Photo: Aaron Patzer
Vital, a company that designs AI-based software for hospital emergency rooms, announced it has raised $5.2 million in seed funding led by First Round Capital and Threshold Ventures (formerly known as DFJ). Essentially, Vital uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to triage patients before they see a doctor — which makes it easier and faster for providers to coordinate care and prioritize patients with a user-friendly system.
Bragiel Brothers, Meridian Street Capital, Refactor Capital, and SV Angel also participated in this round along with angel investors Vivek Garipalli (CloverHealth CEO) and the founders of Flatiron Health Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg. In conjunction with this funding round, First Round Capital founder and partner Josh Kopelman is joining Vital’s board.
“The HITECH Act was well-intentioned, but now hospitals rely on outdated, slow, and inefficient software – and nowhere is it more painful than in the emergency room,” said Vital founder and CEO Aaron Patzer in a statement. “Doctors and nurses often put more time into paperwork and data entry than patient care. Vital uses smart, easy tech to reverse that, cutting wait times in half, reducing provider burnout and saving hospitals millions of dollars.”
Patzer is also known for his previous success with the launch of Mint.com — which was acquired by Intuit for $172.5 million. To launch Vital, Patzer partnered with Justin Schrager — a Doctor of Emergency Medicine at Emory University Hospital. To build Vital, Patzer invested a million dollars and conducted two years of peer-reviewed academic study and technical research and development.
“Vital successfully built software with a modern, no-training-required interface, while also meeting HIPAA compliance. It’s what people expect from consumer software, but rarely see in healthcare,” added Kopelman. “Turning massive amounts of complex and regulated data into clean, easy products is what Mint.com did for money, and we’re proud to back a solution that’ll do the same in life and death situations.”
