For $149 a Month, the Doctor Will See You as Often as You Want

Rachel Metz | MIT Technology Review | January 17, 2017

A health-care startup is using fancy digs, fitness trackers, and a membership fee to change doctor visits.

Forward’s rethinking of the doctor’s office includes lots of touch screens, white walls, and wood accents. Imagine if your doctor’s office was more like an Apple Store mashed up with a fancy gym: a modern white-and-wood aesthetic, replete with fancy gadgets and gleaming touch screens, for which you paid a monthly fee to visit as often as you wished. That’s the environment I stepped into last week upon entering the new medical clinic belonging to San Francisco health startup Forward, which opened to the public on Tuesday in the city’s Financial District.

Forward combines a variety of services—you can get help with your high cholesterol, a pap smear, and a vaccine for an upcoming overseas trip—with data gathered both at the office and, via wearable gadgets and Forward’s smartphone app, at home. The clinic has a built-in pharmacy; the first round of any drugs your Forward doctor prescribes is free. And blood tests that can be performed and quickly analyzed on site are included, too, as are any wearable gadgets the doc wants to send home with you. It does not accept health insurance.

Forward founder and CEO Adrian Aoun says the startup wants to change how patients approach going to the doctor. Most people just make an appointment when they’re sick or have a weird rash. But while you may see a doctor once or twice a year, “your body hasn’t stopped caring about its health in between,” he notes. It’s concierge medicine, Silicon Valley style, for $149 a month. Forward’s exam rooms are sleek and modern, with a large touch screen on one wall that doctors use to go over patients’ information...