Uber’s massive popularity and insanely high valuation has spawned a countless number of startups looking to bring on-demand services to a variety of fields. Some are industry changing, others are time-saving, and a few are potentially life-saving.

One such startup is Chicago-based Go2Nurse, an app that provides people in need with a healthcare professional on-demand. With 225 registered nurses on the platform, Go2Nurse lets you request service to your home and pay within the app. Go2Nurse is designed for individuals or their care-takers to have immediate access to a healthcare professional.

“It occurred to us that you could come up with a pretty good business by emulating a lot about Uber and Uber’s business model, but do it for connecting nurses to patients,” said co-founder Edward Ben-Alec.

But Go2Nurse does more than just send a nurse to your door, Ben-Alec said. Patients can also chat with nurses and doctors through the app, potentially saving a trip to the hospital for less pressing issues. The app also has a built in translator that can take spoken english and repeat the phrase out loud in spanish. And the app has its own electronic medical records system, allowing nurses to input patient information and observations.

Additionally, users can request a wheelchair accessible vehicle on-demand, driven by a registered nurse or CNA.

The company launched its pilot program last year with Southland Care Coordination Partners, where Go2Nurse had access to the south suburban organization’s roughly 1,000 patients. Go2Nurse is on the verge of closing a deal with another Chicago organization that’s “part of a large, well-known medical group” in Chicago, which will expand its potential user base to 25,000, said Ben-Alec. He declined to name the organization as the deal is yet to be finalized. Go2Nurse’s users come both from partnering with healthcare organizations and attracting individual users, but forming connections with hospitals greatly extends the startup’s reach Ben-Alec said.

Go2Nurse costs $37.50 an hour for individuals, and is priced less for patients in its partnering healthcare organizations. Users can pay out of pocket or through insurance, Medicaid or Medicare, Ben-ALec said.

And, like how Uber creates a revenue stream for drivers, Go2Nurse acts similarly for nurses. Independent nurses sign up for the service, are vetted and background checked by Go2Nurse, and can begin offering services on their own time. It gives more flexibility to nurses, many of which get burned out by the demands of working in a hospital or opt to leave the field to care for their children, Ben-Alec said. Through Go2Nurse they can answer patient questions from home, and make house calls when they’re available.

“2.5 million nurses are licensed and don’t practice their profession,” Ben-Alec said. “Nurses have the ability to control their work environment much better (with Go2Nurse). They can do work from home. They can go out into the community and help patients. All without having to deal with an HR person at a hospital.”

There are other startups offering similar services around the country, like Pager in New York City and Medicast in Miami and areas of southern California. Both startups provide doctor’s on-demand.

Ben-Alec and his co-founder Meg Kubiak have so far put in $250,000 of their own money into the app, which is now generating revenue, Ben-Alec said. The company is currently looking to raise a $1 million round from outside investors.

Go2Nurse expects to have the partnership with the larger healthcare organization finalized by the summer.

“It appears to us that the upside for what we are doing, provided we can scale easily, is something like Uber’s,” he said. “It’s an enormous market, it’s funded by the government or insurance companies, and it’s filling a need that’s imperative.”

Image via Go2Nurses