Digital health · Telehealth
HeyDoctor
A text-message primary care app built by a family doctor and a lawyer, bought by GoodRx in 2019 for $14.3 million in cash and renamed GoodRx Care. Its software now belongs to another company, and its old name survives mainly in a federal complaint.
No video, no waiting room, under twenty dollars
In November 2017 a small San Francisco company shipped an app that did something most telemedicine companies would not. It skipped the video call.
A patient opened the app, picked a condition, answered a short set of questions, and waited. A board-certified physician on HeyDoctor’s own in-house team read the answers and, if appropriate, sent a prescription to a pharmacy. Most consultations cost less than $20. The service list was narrow: urinary tract infections, acne, birth control, cold sores, smoking cessation, HIV testing, cholesterol panels, blood typing.
“so much time is wasted in traditional healthcare,” co-founder Brendan Levy told HIT Consultant that month. “I’ve had patients sit for hours in a waiting room for basic issues that required only a couple of minutes.”
It launched in 19 states, with ten more promised inside 90 days.
The gap it picked
The bet was not that Americans wanted better medicine. It was that a large slice of primary care is administrative, that the administration is expensive, and that the cost falls hardest on the uninsured.
Telemedicine in 2017 was built around the video visit, which recreates the appointment and its cost structure. HeyDoctor went the other way: asynchronous text, a fixed low price, no insurance billing, and a tight list of conditions assessable from a questionnaire and a lab result. Telehealth & Telecare Aware, reviewing the app that November, named the weakness: misdiagnosis, identity verification over text, and no photo upload for a service treating acne. Those conditions, the reviewer wrote, are not hangnails.
A family doctor and a lawyer
Levy is a Georgetown-trained, board-certified family medicine physician. Rohit Malhotra is a San Francisco developer and attorney. They founded the company at the beginning of 2017 with what HIT Consultant reported as the goal of finding a way “to make healthcare suck less.”
The company incorporated in Delaware as Sappira Inc. Its only Form D on record, filed November 28, 2018, covers an offering of rights to acquire securities with a first sale on October 23, 2017: $2,345,802 offered, $2,345,802 sold, 32 accredited investors, no commissions. Three related persons are listed and none is a venture fund: Malhotra and Levy as executive officers, directors and promoters, and Kyle Alwyn, the director of engineering, as a director. By the time Y Combinator listed the company in its Summer 2018 batch, the team had reached 50.
Bought in April, announced in September
On September 26, 2019, GoodRx announced it had acquired HeyDoctor and was launching a service called GoodRx Care, powered by it. Terms were not disclosed. Doug Hirsch declined to give Business Insider a number, and the outlet reported a PitchBook valuation of about $1.7 million as of mid-2018.
The deal had closed five months earlier. GoodRx’s registration statement, filed August 28, 2020 ahead of its IPO, records the acquisition of 100 percent of Sappira Inc. on April 18, 2019 for $14.3 million in cash, $1.4 million of it in escrow until October 18, 2020.
Of $14,259,000 in consideration, $9,305,000 became goodwill. Identifiable technology was valued at $3.1 million on a four-year life. Separately, GoodRx issued 1,878,588 restricted shares to certain HeyDoctor employees, fair value $3.88 each, or $7.3 million, vesting over four years and excluded from the price as retention pay.
The doctors stayed legally separate. State corporate practice of medicine laws require physicians to own the clinical entity, so HeyDoctor managed professional service corporations rather than employing clinicians. GoodRx consolidated them as variable interest entities. From April 18 to December 31, 2019 they produced $1.3 million of revenue and a net loss of $1.6 million.
What happened to the thing they built
Growth came fast. By September 17, 2020 GoodRx said HeyDoctor by GoodRx was live in all 50 states and Washington DC, its in-house provider network seeing more than 1,000 patients a day. In 2021 the name was retired and the service became GoodRx Care.
