A modern MRI machine can map the body with astonishing precision. The journey into that machine is often managed with the technological equivalent of string and tape. A physician places an order. A staff member sends a fax. An insurer may demand prior authorization. A patient calls a facility, waits, learns it is out of network, calls somewhere else, then forgets which office needed the result. The image can be exquisite. The process around it is frequently a blur.
Medmo built its company inside that blur. The New York health-technology business does not own scanners and does not interpret films. It coordinates what happens from the moment an exam is ordered until the report returns to the clinician: patient outreach, benefits checks, site selection, prior authorization, scheduling, reminders, status tracking and result retrieval. In the language of software, it is orchestration. In the language of anyone who has spent lunch on hold with a medical office, it is getting the thing done.
That distinction explains why Medmo matters. Medical imaging is not one market participant serving one customer. It is a relay among the ordering practice, patient, insurer and facility. Each holds a piece of the baton; none necessarily owns the finish line. Medmo's wager was that a company willing to own the handoffs could become more useful than another point tool added to the pile.
01 / The first failureThe order is not the outcome
Co-founder Christopher Kelly saw the problem as a physician treating underinsured patients. A scan might be clinically necessary and available nearby, yet still be practically inaccessible because the price was opaque or the route to an appointment was unclear. He and Lucas Takahashi founded Medmo in 2017 around a simple consumer promise: help people find accredited imaging at a predictable price, whether they used insurance or a negotiated self-pay rate.
The early version looked like a marketplace. Patients could ask for an MRI, CT, ultrasound or other exam, compare workable options and let a care team arrange it. Medmo said some self-pay rates could save patients as much as 80 percent. The service addressed a visible pain - the startling spread in prices for essentially the same scan - while giving independent imaging centers a way to fill unused capacity.
But the broader opportunity was upstream. By the time a consumer searches for help, a provider has already lost visibility. Staff are calling, faxing and checking portals. Patients are falling out of the process before anyone knows where. Public materials from 2019 emphasized booking affordable scans; the current product leads with enterprise referral workflow for physicians, payers and value-based care groups. That evolution is less a theatrical pivot than a widening of the unit of work: from finding an appointment to completing the care loop.
THE PRODUCT IS THE ARROW: Medmo is paid for continuity across the chain, not for operating the scanner.
02 / The productSoftware with a phone number
Medmo's offering combines a workflow platform with human care coordinators. Ordering practices can place and track referrals in a portal. The system works with electronic medical records through API connections or e-fax, so a group does not need a long integration project to begin. Once an order arrives, Medmo contacts the patient, explains nearby in-network choices, checks insurance, handles required authorization and books a suitable time. The care team remains available for questions and changes. The result is collected and routed back.
That human layer is not decorative. Scheduling an imaging exam involves exceptions that resist a tidy form: implanted devices, contrast requirements, pregnancy screening, changing insurance, claustrophobia, transportation and a calendar that belongs to a real person. Medmo uses automation to structure the work, then gives coordinators the awkward cases. Its public formulation is “AI + human in the loop,” an unfashionably practical admission that healthcare workflows cannot simply be wished into a chatbot.
“We knew the connective tissue was missing from this space.”Dr. Rob Epstein, senior healthcare adviser at Insight Partners
For the patient, Medmo says coordination is free when a provider sends the order. For an imaging center, joining the network is also free. The enterprise customers - provider groups, value-based care organizations and health plans - buy the workflow and its outcomes, though Medmo does not publish contract prices. The center receives a prepared, insured and, when necessary, pre-authorized patient. The physician gets visibility and a report. The payer can steer the exam toward an in-network, higher-value facility. The patient gets one accountable guide.
Those are company-reported results, not universal guarantees. Still, they reveal what buyers are purchasing. The economic case is not “new software is pleasant.” It is fewer abandoned orders, less scattered staff labor, fewer expensive site choices and a quicker return to follow-up care. On its current website, Medmo frames the gains slightly more conservatively in places, citing a 25 percent-plus reduction in imaging spend, 30 percent higher completion and a 95 percent reduction in staff time.
03 / The hidden billWhat does a referral cost?
The company recently offered an answer designed for operators: an unmanaged imaging referral carries an expected hidden cost of $500 to $1,400 on top of the scan. Medmo's calculation includes 20 to 30 minutes of labor spread across several employees, leakage to a more expensive hospital outpatient department and the cost of exams that never happen. A freestanding MRI might be reimbursed at $450 while the same study in a hospital outpatient setting might reach $1,800. The referral, in other words, can move a patient across a fourfold price gap without anyone treating that movement as a product decision.
This is the most copyable part of Medmo's playbook. Do not begin with a vendor demo. Pull 100 recent orders. Count staff touches, time to appointment, completion, destination and whether the report returned. Compare the intended site with the actual site. The exercise turns a diffuse annoyance into an operating baseline. A company can then automate, outsource or redesign from evidence rather than enthusiasm.
Choose a workflow with several owners and no owner. Measure the full journey, accept the incumbent channels at first, and sell completion rather than another dashboard. The wedge is accountability.
04 / The marketFrom navigation to infrastructure
Medmo raised $9 million in November 2023, led by Lerer Hippeau, after expanding across traditional primary care, multispecialty systems and virtual-health groups. Investors described growth of more than tenfold year over year. By October 2025, the company said it operated in all 50 states, served thousands of providers and had facilitated more than one million patient journeys. That month Covera Health led a $15 million Series A, joined by Origin Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Digital Health Venture Partners and Toppan Global Venture Partners.
Covera approached radiology from the opposite end. Its platform measured diagnostic performance across more than 1,100 imaging sites and helped employers and health plans route members toward centers with stronger quality. Medmo could get the patient to an exam and the result back. Covera could evaluate where the patient should go and whether the interpretation deserved confidence. One handled movement; the other, measurement.
Six months after the Series A, the companies combined into a single organization. Covera co-founder Ron Vianu remained chief executive; Takahashi became president of the combined company while continuing to lead Medmo. Insight Partners committed additional capital. Announced customers and partners across the organization included Walmart, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, major national health plans, large employers and thousands of value-based primary-care physicians. The joint platform said it covered nearly six million Americans.
The transaction clarified where Medmo fits. It is not merely a booking marketplace and not a clinical AI company. It sits in the care-management layer between an ordering clinician and the fragmented supply of radiology. Competitors can be an internal referral team, an EHR module, a benefits manager, a navigation marketplace or a prior-authorization vendor. Medmo's difference is scope: one system and service team assumes responsibility from order through result, across insurance types and facilities.
The sophisticated part was already in the room. Medmo built around everything required to get the patient into it.
05 / The limitsWhere the model bends
Referral orchestration is most valuable where the market is fragmented: many facilities, variable prices and quality, complicated benefits, thin office staffing and meaningful non-completion. It is less compelling inside a tightly integrated delivery network where scheduling, authorization, imaging and results already share one system and one accountable team. Low imaging volume also weakens the savings. So does a patient population that cannot reliably be reached by phone or digital messaging unless a local care team can bridge the gap.
The model also depends on neutrality being credible. Payers want high-value in-network sites. Physicians may have preferred facilities. Patients care about distance, timing and trust. Imaging centers want volume without surrendering control of their schedule. A coordinator that optimizes too aggressively for one participant can lose the others. Medmo's promise works only when the selected exam is clinically appropriate, affordable, convenient enough to complete and returned promptly.
There is a useful humility in that constraint. Medmo did not invent a new scan. It noticed that medicine's most advanced devices were surrounded by unfinished errands, then built a system that treats those errands as consequential. The company's path - consumer marketplace, enterprise workflow, quality-informed infrastructure - follows the growing size of the problem it agreed to own.
The reader can copy the method without touching radiology: find the expensive transaction that repeatedly fails in the handoffs. Trace what happens after someone clicks “submit.” Measure the invisible labor. Support the old channels long enough to earn adoption. Add software where patterns repeat and people where exceptions matter. Then charge the participant that benefits from completion. It is not glamorous advice. That may be why it is useful.