Generative AI is heating up in healthcare — and one startup is elevating extra funding to assist clinicians with the tech.
Medical scribe startup Abridge, which makes use of AI to report doctor-patient conversations and make notes within the affected person’s digital well being report, is in talks to shut a considerable spherical of funding lower than 4 months after asserting its final fundraise, based on three individuals with data of the efforts.
Two of these individuals stated Abridge was searching for to lift no less than $50 million. One particular person stated Abridge’s post-money valuation might hit $500 million or increased.
With surging investor curiosity, although, phrases of the deal might change and convey the startup a bigger elevate. Abridge declined to touch upon any fundraising efforts for this story.
Abridge final banked a $30 million Collection B in late October led by Spark Capital. The startup can also be backed by institutional traders together with CVS Well being Ventures, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, and Mayo Clinic.
Abridge has raised $62.5 million to this point. The startup was named to Enterprise Insider’s checklist of the 44 startups to guess your profession on in 2024.
Whereas AI adoption in healthcare hasn’t been fairly as frantic as in different industries, the tech is taking off for its potential to ease administrative duties like scientific documentation as burnout drives many suppliers out of the sector.
Abridge is not the one startup capitalizing on this pattern. Atmosphere Healthcare, which supplies AI software program together with tech for ambient scientific documentation, just lately introduced it had grabbed $70 million in Collection B funding co-led by Kleiner Perkins and OpenAI’s Startup Fund, with current traders Andreessen Horowitz and Optum Ventures collaborating. Medical scribe startup Nabla has already landed further money this 12 months, too, elevating a $24 million Collection B in January.
Nonetheless, as a rising contingent of startups race to deal with scientific documentation with AI, they’re going to should deal with the behemoth within the house that’s Microsoft’s Nuance. Microsoft agreed to purchase the AI firm in 2021 for $19.7 billion — its second-largest acquisition ever. Nuance claims its options are utilized by 77% of US hospitals.
Abridge has been working with well being techniques just like the College of Pittsburgh Medical Heart and the College of Kansas Well being System to coach its AI. The startup additionally landed a partnership with Epic in August to combine the startup’s software program into the digital well being report big’s scientific workflows, additional simplifying using Abridge’s tech for suppliers.
On the time of Abridge’s October Collection B, the corporate stated round 5,000 docs have been utilizing its tech.
