Child psychiatrist Dr. Tarik Shaheen co-founded Iris Telehealth in 2013 from a small yellow house on West Avenue in Austin.
Now, nine years later, the company has a downtown office at Norwood Tower and provides virtual mental health services to nearly 200 hospitals and community health centers in 33 states.
Iris Telehealth is now about to embark on its next chapter of growth. The company announced Thursday that it has raised $40 million in Series B funding from Columbia Pacific Advisors and Concord Health Partners.
Iris currently employs 300 mental health clinicians, but CEO Andy Flanagan told Built In that the company expects to hire another 200 clinicians this year to meet the surging demand for behavioral healthcare. Iris also expects to increase its administrative headcount from 150 to 200, he said.
Hospitals and community health centers use Iris Telehealth to handle serious mental health issues that they do not have the resources to address. That could mean virtual care at home or for patients who come into the emergency room, which is where people often end up when they are not able to access a psychiatrist, Flanagan said.
Iris Telehealth’s mission is to help patients get back on track to receiving care through appropriate channels to avoid a crisis in the emergency room.
“As patients move through our healthcare system, what we really want to do is help navigate them early and proactively to the right side of care,” Flanagan said.
The company’s proactive approach includes online therapy, ways for clinicians to remotely check in with patients and tools for patients to share how they are doing.
If a patient is in need of attention, Flanagan said Iris Telehealth has the resources to assist an individual that other tech companies in the virtual health world typically do not have.
Flanagan said his organization wants to use its technology and specialized psychiatric personnel to support — not compete — with hospitals, which it sees as integral resources in each community.
“We have a deep technology team, a deep regulatory team and a care innovation team,” he said. “We bring those resources to the table with our healthcare partner to leverage all the technology investments that they’ve already made.”
In addition to scaling its team, Iris Telehealth will also use the funding to improve its technology. Flanagan said the company plans to share those technical solutions with other healthcare organizations to help combat the mental health crisis in the U.S.
“We all need to do our part to knock down this wave of behavioral health volume that we just can’t quite get our arms around,” Flanagan said.
