OnMed, a company that developed an innovative way to provide medical checkups almost anywhere, inked a new partnership to expand its CareStations to 30 charter schools as part of an initial pilot.
In partnership with 22Beacon, OnMed will launch the Public Charter School Health Equity Initiative, bringing OnMed's CareStation kiosks to charter schools across 22Beacon's portfolio network with plans to expand the pilot into a national offering, executives said.
22Beacon, formerly Charter Schools Development Corporation, is a nonprofit organization that provides schools with real estate and investment resources.
The ultimate goal is to establish the model as a standard for charter schools using proven impact data, executives said. The funding model leverages public-private partnerships, grants and philanthropy, making it cost-free to schools while ensuring sustainability, the companies said.
"22Beacon's portfolio represents over $1 billion in charter school real estate across 31 states," said Alan Washington, president and CEO of 22Beacon, in a statement. "As a national nonprofit, our existing infrastructure eliminates typical barriers to implementation, allowing us to move quickly to serve communities that need healthcare access most urgently."
Through the partnership, the CareStations will be available to students during the school day, with extended hours for families and community members, supporting both insured and uninsured patients. All medical information is protected with HIPAA-compliant privacy standards, and parents maintain full control over their children's healthcare decisions, the companies said.
The partnership combines 22Beacon's real estate infrastructure with OnMed's proven CareStation technology, according to Karthik Ganesh, CEO of OnMed.
"Schools are already trusted anchors in communities," he said in a statement. "This partnership empowers them to address one of the biggest barriers to student success, which is healthcare access. We're creating a scalable model that brings care directly to those who need it most."
OnMed's CareStations are currently contracted across seven states and Puerto Rico, with plans to significantly expand the footprint in 2026.
The company believes its CareStations, or what some refer to as "clinics-in-a-box," are helping to address limited care access across the U.S., an issue that is expected to worsen with a shortage of primary care providers. Demand for care is projected to increase due to demographic shifts as more individuals turn 65 and the growing prevalence of chronic conditions.
"More than 120 million Americans lack adequate access to viable care, 80% of U.S. counties are considered care deserts," Ganesh told Fierce Healthcare. "If we thought of healthcare as a core utility, and it really should be thought of as such, if we said 120 million Americans had rolling power blackouts, or we said 80% of our counties had inconsistent running water, that would really not be good, to put it very mildly. Access to healthcare, it doesn't get much more personal than that."
OnMed, a Fierce 50 2025 honoree, has developed a tech-enabled hybrid care model, combining the comfort of in-person care with the scalability of telemedicine, Ganesh said.
The CareStations, 8-by-10-foot facilities, provide comprehensive diagnostic tools and a private environment. When a patient steps into a soundproof CareStation and the door closes, the glass walls fog up, providing instant privacy. Hitting a start button on a 65-inch screen reveals a life-sized nurse practitioner who conducts the examination via telemedicine. The OnMed CareStation is equipped with advanced diagnostics, real-time scans and vital sign monitoring such as pulse oximeters, blood pressure cuffs and a floor scale to capture the patient's weight.
A heat camera with thermal imaging records the patient’s temperature and checks for chest congestion. To take a closer look, a high-definition camera comes down from the ceiling and can be manipulated by the patient under the nurse’s direction. The nurse can also examine a patient’s eyes, ears and throat, OnMed executives told Fierce Pharma's Kevin Dunleavy earlier this year.
Everything from infections, respiratory problems, allergies, heartburn and headaches can be detected. About 85% of OnMed's patients do not need a specialist referral, which means most patients are getting their medical needs met by using the CareStations, Ganesh noted. After the clinical visit, patients can get a medication prescription sent to their local pharmacy or a follow-up referral to see a specialist.
Afterward, the station cleans itself with spray and air filtration, while ultraviolet light disinfects the station and its instruments.
