Soda Health: Leveraging technology to unlock the potential of social determinants of health to address health inequities

Health disparities are an enduring challenge, none as acute as we have witnessed during the pandemic. Heightened awareness of the existing inequities in housing, access to nutritious foods and transportation have catalyzed conversations around approaches to address these basic needs in order to promote health equity.

Leaders in academia and government have developed economic and social policies and programs designed to bridge long standing health gaps. These initiatives, some of which represent tens of billions of dollars in government support, help address critical social determinants of health and provide actionable opportunities to deliver much-needed benefits. However, progress to date has been limited in delivering on these policies at scale due to key technical and infrastructure bottlenecks.

We believe technology will play a critical role in operationalizing and scaling the vast resources being invested. The combination of the size of impact and the ideal team to tackle this challenge drove our investment in Soda Health.

Our investment in Soda Health

We are delighted to join Robby Knight, CEO, along with co-founders Daryl Risinger, Jared Dauman and Chris Brown on their journey creating Soda Health in co-leading their $6M seed round. This founding team’s powerful combination of compassion, industry experience and an innovative spirit are key reasons we are supporting their ambitious mission. Whether as a social worker in the early days, or more recently leading health and consumer growth at the largest scale enterprises, this team possesses the perspectives and experiences necessary to build a solution that benefits all stakeholders.

Soda Health is addressing longstanding challenges to provide reimbursement for goods and services critical to achieving and maintaining good health but are not supported by traditional medical claims. By developing health care-centric payment and related solutions, Soda Health is working to ensure that consumers have easier access to their benefits and that health plans have a technology platform that can cost-effectively administer those benefits.

The company’s focus on building a platform to administer and reimburse benefits personalized to individual needs will provide a foundation for improved overall health across communities.

This is a win-win for all parties and leads to better health and economic outcomes. At Lightspeed, we are excited and grateful for the opportunity to partner with Soda Health.

— Ling Wong, Ravi Mhatre, Galym Imanbayev