Hippocratic AI – a company building the first safety-focused Large Language Model (LLM) for healthcare (see Pulse 2.0 profile here) – announced the closing of a $53 million Series A funding round at a $500 million valuation. This funding round brought the company’s total funding to $120 million.
The company also released its first product for phase three safety testing – which is a staffing marketplace for healthcare where health systems, payors, and others can hire generative AI (GenAI) agents that complete low-risk, non-diagnostic, patient-facing healthcare tasks to help solve the massive shortage of healthcare nurses, social workers, and nutritionists in the US and worldwide. The new funding round will help fund these safety tests and further develop the product.
This funding round was co-led by Premji Invest and General Catalyst with participation from SV Angel and Memorial Hermann Health System and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health, Cincinnati Children’s, WellSpan Health, and Universal Health Services (UHS).
Hippocratic AI was founded on the belief that GenAI holds the potential to improve healthcare access, equity, and outcomes, but it has to be developed and deployed safely and responsibly. The funding round was significantly oversubscribed, enabling the company to select lead investors who were patient enough to prioritize safety over short-term revenue and profits.
The company starts the next stage of its responsible AI journey by releasing its first product for phase three safety testing. And the company pioneered a clinician-driven safety testing system for LLMs.
The Phase one testing was conducted by leading physicians and nurses (< 50) to ensure the agent completes the critical checklist items with the patient for a given use case. And Phase two testing required testing to be completed by over 1,000 licensed US nurses and over 100 US licensed physicians talking to the AI while acting as a patient. The Phase three testing – which starts now – requires the testing to be completed by 5,000 licensed nurses, 500 licensed physicians, and the company’s health system partners.
This product is a novel staffing marketplace where health systems, payors, and others can essentially hire auto-pilot generative AI-powered agents to conduct low-risk, non-diagnostic, patient-facing services to help solve the massive healthcare staffing crisis. And this marketplace is part of the company’s goal of how generative AI can provide super staffing and healthcare abundance and equity for the first time in history.
The initial roles include chronic care management, post-discharge follow-up for specific conditions like congestive heart failure and kidney disease, and wellness and social determinants of health surveys, health risk assessments, and pre-operative outreach. But these agents won’t be allowed to speak with patients unsupervised until phase three of the safety testing is completed.
The company decided to move to phase three testing due to the promising results of phase one and two testing. For these earlier phases, 1,002 US licensed nurses and 130 US licensed physicians were asked to act as patients and speak to the company’s agents in various use cases. After each encounter, they were asked to assess the product on subjective and objective safety measures and compare the product to real nurses and other LLMs like GPT4 and LLaMA 2 70B Chat.
Plus, product development is guided by several Hippocratic AI oversight groups, including a safety governance council, a Physician Advisory Council, and a Nurse Advisory Council – which brings together esteemed physicians and registered nurses hailing from leading health systems and digital health companies like Cleveland Clinic, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Teladoc Health, WebMD, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Illinois Health System, and others.
For phase three testing, Hippocratic AI will ask its 40+ partners to test the safety of this novel GenAI-based product. The partners include HonorHealth, Cincinnati Children’s, OhioHealth, Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Universal Health Services, ELNA, SonderMind, Vital Software, Capsule, Evernow, HarmonyCares, Guidehealth, University of Vermont Health Network, Memorial Hermann Health System, Fraser Health, Side Health and many more. Along with these partners, the company will significantly expand testing with more licensed nurses and physicians.
KEY QUOTES:
“Premji Invest supports the Azim Premji Foundation’s non-profit activities in perpetuity by investing in companies that can create long-term societal value. The Foundation runs deep, on-the-ground work in healthcare and education. Hippocratic AI’s approach towards safe AI helps further the Foundation’s mission. The team has the potential to transform healthcare with an LLM that is safe and effective. We look forward to working with this ambitious and talented team to achieve better outcomes for patients around the globe.”
- Sandesh Patnam, Managing Partner at Premji Invest
“Since the founding of Hippocratic AI a year ago, the company trained its foundational model, achieved a key safety threshold, identified novel use cases to solve the healthcare staffing crisis, and established partnerships with 40 health systems, payors, and digital health companies. Hippocratic AI has grown rapidly due to sound execution and strategy, while prioritizing safety. The company is a leading standard of radical collaboration at work and will play a critical role in transforming our healthcare system to make it more proactive, affordable, and equitable.”
- Hemant Taneja, CEO and Managing Director at General Catalyst
“When we started the company, we prioritized safety as our top value. This is why we named the company after the physician’s Hippocratic Oath and made the tagline ‘Do no harm.’ This has been our guiding principle since the company’s founding. Our focus on safety testing our product in multiple phases and transparent publication of the results for everyone to see is the next down payment in this safety-first journey. Our selection of partners who align with our values and have the patience to let us pursue safety over revenue and profits further underscores our commitment to these values.”
- Munjal Shah, co-founder and CEO of Hippocratic AI
