The American Heart Association had never written a venture check before 2025. That changed in late September, when its Go Red for Women fund led an $11.4 million Series A into Neura Health, a telehealth neurology startup that's betting it can fix one of healthcare's most stubborn bottlenecks: getting people in front of a neurologist.
For a century-old nonprofit built on galas and peer-reviewed guidelines, the move signals something of a philosophical shift. "We've moved from purely funding research to backing companies that can deploy solutions at scale," says Lisa Suennen, managing partner at AHA Ventures. The fund's mandate—addressing cardiovascular and brain conditions that hit women harder or differently—led it to Neura, which as of September 29, 2025, claimed more than 43,000 patients across its virtual platform.
The round, which closed September 29, 2025, pushes Neura's total raise to $22 million and brings a roster of repeat backers back to the cap table: Norwest Venture Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Pear VC, and Correlation Ventures all participated again, joined by Esplanade Ventures and E12 Ventures. Most had been in since Neura's $8 million seed round in May 2023, a sign of continued conviction in a market that's proven tricky for digital health companies chasing profitability.
The Wait-Time Problem
Here's what Neura is up against: According to a study published in January 2025, if you're a Medicare patient who needs to see a neurologist, you're looking at a median wait of 34 days just to get in the door. That study in Neurology also found that nearly one in five patients waits longer than three months. For conditions like stroke recovery or undiagnosed tremors, that's not just inconvenient—it's clinically consequential.
Elizabeth Burstein and Sameer Madan founded Neura in 2020 with the pitch that virtual-first neurology could collapse those timelines. The New York-based company now promises appointments within a week, staffing board-certified neurologists who treat everything from migraines and epilepsy to dementia and post-concussion syndrome. The model leans on AI-enabled workflows—symptom tracking between visits, EHR integration, care coaching—to keep patients engaged outside the traditional 15-minute consultation window.
By late September 2025, Neura had worked its way into more than 40 commercial insurance networks, including household names like Aetna, Cigna, and Blue Shield of California. It's also in-network with Medicare, a critical piece for a specialty that skews older. Partnerships with health systems like Sentara Health let the company plug into existing referral channels, extending what a neurologist employed by the hospital can realistically handle.
Scaling in a Skeptical Market
Whether any of this pencils out financially is the question venture investors are now asking of every telehealth play. The sector's pandemic-era exuberance has given way to harder scrutiny around unit economics and reimbursement sustainability. Neura's in-network status helps—it's not burning cash on patient acquisition the way direct-to-consumer models often do—but margins in neurology aren't forgiving, and the company will need to prove it can grow without proportionally scaling headcount.
CEO Burstein says the fresh capital will fund national expansion and deeper integrations with payers and health systems. The company is also branching into new clinical areas. Memory care is the latest addition; in June, Neura partnered with Ceresti Health to deliver dementia assessments under CMS's GUIDE model, a value-based payment framework designed to keep patients out of hospitals.
The AHA's involvement adds a layer of credibility that pure venture backing can't replicate. It also underscores a broader trend: established health institutions hedging their bets on digital-native care models, perhaps more than the founders initially expected when they started pitching in 2020. Whether that institutional stamp translates to patient trust—and sustained revenue growth—is the test ahead.
For now, Neura sits at the convergence of two healthcare imperatives: expanding specialist access and proving that virtual care can deliver outcomes that payers will actually reward. The jury's still out on the second part. But the first? There's no shortage of patients waiting.
