was moving away from occasional appointments towards services that are continuously available and primarily accessed online. They described children’s healthcare as a frequent and high-need entry point.
Summer Health will move towards an AI-based triage service that assesses how urgently a child needs care. Families will be referred to a paediatrician through Doctronic’s platform when necessary.
Ellen DaSilva, founder and chief executive of Summer Health, said: “It’s the perfect combination and distillation of what Doctronic offers and what Summer Health offers.”
The companies said Summer Health’s collection of more than 100,000 real-world paediatric text conversations would provide a basis for developing AI systems specifically for children’s healthcare.
The information includes medical interactions in which parents describe symptoms and ask questions about their children.
Executives said it could help Doctronic develop more accurate and clinically informed paediatric services.
