Perspectives
Our Investment in Summer Health
We are thrilled to announce that 7wireVentures has led an investment in Summer Health (Summer) as part of the company’s $11.7M Series A financing round. Summer Health is a consumer-first, longitudinal pediatric care platform that leverages convenient text-based care and LLMs to efficiently meet the health needs of families and children. Through radically simplifying access to high-quality healthcare for the 34M families across the country with young children and adolescents, Summer presents families, health plans, and employers with a meaningful value story. We are delighted to support the company alongside a strong syndicate of premier institutional investors, including co-lead, Lux Capital and preeminent investors Sequoia Capital, Pivotal Ventures, Box Group, Leaps by Bayer, and Chelsea Clinton’s Metrodora Ventures. With this new financing, Summer will expand the company’s direct-to-employer offering and health plan network to meaningfully increase access to the company’s national team of pediatricians and compassionate longitudinal care model.
Founded in 2022, Summer Health was developed by Founder and CEO Ellen DaSilva whose own difficulties trying to find timely medical advice and care for her three young children served as inspiration for the business. In addition to the highly relevant personal experience Ellen has, she also brings a meaningful digital healthcare and consumer technology background that has served the business well as it continues to scale. Ellen was an early employee at Hims & Hers, where she joined as the eighth employee serving as the Head of Strategic Partnerships and stayed through the IPO. Ellen also brings a strong consumer technology and business operations skillset from her time at Twitter, where she implemented key initiatives to scale annual revenue from $100M to $2B.
“As a parent, I understand firsthand the constant concern for your child’s well-being, which often arises at any hour and can be anxiety-inducing to manage”, said Ellen DaSilva, Founder and CEO of Summer Health. “Summer was founded to be that empathetic, reliable partner for families and ultimately to eliminate the frustration of enduring weeks-long waits for specialist referrals or appointments. We built this business to provide parents with instantaneous, longitudinal care from pediatricians who actually know their children.”
Summer Health’s on-demand, text-first platform was built to address the hurdle laden experience families have when attempting to get their children the care they need. For these families, a child’s rash or a concerning cough often means time away from work, late night trips to the ER or urgent care, hour long waiting times, and large out of pocket medical costs. Pediatric well-care is designed to prevent health problems and injuries, and to promote the well-being of children. However, with 60% of well-child visits lasting less than 15 minutes, the traditional care experience leaves parents with more questions than answers about their child’s health and development.[1] Ultimately, when seeking to address the health of their children, families find themselves with a set of options that are burdensome, costly, ineffective, and subpar.
In response to these challenges, Summer Health provides parents and caregivers 24/7 access to a national network of board-certified pediatricians who quickly find solutions to the frequent physical and emotional challenges that are an inevitable part of childhood. The service allows parents and caregivers to easily text pediatric-care physicians and get care in a matter of minutes, offering peace of mind, affordability, and access to accurate answers for acute and everyday pediatric needs, including sleep, nutrition, and lactation support. Today, Summer is available across all 50 states, is actively serving thousands of families, and has completed tens of thousands of visits. By serving as a trusted source of empathetic, always-on care for families experiencing time sensitive health events, Summer Health provides a reliable, go-to care option for its members.
Part of Summer Health’s vision is to create a world in which there is an abundance care for everyone. In response to the growing demand for accessible healthcare, Summer Health was purpose-built using artificial intelligence and LLM (large language models) tools to create a better consumer and provider experience. In particular, the company’s landmark partnership with prominent generative AI leader, OpenAI, has equipped Summer’s care team with an industry-leading medical co-pilot that augments clinical workflows in real time. By combining advanced technology with empathetic care, Summer Health is transforming pediatric healthcare delivery, improving health outcomes for children nationwide.
“As a working mother of three myself, I intimately understand the challenges that parents experience every day when juggling work and life,” said Alyssa Jaffee, Partner at 7wireVentures. “Ellen’s story and vision resonated with me instantly, and I’m proud to have been a part of Summer’s journey from the beginning. As a platform purpose-built for families, Summer is uniquely positioned to become a leader in pediatric health. We are thrilled to work with Summer Health to transform and enable convenient diagnosis and management of acute and chronic problems for the 73M+ children across the country.”
Why We Invested
A Clear Need for Change
Despite the growing acceptance of virtual care delivery (88% of consumers have used telehealth services since 2020), the technology’s broad applicability (nearly 50% of primary care visits can be resolved virtually), and a proliferation of digital health companies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic (3.3K digital health companies in market today), the healthcare system still lags in innovation.[2] Notably, 30% of health care spending is still attributable to inefficient care delivery.[3] ED utilization in particular has been cited as one of the highest-cost sites of care. Further, 71% of visits are considered unnecessary and avoidable. Even with this context, each year 25% of parents will take their children to the ED.[4] This is uniquely concerning as hospitals and regulators have done little to ensure our nation’s emergency rooms are ready to treat children in emergencies.[5] This means lower quality, higher cost care for children.
