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Abridge Series B | WebMD Taps Freshpaint October 30, 2023
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Together with
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“Part of our central thesis is that clinicians need to be in the cockpit with us. The only way we can continue to actually take care of people and not paperwork is by having clinicians help drive that innovation.”
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Abridge COO Julia Chapin
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Momentum makes magic, and few startups have more of it than AI medical scribe Abridge after landing $30M in Series B funding from Spark Capital and high-profile strategics like CVS Health, Kaiser Permanente, and Mayo Clinic.
Abridge’s generative AI platform converts patient-provider conversations into structured note drafts in real-time, slashing hours from administrative burdens by generating summaries that rarely require further input (clinicians edit less than 9%).
The Series B is one of this year’s largest raises for pure play healthcare AI, an area that now accounts for about a quarter of all capital flowing into health IT.
One of the reasons why investors are taking such a keen interest in Abridge is its partnership hot streak, which includes Epic bringing them on as the first startup in its new Partners and Pals program – a move that will make Abridge available directly within Epic’s EHR.
- It also probably doesn’t hurt that Abridge isn’t shy about sharing its performance data and machine learning research, giving it one of the deepest publication libraries of any company we’ve ever covered.
- On top of that, Abridge has been racking up a lengthy list of deployments at health systems such as UPMC, Emory Healthcare, and University of Kansas Health System.
The competition is fierce in the AI scribe arena, which is packed with hungry startups like Suki and Nabla, as well as a thousand-pound gorilla named Nuance Communications.
- Half a million doctors use Nuance’s DAX dictation software, with “thousands” more already up-and-running on its new fully-automated DAX Copilot.
Some key differentiators give Abridge and its user base of 5,000 clinicians a solid shot at closing the distance, including “linkages” that map everything in the note to its source in both the transcript and audio (Nuance provides the transcript but not the recording).
- Abridge also developed its own ASR stack (automatic speech recognition), enabling it to do things like account for new medication names and excel at multilingual documentation, meaning it can generate an English note from a Spanish conversation.
The Takeaway
Abridge is emerging as a standout in the clinical documentation race, with DNA that’s as healthcare-native as it is AI-native. The executive team is lined with practicing physicians and machine learning experts, giving Abridge an advantageous understanding of not only the technology, but also the hurdles it will take for that technology to take hold in healthcare.
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- WebMD Taps Freshpaint For Data Privacy: WebMD is tapping Freshpaint to help its payor and provider clients step up their data privacy compliance with web tracking technologies, an area that’s top of mind following the FTC and HHS’ recent warning on the security risks of tracking tech such as pixels. Freshpaint aims to tie together patient privacy and digital marketing by preventing protected health information from ever being shared with tools that aren’t HIPAA-compliant, as well as de-identifying individual visitors to enable performance reporting.
- Complexity Is the Enemy of Access: A short-and-sweet JAMA Viewpoint laid out how complexity in healthcare is a growing threat to patient access. About half of consumers say they don’t understand some aspect of their coverage, including a third who rarely understand what costs their plan covers. The article argues that the regulatory structure already exists to require understandable explanations of benefits, but what’s missing is effective enforcement and support for consumers to navigate the “complex labyrinth” of the US health system.
- Hesitation Sharing SDOH Data: New findings from the ONC show that Americans are more comfortable with providers sharing their clinical data than social determinants of health data. Based on the latest Health Information National Trends Survey, a large share of patients still aren’t comfortable sharing information related to transportation (38%), food instability (41%), or housing insecurity (43%) – even for treatment purposes. That stacks up to just 29% for clinical data.
- Greater Good Series A: Senior-focused primary care provider Greater Good Health closed a $20M Series A round to fund the opening of its first clinics. Greater Good partners with payors and providers to help them transition to risk-based contracts, leveraging a nurse practitioner-led model and value-based incentives to address the country’s serious shortage of PCPs.
- Disconnect on Care Orchestration: A Lumeon survey uncovered a disconnect on how providers plan to improve perioperative care before, during, and after surgery. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of nursing and surgical chiefs believe that automating perioperative workflows would open up time for better care, yet only 36% of CEOs and financial chiefs agreed. That could be because of the latter group’s closer focus on their organization’s resource constraints, with over half citing IT budget and staffing challenges as barriers.
- RadiantGraph Launch: RadiantGraph launched with $5M in seed funding to improve the percentage of employees that actually use their health benefits, which currently stands at an abysmal ~10% share. The RadiantGraph platform uses AI to translate data such as medication history, biometrics, and clinical information into personalized engagement journeys and member-specific communications.
- Investment Down 33% In Q3: CB Insights’ State of Digital Health Q3’23 Report provided more confirmation that the digital health funding environment is in a tough spot, with Q3’s total investment count (247) representing a 33% quarterly drop to its lowest level in nearly a decade. Despite the slowdown, median round size is only down 5% YTD due to stability in early-stage investments, which comprise 64% of the quarterly total and have only seen their median size slide by 4% (vs. -29% for mid-stage and -17% for late-stage).
- GenAI Shifts Investment Strategies: On a similar note, GSR Ventures’ annual digital health market survey wrapped some numbers around how generative AI is shaking up investment strategies. Most healthcare investors are taking the middle ground, with 71% reporting ChatGPT/GenAI has made a minor impact on their strategy, versus 17% saying it changes their approach significantly and 12% saying it didn’t have an impact. The sectors where investors predict GenAI will make the biggest splash: Data/Analytics and Tech-Enabled Services.
- Sage Raises $15M: Last week’s other senior care Series A was secured by Sage, which raised $15M to build out its coordinated-care platform for senior living communities. Sage deploys hardware that replaces existing tools such as pull cords and help buttons with connected devices. Caregivers use Sage to coordinate their responses and triage care, while care managers can use it to access insights on a resident’s treatment needs, recommendations, and community-performance metrics.
- Cleveland Clinic Quantum Initiatives: Cleveland Clinic is diving deeper into quantum research after landing two contracts with Wellcome Leap to allocate up to $40M toward advancing quantum computing applications in healthcare. For the first project, Cleveland Clinic will work with the IBM Quantum team to create quantum algorithms for improving rapid protein structure prediction. In the second, Cleveland Clinic is teaming up with both IBM and Algorithmiq to develop computational tools for investigating the potential of quantum computing in cancer drug development.
- Meta Mental Health Lawsuit: Dozens of US states are suing Meta for contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to the platforms. The lawsuit also alleges that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent. The litigation follows damning reports that Meta ignores its own internal research that illustrates the harms Instagram can cause teenagers, especially when it comes to mental health and body image issues.
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