Phare Health, a London-based startup founded by DeepMind and Google Health alumni, has raised £2.5m for its AI products for clinicians.
Founded in August, Phare Health is developing AI tools to support the administrative efforts of healthcare professionals.
Short staffing and tight budgets have left hospitals and clinics with significant backlogs and Phare Health claims it can help tackle that by using automation to boost efficiency in the tasks beyond medical practice.
Phare Health co-founder and co-CEO Dr Martin Seneviratne said that while there is a lot of discussion about AI supporting clinicians, “there is a much more urgent need for AI in the back office – doing low-risk, manual, administrative tasks that will free clinicians up to spend more time caring for patients”.
Seneviratne said that during his time working in hospitals, the most “frustrating thing was having to spend time on admin, at the expense of patient care”.
The company’s initial product uses a large language model to quickly review patient notes from clinicians and turn them into usable data for admin, operational and financial teams.
“AI in healthcare should be invisible – it should help behind the scenes to make healthcare more efficient and safe without getting in the way of doctors and nurses,” said Seneviratne.
Phare Health plans to use the cash injection to expand its team by recruiting AI and healthcare experts.
The funding round was led by General Catalyst and featured participation from KHP Ventures and Bertelsmann Investments.
“Automation holds tremendous potential to alleviate the ongoing labour shortage in the healthcare space,” said Thorsten Wirkes, senior VP at Bertelsmann Investments.
“Phare is the only automation coding company going after the inpatient market – and doing so with a global ambition.”