Sherpaa: Dumbo insurance discovery platform to get Obamacare bump

In the age of Obamacare, healthcare startups might be on a faster track to profitability than that mobile app you’re tinkering with.

The idea is that, under tougher policy, insurers will be looking to innovators to help them save money on paying for the care of their subscribers. When Wired took on the next generation of healthcare startups, one of the companies highlighted in the story was Sherpaa, a Dumbo startup working both to help employers find the right insurer and to save insurers money by providing healthcare online.

• Helps employers find the “perfect” healthcare plan
• Provides a “bill of health” for a company each year, so employers can show it to new insurers, if and when it is time to switch plans
• Consults employees about their health, accidents and prescriptions online, to savey money on more expensive in person or emergency room visits
• Provides referrals to area doctors when necessary

Sherpaa was founded by a doctor and an experienced Human Resources professional. It has three full-time doctors on staff who work with patients online. The site includes case studies for a small business, a small company and a mid-sized firm that Sherpaa’s team has helped to save money and time. Interestingly, Sherpaa convinced the largest firm on this list to go with self-insurance.

The company raised $1.85 million in equity last year, according to the SEC.

Technically Brooklyn reached out to Sherpaa to find out how much of their work matching employers to insurance plans is information technology driven and how much of it is just humans digging through paperwork, but received no answer.

You can see the MD co-founder of Sherpaa, Jay Parkinson, a former staffer at Public Citizen, in this 2011 Ted Talk, from TedxMidAtlantic, in which he explains how he started up an Internet based medical practice that worked exclusively through housecalls, which eventually evolved into what he’s doing today: