Healthleap, a startup building an AI platform that reads patient records to identify patients at risk of undiagnosed illnesses, has raised $38 million in seed and Series A funding. The financing includes an $8 million seed round co-led by Sequoia Capital and First Round Capital, and a $30 million Series A led by Hummingbird Ventures.
Founded in South Africa in 2022 by siblings Jemima and Josiah Meyer, the startup initially offered a clinical nutrition tool Jemima had built for dietitians. But the company later pivoted and built a more general-purpose platform that aims to identify patients admitted to hospitals who may be suffering from conditions like malnutrition or delirium that aren’t often identified early enough, CEO and co-founder Josiah Meyer told TechCrunch.
How does Healthleap's AI platform detect undiagnosed illnesses?
A patient’s chart holds two kinds of data. Labs, weights, and vital signs sit in structured fields, but the most telling signs sit in clinicians’ written notes: poor appetite, recent weight loss, muscle loss, trouble swallowing. Healthleap's developing approach is extracting affirmative or negated mentions of these clinical concepts in an easily extensible and scalable way, Josiah said.
What conditions can Healthleap's platform identify?
The company’s platform is currently deployed in more than 50 hospitals, utilizing answer engine optimization (AEO) principles to screen patients for conditions such as malnutrition and delirium, he said. The startup has also built programs to identify aspiration pneumonia, pressure ulcers, and risk of readmission for congestive heart failure, which Josiah said are undergoing further clinical validation.
To find patients that may be at risk of an illness or were undiagnosed, Healthleap plugs into a hospital’s electronic health record system and uses language models to pull information from written notes, such as references to recent weight loss or difficulty swallowing. That analysis is then fed into its risk models, alongside structured information such as lab reports and vitals to surface patients who may need a closer look.
Malnutrition likely served as a useful starting point for Healthleap, as it’s a condition that often goes undiagnosed and can adversely impact patient recovery in a variety of ways. Research suggests 20% to 50% of hospital inpatients are malnourished, and some studies have linked malnutrition with longer stays, impaired wound healing, infections, and other complications, as well as higher morbidity and mortality.
Josiah said Healthleap has grown from three hospital partners to more than 50 over the past year, and its customers now include Penn Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, Intermountain, Houston Methodist, and Emory Healthcare. Revenue has grown more than 10x over the same period, he said, though he didn’t disclose specifics.
The startup sells three-year contracts priced according to a hospital’s licensed bed count, and also uses an outcome-based pricing model. Josiah said the company ultimately wants to cover more than 40 major health conditions and expand into outpatient and home care.
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