据《科技创投》独家获悉，Healthleap 这家正在开发人工智能平台的初创公司已完成 3800 万美元的种子轮和 A 轮融资。该平台能够读取患者病历，识别出可能患有未被诊断疾病的高风险患者。
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, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
此次融资包括由红杉资本和 First Round Capital 联合领投的 800 万美元种子轮融资，以及由 Hummingbird Ventures 领投的 3000 万美元 A 轮融资。该公司并未披露其估值。
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. The company is not disclosing its valuation.
Healthleap 由兄妹二人 Jemima 和 Josiah Meyer（见上图）于 2022 年在南非创立。最初，这家初创公司提供 Jemima 为营养师开发的一款临床营养工具。但后来公司调整了方向，构建了一个更通用的平台，旨在识别住院患者中可能患有营养不良或谵妄等未能及时发现的疾病。首席执行官兼联合创始人 Josiah Meyer 向《科技创投》透露了这一信息。
Founded in South Africa in 2022 by siblings Jemima and Josiah Meyer (pictured above), 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.
Josiah 表示：“患者的病历包含两类数据。实验室检查、体重和生命体征都记录在结构化字段中，但最具提示性的信息其实藏在临床医生的手写笔记里，比如食欲差、近期体重下降、肌肉流失或吞咽困难。我们正在开发的方法，能够以易于扩展和规模化应用的方式，提取这些临床概念在病历中的肯定或否定提及。”
“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. Our developing approach is extracting affirmative or negated mentions of these clinical concepts in an easily extensible and scalable way,” Josiah said.
他提到，该公司的平台目前已在超过 50 家医院投入使用，用于筛查营养不良和谵妄等疾病。此外，这家初创公司还开发了识别吸入性肺炎、压疮以及充血性心力衰竭再入院风险的项目，而这些项目目前仍在进行进一步的临床验证。
The company’s platform is currently deployed in more than 50 hospitals, where it screens 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.
为了识别可能面临疾病风险或尚未被诊断的患者，Healthleap 会接入医院的电子健康记录系统，并利用语言模型从书面记录中提取信息，例如近期体重下降或吞咽困难等描述。随后，这些分析结果会与实验室报告、生命体征等结构化信息一同输入其风险模型，从而筛选出可能需要进一步关注的患者。该公司指出，其软件并不会对患者进行诊断，而只是将其标记出来以供进一步评估。
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. The company notes that its software doesn’t diagnose patients, only highlights them for additional review.
“每晚，我们都会分析每位成年住院患者的记录：实验室结果、生命体征、体重、用药情况、饮食安排、诊断结果、临床医生笔记等等，”Josiah 解释道。“每天早上，我们都会在护理团队的现有工作流程中生成一个风险评分，并通过一个可访问的仪表盘提供有关患者病情趋势的更多信息。”营养不良很可能成为 Healthleap 的一个有效切入点，因为这是一种常常未被诊断的疾病，且可能以多种方式对患者的康复产生负面影响。
“Each night, we analyze every adult inpatient’s record: lab results, vital signs, weights, medications, diet orders, diagnoses, clinicians’ notes, and more,” Josiah explained. “Each morning, we write a risk score into the care team’s existing workflow with a dashboard accessible that holds additional information about the patients’ trends.”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.
研究表明，20% 至 50% 的住院患者存在营养不良问题，一些研究还指出，营养不良与住院时间延长、伤口愈合不良、感染及其他并发症，以及更高的发病率和死亡率有关。
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 表示，在过去一年中，Healthleap 的合作医院已从三家增长到超过 50 家，其客户现已包括 Penn Medicine、Cedars-Sinai、Intermountain、Houston Methodist 和 Emory Healthcare。他还提到，同期公司的收入增长了 10 倍以上，但并未透露具体数据。
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.
这家初创公司出售为期三年的合同，价格根据医院的许可床位数确定，同时采用基于结果的定价模式。“我们将医院财务团队验证并归因于我们的实际投资回报率（ROI）作为可衡量的投资回报率。基于这一点，我们在合同中确保交付的回报将是合同价格的数倍。迄今为止，所有客户都实现了5倍或更高的实际投资回报率，在某些情况下，年度总投资回报率甚至超过了20倍，”乔西亚说道。
The startup sells three-year contracts priced according to a hospital’s licensed bed count, and also uses an outcome-based pricing model. “We use the hard ROI that the hospital finance team validates and attributes to us as the measurable ROI. Based on that, we contractually ensure that we deliver multiples of the contract price. To date, every customer has seen a 5x hard ROI or more, in some cases over 20x annual total ROI,” Josiah said.
宾夕法尼亚大学医院方面表示，Healthleap的营养不良干预项目带来了2380万美元的年度财务影响，其中630万美元来自额外的报销，1750万美元则来自住院时间的缩短。
At the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Healthleap says its malnutrition program resulted in $23.8 million in annualized financial impact, of which $6.3 million came from additional reimbursement and $17.5 million from shorter hospital stays.
Healthleap计划将这笔新获得的资金用于工程、产品、销售和客户成功领域，同时增加对更多疾病识别的支持。梅耶表示，公司最终希望覆盖超过40种主要健康问题，并拓展至门诊和居家护理领域。
Healthleap plans to spend the fresh cash on engineering, product, sales, and customer success as it adds support for identifying more conditions. Meyer said the company ultimately wants to cover more than 40 major health conditions and expand into outpatient and home care.