The homepage of the company’s websitecurrently reads a shutdown notice. It says Forward is closing clinics, canceling patients’ scheduled visits and turning off its mobile app. The company wrote, “We know this news is abrupt,” and promised that its medical staff would be reachable by email until Dec. 13. Per Business Insider, Forward also shared the message with customers in a late-night email Tuesday.
Well, all the initial venture capitalists involved already “got theirs” so there’s no reason for it to exist anymore. This isn’t a failure, this is the operating model of your average SF tech start up.
“AI company shuts down”
We’re gonna read that more often in the next few years.
Months
FTFY
Once valued at 1b, it was never worth that
tech-laden “AI doctor’s office,”
For those wondering what they did,
oh so nothing
Anyone want to place bets on how much of their “AI” medical advice was just medical students and low cost doctors overseas answering questions?
Why would they use real doctors at all?
Why would there be appointments at all…?
Most likely, as with all AI as a service startups. After a certain mass of users the models can’t keep up. So to reduce the response times they pay offshore firms to have real people answer the chat. Unfortunately, doctors willing to answer a chat all day are way less numerous than cheap labor.
Could be that the AI is just vaporware they use to get funding from VCs while effectively being a normal clinic.