"I'm not a big believer in this whole line of conversation around 'Well, if we had to go back and change the healthcare system, how would we do it?' It's a bogus question. You don't go back and redo a $5 trillion system. You take what's working, amplify it, and you neutralize what isn't," Ganesh said. "That's what we've tried doing with OnMed. We've taken the comprehensiveness, the psychological comfort of a clinic, an in-person setting, traditional care, if you will, and we've married it with a rapid scalability that telemedicine brings to the table to create tech-enabled hybrid care."
OnMed aims to expand into underserved communities and schools, reducing emergency room visits and chronic absenteeism. And the company sees opportunities to expand in rural health communities.
The company has placed its CareStations in a range of settings—from a prison in Texas and a senior center in Nevada to an international airport in Connecticut. In Florida, they are installed in a homeless shelter in Tampa and a youth center in Miami. Other locations include South Carolina State University and the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, executives said during an interview for the Fierce 50.
Ganesh said data backs up OnMed's model and how it is bridging the care access gap.
Among OnMed's users, 50% said they would have otherwise gone to the ER or urgent care and 37% of patients have returned to use the CareStations again.
"Seventy-eight percent of our patients tell us that we are their medical home. They have no place else to go. They don't go to a PCP. We have a 4.96 out of 5 satisfaction score," he said.
From contract to deployment, a CareStation can be fully operational in just 30 days, according to OnMed executives. And they claim the solution can be deployed for a fraction of the cost of in-office clinics, which can cost upwards of $2.5 million to build and run, without the need for in-office staff.
OnMed generates revenue through partnerships and sponsorship deals, in which entities such as governments, providers and universities cover the cost of patient visits. The company partners with payers, providers, government agencies, employers and educational institutions. OnMed has received support through grants and private equity funding, including most recently from Washington, D.C.-based JSL Health Capital.
As demand for care increases and providers face a shortage, the healthcare system continues to rely on solutions—either brick-and-mortar clinics or telehealth—that don't address the gap in accessing care, Ganesh noted.
"Look at the brick and mortar modality, the in-person clinic-based setting, it's too expensive to stand up, too expensive to run, we're running out of clinicians. It's frustrating because there is no policy that's coming through to change that dynamic. One in five Americans has suboptimal broadband and with no vitals, no scans, no biometrics. You're looking at a virtual care or a telemedicine modality that really doesn't feel like a clinical visit. Let's call it a clinical phone-a-friend," he said. "Those are the only two modalities of care that exist to satisfy a growing demand for care. And that's where OnMed comes in."
OnMed also signaled its intentions to the public via a SPAC deal in 2026. In October, the company announced it had entered into a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) with Berto Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded special-purpose acquisition company, to pursue a potential business combination that would take the company public.
"We are excited to partner with the Berto team because of their significant experience and success in scaling tech-enabled infrastructure solutions," Ganesh said in a statement.
Speaking to Fierce Healthcare, Ganesh said, "There is no doubt that a public company has significantly greater credibility than a private one. All of the financial and the regulatory rigor that you have to go through just sets you up and positions you very differently, both in the eyes of the market and quite frankly, in terms of your own operational discipline. We believe we are ready. We believe OnMed is an answer that is here to stay and it needs to scale significantly across the country and beyond. We believe setting ourselves up as a public company gives us that foothold to be able to leapfrog and do the things we need to do."
"OnMed has the financial and business characteristics we like to see for the companies we have taken public—strong growth, an emerging free cash flow positive model, an IP-protected platform, and a massive addressable market with the potential to be extended further by cutting-edge technologies like AI," Harry You, chairman of Berto Acquisition Corp., said in a statement.
Ganesh said OnMed's solution is an "infrastructure play." "This is not a health tech conversation. It's not a healthcare service conversation. This is a healthcare access infrastructure conversation. There is an entire layer of health access infrastructure that is missing in our country."
Too many patients show up at the emergency department even for non-emergent needs, or even skip getting care because of the lack of access points, he said.
"We would like to see OnMed's CareStations optimally deployed in every single zip code in America, where it either becomes the point of care for those 85% where we can take care of them within the CareStation, or it becomes the point of triage where the patient gets triaged and then gets appropriately routed to the right point of care delivery. That missing layer is resulting in people just skipping past it and going to step number two, and as a result, we're choking our resources."