Medical Education Startup Osmosis Raises $4M Series A

6/12/19

Tanner Marshall and Shiv Gaglani

Having surpassed one million YouTube subscribers and 500,000 registered users last month, the leading health education platform Osmosis has announced a Series A round of financing led by Felicis Ventures, known for investing in iconic companies including Fitbit, Shopify, and PluralSight.

35 million more healthcare professionals will need to be trained by 2030 to keep up with demand, due to the aging population worldwide. There are massive predicted shortages across nurses, primary care physicians, and other fields, as described in this recent TEDx talk about the company. To combat this crisis, Osmosis has already registered users in 100% of US, Canadian, Australian, and UK medical schools as well as confirmed users in over 1,500 other health professional schools, ranging from nursing and PA to dental and pharmacy.

"By reimagining medical education, Osmosis is addressing a critical impending global crisis: the need to develop and retrain tens of millions of healthcare professionals over the next decade to meet growing demand. With Khan Academy DNA and a deep-rooted empathy for this field, we believe this team is building the next iconic company at the intersection of health and education," said Aydin Senkut, founder and managing partner at Felicis Ventures.

With follow-on investments from Greycroft, Coverys, FundRx, Figure 8, Social Starts, and LearnStart, and a new investment from SEI Ventures, this round of funding will be used to further expand Osmosis' health content library of 1,300+ videos to reach more clinicians and caregivers and grow its partnerships from dozens to hundreds of institutions. Osmosis's vision is to educate more than a billion clinicians and caregivers by 2025 through its best-in-class video library and learning platform.

"When I think about talent, I think about people first. Shiv is a groundbreaking entrepreneur. Education as a whole, specifically medical education, needs to change to alleviate the financial burdens and massive debt that's crushing young students across America. As these same students are digitally-native, they want convenient, cost-effective and personalized tools for learning, and Osmosis provides exactly that," said Alan Patricof, Founder and Managing Director of Greycroft.

"We are thrilled to have the support of incredible investors like Aydin and Alan as we build the most efficient and scalable learning platform for current and future health professionals," said co-founder and CEO, Shiv Gaglani. "It's particularly meaningful that this investment came as we crossed our first million subscribers on YouTube and are preparing to launch the Osmosis nursing and physician assistant offerings. We'll be able to use the funds to increase our reach within our core health professional student markets as well as expand into related allied health fields."

As Osmosis looks to the future, major goals in addition to serving one billion people by 2025 include the sustained growth of their Care for Caregivers initiative, which aims to improve the lives of caregivers and destigmatize mental illness in the medical industry, as well as Osmosis Around the World, an interactive element which allows users to see who else in the world is learning through the platform.

About Osmosis Created by medical students from Johns Hopkins and the former Khan Academy Health and Medicine team, Osmosis is a leading and rapidly growing medical education platform used by more than one million current and future health professionals, as well as patients and their family members. Osmosis's mission is to empower the world's clinicians and caregivers with the best learning experience possible. It accomplishes this through an expanding library of more than 1,300 clear and concise educational videos on everything from atrial fibrillation to Zika virus as well as a personalized learning platform that incorporates evidence-based cognitive techniques, machine learning, and gamification to make learning efficient and enjoyable. The company's vision is "Everyone who cares for someone will learn by Osmosis." 

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