‘Quora for cancer’ startup theMednet raises $1.3 million in seed funding

TheMednet launched out of Y Combinator earlier this year to bring physicians a sophisticated platform for finding the best in treatment research, starting with cancer. It has now raised $1.3 million in seed funding to help it reach even more of those physicians.

The funding comes from Endure Capital, Lumia Capital, The Hope Foundation, The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and a bunch of angel investors, including Quora’s Charlie Cheever, Scribd’s Jared Friedman, YC partner Paul Buchheit, Peter He and Science’s Peter Pham.

Co-founders Nadine Housri, a radiation oncologist, and her brother, CEO Samir Housri, told TechCrunch previously theMednet had raised some grant funding and equity funding from YC and The Hope Foundation.

Why does this startup matter so much? Doctors generally practice in small groups and depend on their networks for advice. However, doctors are limited by their own, closed network. Opening up that network to a strong group of thousands of physicians helps them connect dots and gain expert information they may not have had access to before.

“People are focused on pure data to answer questions on how to treat cancer. But data isn’t the same as knowledge. It has to be filtered by clinical experience and expertise to be applied to patients,” Samir says. “We are exposing doctors to the strongest networks, so experts are right down the hall, just like in academic centers.”

TheMednet is similar to apps like Figure1 and Uptodate in that it brings up expert commentary on various cases. At current count, there are more than 4,000 oncologists on the platform, including 500 experts, and theMednet says 25 percent of oncologists in the United States have used the platform so far. Faculty from academic cancer centers also moderate the content sort of like Redditors, but with a background in cancer treatment.

TheMednet now plans to use the money to grow that community, reach at least 50 percent of oncologists throughout the country, expand the product past Q&A and to use technology to curate the right information doctors need to stay on top.