In addition to contributing to rising healthcare costs, the unnecessary utilization of in-person services is further compounded by a growing provider supply-demand mismatch. The United States is experiencing a national pediatric clinician shortage, threatening child access to critical health care services. While children comprise nearly 25% of the U.S. population, pediatric primary and acute care NPs constitute just 3.2% and 0.7% of the NP workforce, respectively.[6] Further, the share of graduating medical students entering residency training in pediatrics is in decline and has fallen by 8% between 2015 and 2020.[7]
As a result, it is estimated that 15-20 million children live in officially designated Health Professional Shortage Areas.[8] Families may lack transportation resources to get to a health care site, especially in areas with too few health professionals impeding timely access to services. In addition to these logistical challenges, making appointments, overcoming language and health literacy barriers, and identifying providers are also major hindrances to timely services. Such gaps reduce access to preventive services and can ultimately contribute to expensive and complex care needs. For children, these barriers can turn childhood challenges into lifelong burdens.
Asynchronous chat has emerged as a preferred modality as it allows consumers to avoid waiting rooms, move freely without being tethered to a device, and communicate at their own pace.[9] This communication medium also offers the benefit of enabling a more efficient staffing model and more purposeful triage into higher acuity care, care management programs, or other third-party vendors.
Salient Opportunity to Support Organizations at the Risk for the Cost of Care
Today, health plans and self-funded employers lack dedicated virtual pediatric services that offer families immediate access to care and a holistic view of a child’s health. Without reliable and effective alternatives, these organizations experience an increase in unnecessary and costly emergency department, urgent care, and specialist utilization. Post-pandemic, employers are increasingly reassessing their family benefits to not only attract and retain high quality talent, but also to reduce absenteeism and increase employee productivity.[10]
While Summer Health has rapidly demonstrated product-market fit in the D2C market, the company is transitioning its focus to selling its end-to-end pediatric platform directly to commercial health plans, self-insured employers, and at-risk providers. Summer Health’s robust platform provides the business an opportunity to benefit from significant commercial opportunities with these organizations, with the value proposition of delivering superior management of members and employees with pediatric care needs.
Purpose-Built Platform Integrating Clinical Care and Cutting-Edge Technology to Deliver the Most Compelling Value to Members
Summer Health launched a broader consumer experience platform, Everyday Care, in November 2023 that is accessible both as an online interface and a mobile application. This pivotal launch symbolized Summer Health’s shift from the initial launch of urgent care to offering comprehensive longitudinal care, the company’s realized vision. Through the new offering, the company is able to develop a true relationship with the families it serves.
Notably, the platform includes milestone tracking tailored for young children. This feature delineates developmental benchmarks in physical, social, communication and language, cognitive, and sensory domains. Summer also provides a personalized education library tailored to each child’s age range, covering topics such as nutrition, general health, development, play, and sleep. The platform uses a personalized recommendation engine to drive customized content and recommended readings, and quick tips from practical advice to appropriate medication administration and vaccines. Ultimately, Summer has built a centralized data entry and storage repository that provides a holistic health history, leveraging advanced analytics to provide personalized health recommendations based on a child’s health longitudinal health information.
To this end, the company has taken an intentional approach to building a platform that leverages technology to scale. Led by Co-Founder and Head of Product, Matthew Woo, 7wireVentures was impressed by the integration of LLMs and technical offering given the stage and size of the business. In particular, Summer Health was one of the first companies to sign a BAA with OpenAI, incorporating Generative AI into the platform from the early days. The results of this partnership have been transformative. Doctors have reported a significant reduction in the time taken for note-taking and administrative tasks by 5x, from 10 minutes per visit note to 2 minutes. This allows them more time for patient care and reduces end-of-day fatigue for providers, as well as improving note accuracy and consistency.[11]
Further, the feedback from parents has been overwhelmingly positive. Many shared that these visit notes were the best they ever experienced. Parents appreciate the clear, concise notes and felt more informed about their child’s health and any recommended follow-up actions.[11]
Summer has already received high praise from consumers and will continue to grow its products, services, channels, and partnerships to expand its impact and reach. As parents increasingly view themselves and their families as consumers of healthcare, Summer has a clear opportunity to address their needs and become the go-to resource for families nationwide. We at 7wireVentures are honored to welcome Summer Health into our portfolio.
[1] American Academy of Pediatrics: Table 1.
[2] Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
[3] Jama Network
[6] Journal of Pediatric Health Care
[7] American Academy of Pediatrics
[9] Mobihealth News
[10] SHRM
[11] OpenAI