After a year of rapid growth, healthtech unicorn Ro has made yet another acquisition to bulk up its capabilities. This time, the company announced its acquisition of Kit, an early stage startup out of San Francisco that offers customizable at-home diagnostic tests. The purchase price was not disclosed.
Founded just last year, Kit partners with health insurers, self-insured employers and telehealth platforms to create at-home diagnostic kits, serving as a place where physicians can order and tweak the tests according to what a given patient needs. The tests, which are self-administered by the patient, include everything from finger prick blood assays to blood pressure tests, and are analyzed at Kit’s own certified lab. Patients and providers are then notified as soon as results are ready.
Although this in-network model appears to be in contrast with Ro’s typical direct-to-consumer approach, Ro CEO and co-founder Zachariah Reitano says this merger will provide “unrivaled convenience” for patients, turning everyone’s home into the “exam room of the future.”
“Kit has built their own lab and a magical patient experience for the self-collection of important health data — from blood tests to saliva to blood pressure,” Reitano continued in a statement. “With Kit, we are adding another essential piece to our vertically integrated primary care platform.”
Ro has come a long way from when it started selling erectile dysfunction medication and men’s hair loss supplements just three years ago. The NYC-based company has since built out an entire healthcare system, handling everything from diagnosis to medication delivery to ongoing care through both telehealth and at-home services.
To date, Ro has raised more than $876 million, including, most recently, a $500 million Series D that valued the company at a reported $5 billion. While it still offers men’s health services, Ro also now offers women’s health services, treatments to help people quit smoking, weight loss management solutions and its own pharmacy.
In May, the company added reproductive health to its expanding list of services after it bought Modern Fertility for an estimated $225 million, according to Axios. Just six months before that, Ro also acquired Workpath, an in-home care company that sends professionals to patients’ homes to conduct diagnostic tests. Reitano added that, in light of the acquisition, the Workpath service will eventually be combined with Kit’s to either send a healthcare professional or test kit to a patient’s home with “the click of a button.”
Now, Ro-affiliated providers will be able to order Kit diagnostic tests for their patients directly through Ro’s platform, providing care for a variety of health conditions. And now that Ro has access to Kit’s lab, patients will be able to discuss their lab results with a doctor virtually through Ro’s telehealth service. The overall goal is to help patients detect health issues earlier and manage their health more efficiently.
Going forward, Kit will still operate autonomously from Ro, according to the company, while continuing to serve its existing B2B customers like insurance firms and other digital health companies. Meanwhile, Ro is in the midst of growing its team, with more than 30 open tech positions available at its NYC headquarters.
This acquisition is coming at a time when at-home diagnostics in general has really been heating up. This year, LetsGetChecked and Austin-based Everlywell — two leading companies in the space — each raised nine-figure VC rounds to keep up with unprecedented demand. Kit, meanwhile, has only raised about $3 million in seed funding. But co-founders Philip Fung and Erik Salazar seem confident that this merger with Ro will be a game-changer for the burgeoning industry.
“We started Kit to create a seamless and reliable at-home testing experience for patients. While we focused first on scaling with enterprise organizations, our vision has always been to bring affordable routine medical care into as many patients’ homes as possible,” Fung and Salazar said in a joint statement. “Joining Ro will accelerate this vision and allow us to create a turn-key diagnostics API for companies, vastly reducing the direction of patient testing and transitioning more healthcare services from responsive to preventative.”
