HealthTensor, an artificial intelligence company creating software to help augment medical decision-making, has raised a $5 million in a seed round of financing led by Calibrate Ventures, TenOneTen Ventures and Susa Ventures.

WHY IT MATTERS

The round also includes hospitals and physicians, including a medical officer at Amazon Health. Funds will be used to scale the company's software engineering and implementation team to keep up with demand from major health systems, the vendor said.

HealthTensor's software functions between physicians and the troves of raw medical data from any given patient, which often is more than any individual doctor can handle. The company uses advanced algorithms to do AI-enabled diagnosis with the aim of ensuring no medical condition is overlooked. The software was designed with the physician workflow in mind, enabling frictionless adoption of the product by users, the company contended.

"HealthTensor makes me a better doctor because it allows me to spend less time in front of the computer and more time in front of the patient," said Dr. Tasneem Bholat, an early user of HealthTensor's software. "HealthTensor synthesizes all the data from the patient's chart, saving me from doing chart biopsy and surfacing diagnoses I might have otherwise missed."

The company's software currently is integrated within several hospitals and will expand to more in the coming months, the vendor reported.

THE LARGER TREND

The use of AI in healthcare has been on the rise throughout 2020. According to some experts, 2021 could be a big year for AI and machine learning.

"AI had become mythical, but 2021 looks set to be the year where it may come into its own in the health sector, along with the use of automation," said Dr. Sam Shah, chief medical strategy officer at Numan and former director of digital development at NHSX. "During the next year, we are likely to see more solutions that support, not only imaging, but also the quality of reporting, as well as the greater use of natural language processing.

"The combination of these technologies will help improve efficiency in health systems as they begin to recover from the pandemic," he said.

ON THE RECORD

"We think of HealthTensor as an AI-powered medical resident that is focused specifically on the tedious, data-driven aspects of medicine, which is what computers do best," said Eli Ben-Joseph, cofounder and CEO of HealthTensor.

"Many doctors are forced to spend a majority of their day focused on data aggregation from medical records, which leads to missed diagnoses, patient dissatisfaction and physician burnout. HealthTensor frees up the physician to focus on the conceptual and emotional aspects of medicine, which is what humans do best."

"HealthTensor makes doctors' lives easier and helps provide better patient care, ultimately generating revenue for hospitals, making it one of the rare startups that has massive global potential for both patients and healthcare providers," said Jason Schoettler, general partner at Calibrate Ventures.

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bsiwicki@himss.org
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