Google and Uber alums have created a doctor's office that's like an Apple Store meets 'Westworld'

August 30, 2017

Google and Uber alums have created a doctor's office that's like an Apple Store meets 'Westworld' — and it's expanding nationwide

forward medical office startup 14

Forward, a futuristic take on the popular concierge medical practice model, has raised $100 million and is expanding nationwide, BuzzFeed News has learned.

Launched in January, Forward is the product of several dozen veterans of Google, Facebook, Uber, and Palantir getting together to reinvent the doctor's office. Its flagship location in San Francisco looks like an Apple Store meets "Westworld," complete with state-of-the-art diagnostics tools and an AI system that listens and takes notes for physicians.

The company is expanding outside its hometown with locations in other cities and a mobile doctor's office, built on an 18-foot-long trailer bed. The truck will roll through San Francisco until early September, when it leaves for other cities.

I toured Forward's location in San Francisco earlier this year. Here's what it was like.

This is how Silicon Valley does the doctor's office.

In 2015, Aoun was riding his bike to Google's offices in Menlo Park — where he worked on artificial intelligence and ran the special projects division at Alphabet — when he got a call.

"Don't freak out, but I'm having a heart attack," his thirty-something relative said over the sounds of sirens blaring. "I'm in an ambulance on my way to the hospital. So what do I do?"

After months of doctor appointments, phone calls with billing offices and insurance companies, and countless hours spent on Google trying to figure out what all the jargon meant, Aoun became frustrated by how difficult the healthcare system was to navigate.

"Doctors are kind of awesome. They're incredibly smart. They're crazy well-educated. They mean well," Aoun told Business Insider. "But the problem is, they're totally set up for failure."

"It's kind of not their fault as much as, I would actually argue, it's my fault," he said. "[If I'm] representing the engineering community, we totally dropped the ball."

His relative's near-death experience was an eye-opener, Aoun told Business Insider. He set out to make the healthcare system more predictable, consistent, and convenient.

He assembled a team of some of the most brilliant minds in Silicon Valley, including one of his cofounders, Ilya Abyzov, an early Uber employee who helped launch UberX.

Founded in 2016, Forward makes over every touch point in healthcare. The company's engineers built things like diagnostics tools and a mobile app that patients use to book appointments. The technology creates a better user experience for members and their doctors, according to Aaliya Yaqub, a Forward physician and Facebook Health Center alumna.

Forward's vision has made an impression on venture capitalists. Its investors include Khosla Ventures, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Benioff.