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Doctronic represents the twelfth entrepreneurial venture for Matt Pavelle, a seasoned entrepreneur with a diverse portfolio that includes companies focused on renters' rewards, wine shopping, and luxury fashion products. Remarkably, approximately two-thirds of Pavelle's previous startups have adopted a direct-to-consumer model, while the remaining ventures have collaborated with businesses to serve consumers more effectively.

With Doctronic, Pavelle now turns his attention to a vital and complex area: healthcare artificial intelligence (AI). Recently, the startup secured an impressive $5 million in seed funding, with Union Square Ventures leading the investment round. Additional contributions came from Tusk Ventures and the startup accelerator HF0, underscoring robust investor confidence in Doctronics potential.

As health-related inquiries soar into the hundreds of millions each day on platforms like Google and emerging AI models such as ChatGPT, Doctronic aims to enhance this digital health inquiry landscape. The startup's mission is to connect patients with AI-driven agents capable of delivering rapid, confidential, and tailored healthcare advice, ensuring that users can seamlessly reach out to medical professionals when necessary.

Pavelle's motivation for creating Doctronic stemmed from witnessing the challenges that friends and family faced in obtaining timely and actionable medical information. He articulated a poignant question that resonates with many: If people who have some of the best health insurance possible in the country are having this much difficulty getting answers from their doctors, what happens to everybody else?

In September 2023, he and co-founder Adam Oskowitz launched Doctronic as a free service for users. The platform prompts users to provide their age, sex, and symptoms, subsequently offering four possible explanations for their condition along with a recommended action plan. This plan includes a standardized note intended for users to share with their healthcare providers.

Come December, Doctronic will extend its services further by allowing users who require immediate attention to book video consultations with licensed medical professionals. Patients across all 50 states will be able to request these consultations 24/7, typically receiving assistance within 30 minutes for a starting fee of $39.

However, Doctronic's capabilities go beyond the traditional AI chatbot framework. The system operates on a multi-agent framework, wherein various AI 'specialists' are designated to address different medical disciplines. These agents collaboratively analyze their findings before passing their insights to a human clinician for final validation. Notably, the platform is designed to be LLM-agnostic, meaning it can utilize multiple AI modelssuch as those from OpenAI, Anthropic, or even several models simultaneouslyto arrive at a consensus for the user's question.

Were trying to build a seamless way for someone to come in and ask questions or look for help navigating the medical system, and for us to figure out what they need and pass them to the right experts, Pavelle articulated, emphasizing the core vision behind Doctronic.

Doctronic enters a competitive field alongside other healthcare startups like Roon, which recently raised $15 million with backing from Sequoia to develop a comprehensive database of videos addressing various health conditions. Additionally, it faces competition from tech giants like OpenAI, whose AI models are increasingly being utilized by both medical professionals and patients, regardless of their original design intent.

Looking ahead, Pavelle mentioned that Doctronic may explore partnerships with gig economy platforms or employers to broaden its user base. However, the startup is currently committed to a consumer-first approach, as the majority of user demand is organically generated. Pavelle noted that many new users discover Doctronic by searching their health-related questions on Google, which directs them to the startups website. The company has even established specialized landing pages for specific topics, including women's health and COVID-19.

We see around 50,000 people a week we've built something people really like, with lots of repeat users, Pavelle asserted. We just want to keep improving to streamline the health system.

For those interested in further insights into Doctronics innovative approach and funding journey, the 11-slide pitch deck utilized to secure its $5 million seed round led by Union Square Ventures is available for review.