Heidi Health, an artificial intelligence (AI) health-tech platform, has on Thursday announced the completion of an $6.3 million Series A capital raise to power its growth and product development.
The firm said in a statement that the raise was led by Blackbird Ventures – with participation by Hostplus, Hesta, Wormhole Capital, Archangel Ventures, Possible Ventures and Saniel Ventures.
According to the statement, the capital will be invested in Heidi’s product development, including developing new AI-driven offerings for clinicians.
This investment will also be used to expand its team of doctors, designers, and engineers, as well as to increase the number of clinics and general practitioners (GPs) using the software in Australia initially, and later in global markets.
“People are living longer with more chronic conditions. While medicine has become increasingly specialised, junior doctors aren’t choosing to become GPs,
“This has created a crippling burden on our GPs, limiting their ability to provide the service and care that Australians expect and deserve,” said Heidi Founder and Chief Executive Officer Dr Thomas Kelly.
According to him, he experienced this working in rural GP settings and in public hospital outpatient clinics – they overrun with patients and not enough time.
He also noted that his time as a doctor was so often wasted doing paper referrals, waiting on hold or filling in copious amounts of documentation to satisfy the government’s requirements for some piece of Medicare funding.
“Overcoming these challenges is the guiding vision of Heidi. Using AI to automate the administrative components of care and better orchestrate our clinician resources with our patient population,” he said.
He said the firm has seen incredible traction with clinics already, where they’re already live, making a genuine difference for patients and practitioners.
“That endorsement from the industry is humbling, and provides validation for our technology and vision,” he said.
However, he noted that the firm’s mission is long-term and this Series A raise is intended to accelerate the firm’s vision of providing humanity with optimal healthcare by supporting every clinician with superhuman medical AGI.
“The first version of that AGI, Heidi for Clinicians, is beginning to ship today. Heidi is superpowers for clinicians, and the first expression of our vision to change the world powered by Heidi’s consult data,” he said.
Founded in 2021, Heidi is a firm that uses artificial intelligence to increase GP capacity and reduce clinical administration.
The firm which is already used by 100+ GPs in about 30 clinics nationwide, aims to advance the world’s transition to AI-supported healthcare, increasing access to high-quality medical care for patients and improving the quality of working conditions for all clinicians.
It is predicted that Australia will be short 10,600 GPs, with demand for their services increasing 58 percent in the next 10 years.
Given the impending shortage, productivity is more important than ever, yet primary care doctors spend as much time documenting visits as they do seeing patients.
It was to overcome these statistics that led to Kelly founding Heidi – formerly Oscer – alongside Waleed Mussa and Yu Liu in 2021.
Kelly, a vascular surgery registrar with a background in mathematics and technology, saw the potential to use AI to improve the patient experience whilst simultaneously easing the burden on clinicians.
Heidi, therefore, was designed to give patients more control and transparency over their experience and provide clinicians with a more productive, automated consulting interface to cut down on administrative workloads and reduce the instances of missed or late diagnosis.
Heidi can also be used as an off-the-shelf platform or as white-labelled solution at an enterprise level.
Heidi for Clinicians combines the power of a doctor’s expertise and medical context with powerful AI, enabling clinicians to automate time-consuming administrative tasks such as gathering histories, building ward round lists, performing clinical audits, writing clinical notes, creating documents, optimizing discharge summaries for billings and processing referrals.
According to the statement, currently, clinicians spend as much as twice the amount of time on paperwork and admin than providing essential care and services; an issue that not only impacts patients, but is a direct cause of clinician burnout.
By streamlining their administrative workload, Heidi is eliminating much of the burden, enabling clinicians to provide a better quality and quantity of care.
“We desperately need a safe path to scale the most scarce resource in our healthcare system — clinicians. Heidi’s AI allows clinicians to spend less time on administrative tasks, and more time on what matters most: to foster enduring relationships with their patients and invest in preventative care,
“We are proud to continue supporting Heidi in its mission to build a sustainable healthcare system for future generations,” said Michael Tolo, General Partner at Blackbird Ventures.
In 2021 Oscer – as Heidi was formerly known – completed a AUD 5 million ($3.15 million) seed round led by Blackbird Ventures.
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