SAN FRANCISCO—Ferry Health launched out of stealth with an AI personal assistant that handles healthcare tasks for patients, starting with finding a medical provider and getting an appointment. The company said it has raised $9 million in seed funding from a variety of donors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Index Ventures, Avid Ventures, Layout Ventures, SV Angel, Box Group and Asymmetric Capital.
"When we were dealing with my dad's care after a hospitalization, we saw firsthand how much of the burden falls on patients and their families in between visits to the doctor's office," said Mehul Mehta, CEO and cofounder of Ferry. "Finding specialists, understanding costs, dealing with insurance all required countless phone calls back and forth. It all adds up to a serious hurdle for people trying to access healthcare, and we saw an opportunity to rebuild the patient's experience with agentic AI."
Mehta said that experience inspired him to launch Ferry in early 2024, alongside his brother Keyur Mehta and longtime friend Andrew Buie. "We talked to hundreds of patients, and decided to first tackle the most common frustration we heard—finding and scheduling care," Mehta added.
For most patients, booking care means hours on the phone. Insurance directories are out of date, hold times stretch on and many calls are dead ends with providers who have retired or are no longer accepting new patients. Ferry's AI agents make those calls for patients instead. Ferry identifies in-network providers, calls to validate location details, subspecialty fit and availability and ultimately books an appointment for the patient. Patients simply message Ferry and get scheduled with the provider of their choosing, without ever picking up the phone.
"It felt like I had a team of 10 taking care of us," said Jeremy Zhang, who uses Ferry to help manage his mother's medical care. "My mom had orthopedic symptoms she might otherwise have ignored. When getting an appointment takes almost no effort, it's much easier to address a health issue instead of putting it off."
Through partnerships with health systems, insurers and care navigation platforms, Mehta said Ferry is helping patients find and schedule care across all specialties and in all 50 states. From finding a doctor to following through on a referral, Ferry handles all of the logistics.