A high-tech San Francisco Bay Area healthcare startup has failed, and its closure is absolutely dripping with irony.
Forward Health started about a decade ago with a dream of using AI and other high-tech solutions to revolutionize primary care.
At the front entrance of their location in San Jose, California, in the Silicon Valley’s Westfield Valley Fair Mall, they had a giant sign that read: “Technology has changed everything except your doctor’s office. Until now.”
Apparently, technology wasn’t able to change the doctor’s office after all.
When the Bay Area Telegraph recently visited, we found a notice on the door at Forward stating that the company had failed to pay its rent.
Additional reporting has confirmed that, despite raising over $100 million last year, Forward has failed and is closing.
It’s not even clear exactly what happened to Forward. As their extremely bold sign suggests, though, the medical space is notoriously difficult to change. New technology like AI often impacts the doctor’s office last.
It’s 2024, and some doctors—even in tech-heavy San Francisco—are still using paper medical records!
The idea that a startup could come in and change this landscape dramatically—as the now highly ironic sign suggested—seems to have been more an example of tech industry hubris than a real possibility.
Left out in the cold are Forward’s patients, who now have only a few weeks to find a new primary care provider after the abrupt closure.
It’s an unfortunate fate for a company whose idea was ultimately good. But it also illustrates an unfortunate truth: not much is going to change in the medical space quickly, not even today’s newfangled AI.
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This is particularly ironic given that a study reported in the New York Times recently concluded that AI can diagnose and suggest effective treatments for an illness much better than either a doc on their own or a doc with access to AI can. You’d think that, this being the case, Forward Health would thrive. Instead, they’re kaput. Sometimes a company comes up with a great idea — a little too early. Or it could just be that whoever is at the helm doesn’t know how to run a business.