Then GoodRx sold the software. An 8-K filed November 10, 2022 discloses an asset purchase agreement selling GoodRx’s backend virtual care technology to Wheel Health, Inc. for $19.5 million in cash, with a license back so GoodRx could keep running GoodRx Care on it. About 20 employees were offered roles at Wheel. GoodRx got more for the record system and clinical tooling than it paid for the whole company three years earlier.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Acquisition terms | S-1, Aug 2020: 100% of Sappira Inc. acquired Apr 18, 2019 for $14,259,000 cash. Allocation: cash $1,653,000; other tangible assets $464,000; liabilities assumed $(486,000); intangibles $4,200,000; deferred tax liability $(877,000); goodwill $9,305,000. | Public record |
| Announced versus filed | Announced Sep 26, 2019 with terms undisclosed, five months after close. Business Insider cited a PitchBook valuation of about $1.7 million as of mid-2018. The figure surfaced only in the Aug 2020 S-1. | Reported differs from filed |
| Retention equity | 1,878,588 restricted shares to certain HeyDoctor employees, $3.88 grant-date fair value, $7.3 million, four-year vest, booked as post-combination expense. | Public record |
| The medical practices | Physician-owned professional service corporations, consolidated by GoodRx as variable interest entities. Revenue $1.3M, net loss $(1.6)M, Apr 18 to Dec 31, 2019. | Public record |
| Scale before the sale | More than 100,000 consultations since the 2017 launch. All 50 states and DC by Sep 2020, more than 1,000 patients a day. | Company-stated |
| FTC and DOJ action | Complaint filed Feb 1, 2023 against GoodRx Holdings, Inc., “also d/b/a GoodRx Gold, GoodRx Care, HeyDoctor, and HeyDoctor by GoodRx.” It alleges HeyDoctor configured a Facebook pixel in 2018 that shared treatment page URLs naming conditions, and that a “HIPAA Secure. Patient Data Protected.” seal sat on the HeyDoctor homepage from April to September 2019. Consent order Feb 17, 2023; $1.5M penalty; permanent ban on sharing health data for ads. | Public record |
| The technology today | 8-K, Nov 10, 2022: backend technology sold to Wheel Health, Inc. for $19.5M cash with a license back. Every 10-K since calls GoodRx Care “principally supported by Wheel Health, Inc.’s” technology and clinicians. | Public record |
| What it earns | Telehealth sits inside Other revenue: $12.6M (2020), $18.8M (2021), $20.4M (2022), $20.1M (2023), $21.0M (2024), $17.7M (2025). In 2025 that was 2% of company revenue, down 16%. | Public record |
| Clinical evidence | No peer-reviewed outcome study found in PubMed as of Sep 23, 2026. No FDA record, registered trial, NIH award or NSF award. | Not found |
| Which YC batch | Y Combinator’s directory lists Summer 2018. A 2026 bio on Levy’s current company site says YC S17. | Bio differs from directory |
Read plainly: the operating record is solid and the clinical record is empty. HeyDoctor showed that asynchronous, cash-pay primary care could reach all 50 states and a thousand visits a day inside four years. Nobody has published whether the care was any good. The FTC complaint is the closest thing to an outside examination of it, and it is not a flattering one.
What to watch
- Whether Other revenue keeps falling. 2025 was its first decline.
- Whether telehealth moves out of Other revenue. Condition-specific subscriptions launched June 2025 and a $39 a month weight loss subscription in November 2025 both bundle the clinician visit into subscription revenue.
- The Wheel arrangement. GoodRx does not own the software GoodRx Care runs on, and the license is not public.
- Compliance filings under the 2023 consent order.
- Levy’s next attempt. He led the medical groups at Lemonaid Health and Hims & Hers, and now co-founds an AI-first primary care practice.
In their words
“so much time is wasted in traditional healthcare. I’ve had patients sit for hours in a waiting room for basic issues that required only a couple of minutes.”
Brendan Levy, MD, co-founder, HIT Consultant, November 2017 · Independent
“We think that security’s obviously paramount”
Brendan Levy, MD, to MedCity News, November 2017 · Independent
“If you want to make it affordable, you have to take more control of the process.”
Doug Hirsch, co-founder, GoodRx, Business Insider, 2019 · Independent
“on the smaller side, mostly because Americans right now are just waking up to this idea of online medical visits”
Doug Hirsch, on the new service’s revenue, Business Insider, 2019 · Independent
“GoodRx has been the perfect launchpad for HeyDoctor to grow its services and reach, and with GoodRx’s prescription discounts, we’re able to make it an even more affordable option for Americans.”
Brendan Levy, MD, executive medical director, GoodRx release, 2020 · Company release
“We are excited to see how Wheel continues to leverage the amazing tools our team developed.”
Doug Hirsch, on the Wheel sale, MobiHealthNews, 2022 · Company statement
“Digital health companies and mobile apps should not cash in on consumers’ extremely sensitive and personally identifiable health information.”
Samuel Levine, Director, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection, February 2023 · Public record
“We do not agree with the FTC’s allegations and we admit no wrongdoing”
GoodRx press release, quoted by The Markup, February 2023 · Company statement
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm D, Sappira Inc., CIK 0001756047
- Public recordGoodRx Holdings Form S-1
- Public recordGoodRx Form 8-K, Wheel Health asset sale
- Public recordGoodRx Holdings Form 10-K, fiscal 2025
- Public recordUnited States v. GoodRx Holdings, complaint, 23-cv-460
- Public recordGoodRx ordered to pay civil penalties
- IndependentHeyDoctor app lets doctors prescribe via text
- IndependentHeyDoctor, your diagnosis via text
- IndependentGoodRx acquires HeyDoctor
- IndependentGoodRx launches virtual care tool
- IndependentWheel to buy GoodRx backend tech for $19.5M
- IndependentThe FTC takes on telehealth data sharing
- CompanyGoodRx expands telehealth nationwide
- CompanyGoodRx launches $39 weight loss subscription
- CompanyHeyDoctor directory record, Summer 2018, acquired
- CompanyTeam page, Brendan Levy after GoodRx
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
