CARPL – an enterprise imaging AI marketplace platform – has announced a $6 million funding round to enable healthcare providers to access, assess, and integrate these radiology AI applications into their clinical workflows through a single user interface, single data channel, and single procurement system.
Stellaris Venture Partners led the seed funding round with participation from strategic angel investors from Novo Holdings, Leapfrog PE, Bain & Co, Boston Consulting Group, and UnitedHealth Group, among others. And CARPL will use the funding to expand the team in North America and continue to build its tech stack.
With over 700 US-FDA-approved AI applications, healthcare providers navigate the complex landscape of niche AI solutions. The daunting task involves determining the best AI solution for them and their patients and then seamlessly integrating it into the radiologists’ workflows. This complexity has resulted in the sluggish pace of AI adoption in healthcare.
A recent joint statement by the world’s top radiology associations also highlighted the importance of AI validation, deployment, and monitoring while it is being used in clinical practice. CARPL’s technology platform addresses this need using its proprietary DEV-D framework, allowing healthcare providers first to Discover (D), Explore (E), and Validate (V) AI applications from CARPL’s AI marketplace and subsequently Deploy (D) the most appropriate application across their clinical workflows.
CARPL is the only platform in the market with deep AI validation and monitoring capabilities, ensuring safe and seamless AI deployment while upholding patient-centricity. And CARPL’s universal AI viewer serves as a single user interface for radiologists, enabling them to accept, reject or refine AI outputs, which can subsequently be used to improve the performance of the AI itself.
Launched in 2021, CARPL was founded by Vidur Mahajan, a physician with an MBA from the Wharton School of Business who has spent more than 12 years in the diagnostics industry. CARPL’s leadership comprises Dr. Vasanth Venugopal as Chief Medical Officer, Rohit Takhar as CTO, and Dhruv Sahai as COO. CARPL has also ramped up its advisory team with the appointment of Dr Vijay Rao, SVP of Enterprise Imaging at Jefferson Health and a past president of the Radiology Society of North America.
CARPL has a multidisciplinary team with clinicians, scientists, engineers and business experts, all working towards the singular goal of driving exponential health outcomes using the encapsulated value of the entire AI ecosystem to ensure access of quality diagnostics to patients. CARPL has over 120 papers and conference presentations to its credit and has coined some seminal concepts in clinical AI, such as algorithmic audits, clinical explainability failure, and unboxing AI.
CARPL’s technology platform is utilized by the world’s top healthcare organizations like the Singapore Government, Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), Radiology Partners (Los Angeles), University Hospitals (Cleveland), I-MED Radiology (Australia), Albert Einstein Hospital (São Paulo), Clinton Health Access Initiative, to name a few. And CARPL is also creating impact in the public health space by working with the Government of India to enable large scale Tuberculosis Screening Programmes in the most remote regions of the country.
KEY QUOTES:
“Over the past two years, we have onboarded more than 50 AI developers having 100+ AI applications, which made us the largest AI marketplace in terms of number of AI applications offered to customers. We are proud that some of the largest healthcare enterprises in the world have vetted our technology and trust us to be their partner in their AI and automation journeys.”
– Dr. Vidur Mahajan, CEO of CARPL.
“We are democratizing radiology in the same way that automation and robotics revolutionized lab medicine, where a single pathologist signs out thousands of tests each day. We envision a future where CARPL creates ‘super-radiologists’ – AI-enabled radiologists who are ten times more productive than traditional radiologists.”
– Vidur Mahajan; Mahajan brings deep domain expertise having previously grown revenue 10x to $20m in 10 years at his family business Mahajan Imaging, a leading radiology service provider. And he conceptualized CARPL under the guidance of his father Dr Harsh Mahajan, a pioneer in radiology, while working on validation and deployment of AI at Mahajan Imaging.
“The volume of imaging scans show a steady 9% year-on-year growth, outpacing the growth in the number of radiologists at a mere 1.8%. Bridging this demand gap is a crucial challenge for healthcare providers, and we believe AI will be the key. CARPL’s integrated platform, designed for testing, deploying, and monitoring radiology AI applications, is poised to empower healthcare providers by seamlessly integrating AI into their clinical workflows. We are thrilled to join forces with Vidur and his team on this transformative journey.”
– Alok Goyal, Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners
